This year and the next (2013 recap)

by | Syndicated

2013 was an exciting year for me as far as tester stuff goes. I jumped into a lot of new stuff that I hadn’t done before, that’s sort of my style. Being in an uncomfortable area seems like a good thing, it really pushes you (me) to explore and learn and grow.

I have been instructing BBST classes with AST for about a year now. I got an email from Michael Larsen one day asking if I had time to lead a class, oh and he was going to be away on vacation for the first week. I said yes of course. Why turn something fun like that down, really? That’s the brief story of how I started being a lead instructor for BBST classes.

This year marked my second CAST and first Test Retreat. For the second time, CAST was a formative event. The conference is really really good, what’s even better is getting to hang out with friends after. This is where the magic is. Test retreat is what lead to me getting to WHOSE2013. I did a session on tester skill lists, and it just happened that other people there were interested in the same thing. Who’d have thunk it. Test retreat also spawned a book club that I’ve been enjoying a lot. Next year I’d like to go to two conferences, I’m not sure what the second will be though. Maybe QAOrTheHighway.

I worked with Michael and JeanAnn a lot this year while contributing sessions for WeekendTesting Americas. Weekend Testing is a great thing for so many people. Participants get a free place to work with groups on new testing topics once a month, facilitators get a place to pursue whatever topics are interesting to them at the moment. All it takes is a good idea and 2 hours of your Saturday. I’m looking forward to more of these next year.

Writing is not something I’m particularly comfortable with, most times it is a struggle. So, because of that, I started writing more often here. Writing and reading a lot really help to make writing easier. I also started to do some writing outside of my personal blog. I’ll be writing one other place, at least for a few months, early next year. I want to thank Matt Heusser for that opportunity.

I’m not really sure what 2014 will bring, but whatever it is I probably won’t say no. There are a few really interesting in the air right now and if any one of them panned out I’d be pretty happy.