Test Bash UK Day 1 — Experience report
Wow — what a day! It has been more than I ever dreamed off to attend an in person testing conference as an attendee. It was definitely worth the effort of justifying the cost to my company. What I have really enjoyed is how relaxed, friendly and open everyone is. As a person that is attending on their own. It has been very comforting. I could be sitting or standing on my own and a complete stranger walks over to say hello / spark up the conversation. For me, I have done things a little strange — building up a presence online and then meeting people in person. I was very nervous, however, I found courage and had the attitude of having fun / finding joy. If I’m not feeling either of those things, then to wander on and do something else. There is no pressure at all. It is completely your own experience.
The speakers have been fantastic. Lena particularly caught my eye as a speaker on her talk “Would you-risk it?”. Confident, well paced, simple slides/not too many and she checked in with the audience on occasions to see how she was doing in terms of pace. As a person that has been moving into the public speaking domain, having role models, such as her, is very inspiring. In her talk, one of the things that I remember was talking about not only assumptions, but also misconceptions. Such as time in a 24 hour clock. Maybe it’s 4 hours or some other weird thing! I felt this was interesting and something that I’ll dig into.
Wow — Dan Ashby and his talk about quality was inspiring. I feel that I need to devour all of his work in more detail. Again, another great speaker that explained concepts clearly for anyone to understand.
Nithin, I feel he is an amazing person. He does a lot of work in the testing community to help other people. I took a leap and decided to try out an activity that he was running called deconstructing your thought process. There was a user story with acceptance criteria and we had to generate test ideas, think about minimum viable product, amongst other things. Everyone was very friendly. We sat around at a table and everyone got a chance to contribute :-) One takeaway I took was “Stress out each word individually to generate test ideas”.
What I found interesting is that in reflection I did not follow my scheduled plan at all. I was hoping to do a lot of the workshops, however, after two really bad night’s sleep my energy was lagging and struggling a lot. So instead, it was a chilled approach where I networked and chatted with people. Supporting those doing the talks by taking photos / posting them on twitter. Had a lovely lunch with two wonderful people and did some mindful colouring in the quiet room. Lots of chats with so many amazing people.
I’m looking forward to day 2. Hopefully I have a better night’s sleep, however, if not, it is so chilled and relaxed that it’s all going to be great anyway. I feel proud of myself for coming on my own, having the confidence to chat to anyone and getting out of my comfort zone to grow.
