It was fantastic, it exceeded my expectations, I learnt how to make a monkey braid and I got to spend time with a bunch of great people.

I had suggested two sessions, and I was fortunate enough to have enough people interested in the proposed topics to make the sessions happen. These are just some brief initial notes for documentation purposes.

Role Models
I wanted to talk about how to be a good role model, not only for testers. I had arranged my thoughts on the topic in a mid map, and I used part of it as a starting point for the discussion.

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We had a great session where amongst other things we talked about (in no particular order):

  • Victim mentality
  • Judgement
  • Getting too personal
  • Dealing with concflict
  • Being a role model from a technical vs human perspective
  • Give and take, or Give and receive
  • Replacing “but” with “and”
  • Admitting to not knowing the answer
  • Asking the right questions
  • Being humble
  • Not making people feel bad

It is all fun and games!
I also wanted to talk about having fun at work and how to engage and motivate testers. We ended up having a session that focused on games and puzzles. I finally got to play the dice game, I am now able to answer the question “Is this a pen?” and I got hooked on The Set Game.

My original thoughts on the topic were:

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