Organizing meetups

03 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by claire in Approaches, Context, Experiences, Experiments, Lean Coffee, Protip, Retrospective, Social media, Soft Skills, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking, Training, Unconference, Volunteering

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Announcing Ministry of Test Atlanta

Last fall was the last of our Software Testing Atlanta Conference (STAC) events. An attendee at my Intentional Learning Workshop chatted with me afterward. I mentioned that I have been a local meetup organizer and have struggled with how much control to retain. My attendee urged me to give the meetup back to the community and I have been pondering that ever since.

I’ve been the primary organizer of the Software Testing Club Atlanta meetup since we began as an affiliate of the UK-based Software Testing Club in October 2013. My charter has always been to serve and develop the local testing community including connecting it with the global virtual community. Not everyone agreed about including digital attendees, but I am willing to experience the friction of a virtual meeting to help people to attend who otherwise would not have a chance. Inclusion matters to me.

I also prefer small groups and experiential events/activities that Justin talks about. I have never had a goal of increasing the size of our meetup beyond what a single facilitator could manage in a workshop.

STAC was just a bigger extension of the meetup for me. I always wanted to reach more people in the local community, so putting together a conference focused on my geographic region was a great chance to bring new local voices to the fore. I never wanted it to be a big formal event, so I’m working on an ATL software testing unconference for the fall: shortSTAC. More on that to come!

This has been an awesome ride over the last 3 years, but we’re re-branding and branching out into our very own Meetup now known as Ministry of Test Atlanta!

Please join us to keep up with our events!

As part of our reboot, I wanted to share some thoughts on what challenges a meetup organizer confronts every month and why monthly events are so difficult to sustain!

Meetups are tough for reasons

1. Location, location, location!

People interested in testing are spread out across ATL and traffic suuuuuucks. Plus, I have no budget, so someone has to be willing to host for free or sponsor the venue fee $$. I don’t want to hold the meetup only in one part of the city since that alienates interested test enthusiasts. Proximity to public transit is something I’m not sure matters, but it would make the meetup more accessible to more testers.

Over the past 3 years, we’ve had completely different crowds depending on which part of the city we chose. I preferred to rotate locations to give everyone some opportunity to attend, even though that introduced uncertainty that probably negatively affected attendance… It’s impossible to make the “right” choice for everyone who *might* attend…

Anyway, I work at VersionOne now and that means I can host, so that’s one variable taken care of!

2. Scheduling

We hold meetings on weeknights assuming that people are more likely to do work-related things on workdays – and would be more reluctant to give up their weekend fun time to work-ish things. Getting all of the stars aligned to schedule these meetups monthly *and* give enough time for people to RSVP and then work out the logistics of showing up… Timing is hard.

Since we tend to meet after work, providing food and drink encourages people to attend, but that’s not free… and I have no budget.

3. Funding

Food and drink cost $$ – someone has to be willing to sponsor the foodz, and drink

Possible sources of funding:

donations from individual attendees
local sponsors (probably companies)
- I’ll have to check on company budget to see whether I can do pizza & sodas every time but I know I can do it sometimes.
the Association for Software Testing
Software Testing Club/Ministry of Test
or even the Agile Alliance.

4. Content

Not everyone wants to present or run a workshop or host a round table or … yeah. People will show up but may not want to provide content. I have to find a willing volunteer to do it for free or someone to sponsor a fee $$.

We infrequently have presentations. Most of our events are workshops or rountables or some sort of interactive experience. My go-to is Lean Coffee since it lowers the barrier to getting groups together and provides value to attendees every time.

I’m definitely interested in scheduling joint events with other Atlanta meetups in the future.

5. Publicity

How do people find out about meetings? I do the social media management, but I have no budget so … mostly word of mouth otherwise? Maybe chat rooms?

6. Audience

I assume that most of the people who want to come to a testing meetup are testers, but not all test enthusiasts are testers. We’ve had development-types show up, so I want to keep it open and inclusive.

