Gary Hawkes | Activities

99 Second Talks – Day 1 – TestBash Brighton/MoTaCon 2025

Celebrate the quality community’s creativity and courage as folks share lessons, ideas, and stories in just 99 seconds.

Recognise your true value as a tester, navigate salary negotiations with confidence, and make the most of benefits beyond pay

In quality we gathered

Explore the challenges of balancing legacy knowledge with modern quality practices

Had An amazing time at MoTaCon 2025, did a first ever talk at a conference and had amazing support!

Thanks for going above and beyond in September 2025. Your community contributions create sparks and support many good things. 🤩

Thanks for writing about your positive experiences with the MoTaverse. We're grateful you continue to expand it. Coming back to the MoTaverse. 

Coming back to the MoTaverse

It's time to remove the silos

It’s a good job Rutherford P Dog can’t read. He is not normally a massive fan of post(persons)

Table Venus, team 302, Leading with Quality. Our quality radar exercise, testing the MoTaverse. Leading with Quality workshop led by Nicola Sedgwick.

My first cup of coffee in my new MoTaverse mug! The perfect way to reflect on two awesome days at this years MoTaCon whilst starting to write a blog about my experience. There is so much to ref...

Grateful to reach 3 years in software testing! 💜 Thank you, Ministry of Testing, for inspiring, supporting, and shaping my journey.

The picture shows only a glimpse of the International Snack Table Not shown are America, Ukrainian, Indian, and many more snacks from all over the world.

Always a pleasure to meet the amazing Isabel Evans and chitchat with her about our common friend, Jyothi R.

The power of number 99 in Motaverse. I Did my 99-secs talks at London MoT meet-up and MoTaCon(former Test Bash) but the real reward has been the awesome people I have met along the way while achiev...

Volunteering gives you wonderful opportunities to connect with some of the wonderful people of the community. It was nice meeting you and talking to you, Richard.

Scott is a wonderful personality, helpful, supportive, and a great thinker. Glad to have finally met him in person. Thanks to MoTaCon.

Stuart beatboxing at MotaCon 25

Gwen & Veerle preparing the day-two-intro, practicing System of a Down on a Glockenspiel

"Ha ha!! Love it 😂"

Ash leading our conversation for "Building with Intelligence: How Quality-Driven Teams Lead with AI" at leading quality

I loved your talk and I'll be using it to help guide my discussions with our Product Team to help them understand the 6 questions. Thank you and congratulations for an amazing talk.

Thanks for being my Conference buddy Jarsto! Great to meet and chat with you 😁🙏

Shout out to Demi

I've listened to Demi hosting TWiQ a number of times and she has always had very interesting things to say. So I wasn't go to miss her talk on Starting Continuous Quality. It was brilliant, loads o...

Glad to be in this learning opportunity around Contract Testing with Marie Cruz and Lewis Prescott.

It was a nasty bugger that broke the code

TestBash coffee break…

From Manila to Brighton. Finally made it to MotaCon25!!!

I have been following Rahul on LinkedIn for sometime now. Finally get to meet him in person!

"Sums up exactly what I've been trying to communicate with my Product Managers...taking that diagram to hammer it home."

During this talk at Test Bash 2025, Joep mention a zero bug policy. Simply put, if we can live with it forever, forget about it, if you can't, fix it right away.

Thank you Stuart!! Have learned a lot from our chat and I feel more confident in taking the next steps in introducing quality engineering at work!! ✨

Taking a selfie before starting the workshop! Full house as well 😱

Enjoying the banter, chemistry and passion for testing, quality and people, from the, err, Morecambe and Wise of our industry ⭐️👏🏽

It was great to see you again Simon and talk about MoTaverse in detail.

It was pleasure to meet Rahul in person and share our thoughts and ideas about testing world

"I was fantastic to meet you, loved the chat. You gave me some ideas too 😁"

The duo was superb - the way they took the stage, engaged the audience, announced the end of 99 secs after each 99 secs talk and many more.... loved their vibes. Captured their instrument as well ...

It was a great time being around the swag corner. Small chit chats, and fun!

MoTaverse is really a universe in so many senses. Testing is a big planet in the MoTaverse. The Testing Planet (Physical Newspaper) really summarises it very well. Long live The Testing P...

Absolutely exhausted today but what an amazing two days! Long ol' journey home last night and I wished I could have stayed at the social for longer but we go again next ywar 😄

It was super fun and exciting to complete each activity in the list.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the MoTaCon craft table, but it was a hit! Drop a comment with the names of people in this video. :)

My first MotaCon/TestBash and my first 99-second talk. So proud to have put something together and found the courage to get up on stage.

"Really thrilled to see Tina there!! She saw my name in the slack threads and messaged me that she was going. So I hopped on linked in and messaged her to try and meetup and noticed my last message to her was 12 years ago!! A wonderful human being and o..."