7. Viewpoint advocated

I refuse to insist people agree with me. I won’t call it a context-driven testing meetup or an agile testing [PDF] meetup because I want to welcome people who subscribe to other philosophies of testing. That said, I also don’t want vendor talks (and yes I work for a vendor now). This group is for engaging with ideas focusing on and around testing, not for mind-clubbing or selling or exchanging business cards. Active participation is expected and encouraged.

8. Volunteers

Organizing: While I have always had a core group of enthusiastic participants, I’ve never had a formal organizing committee. Being a one-woman-show most of the time is pretty exhausting, y’all. The meetup consumed lots of my free time. I made my professional hobby the primary thing I did for fun outside of the office for years. Um… not a sustainable model. I do not recommend it. At the same time, working with others means compromise, so consider carefully the tradeoffs and find allies who believe in your mission.

Presenting: Members of my core group have all helped out with content for the meetup – for which I am eternally grateful! I’ve also encouraged other local aspiring presenters to practice on us. Occasionally, someone I know from the wider testing community is in town and joins us to share their wit and wisdom. I resisted presenting at my own event for a long long time… until I needed content LOL

Est testing parfait?

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by claire in #testchat, Agile2013, AgileConnection, Experiments, Exploratory Testing, Hackathon, ISST, Lean Coffee, Podcast, Retrospective, Skype Test Chat, Social media, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking, Tea-time With Testers, Techwell, Test Retreat, Testing Circus, TWiST, Volunteering, Weekend Testing

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I heard that Gerry Weinberg has an exercise called “Mary had a little lamb,” in which you analyze each word in the sentence to elicit implicit meaning that might be important. This sounded interesting enough to try, so when the opportunity came to propose a topic at Test Retreat 2013 I went for it. My topic “Is testing for me?” didn’t end up formally scheduled but made a nice interstitial topic to discuss with those milling about in the main room.

I chopped the sentence into separate words and wrote them top-to-bottom on a large sticky note. Then, instead of giving some sort of prepared remarks, I elicited brainstorming from the gathered participants. Having received interesting feedback on my professional and personal strengths at Agile2013 that had left me questioning how best to use my evil powers for good, I wanted to hear how others were thinking about the testing field and how it fit them.

The resulting scrawled notes ended up a mindmap, the path of least resistance for me. I won’t say the discussion solved all my problems, but it did give me some direction for future exploration – exploration that might also be helpful to a newbie wondering whether to pursue a career in testing.

Which brings me to some interesting recent events:

the first ISST webinar by Ben Kelly
Our second meetup for Software Testing Club Atlanta
Randomly running across a new tester on Twitter
This testing blog post I read recently

I started composing a list of things I’d recommend to people just starting out as testers to help them to evaluate whether to continue. I wanted to encourage them to jump right in but also think big, not waiting them to wait 5 years to reach out to the wider world of testing (like I did).

Here’s my current list. I blogged about various experiments I tried, so you can read for yourself to see what it’s like to select what’s a good starting point for you.

First things first: Whatever you try, frequent retros
Social media, especially Twitter
Try exploratory testing
Weekend Testing
Chatting with other testers online
Books, Podcasts, Blogs, maybe even writing for some ezines or websites?
Meetups, local events, Lean Coffee, conferences – attend (in person or virtually), live-tweet a conference, volunteer, speak (lightning talk, whole session, workshop, tutorial)
Open Source, Hackathons, innovation days, etc
uTest/Applause? I’ve heard of this but not tried it. Seems like a lower barrier to entry/way to get started?
And, last but not least, who do you want to be?

No matter how many times I think I’ve found all the meaning in my testing career, suddenly I realize there are more layers… but like a parfait, not an onion.

Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!
Shrek: I don’t care what everyone else likes! Ogres are not like cakes.
Donkey: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, “Let’s get some parfait,” they say, “Hell no, I don’t like no parfait”? Parfaits are delicious!
Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden! Ogres are like onions! End of story! Bye-bye! See ya later.
Donkey: Parfait’s gotta be the most delicious thing on the whole damn planet! – Shrek

Thanks for the inspiration to write, EmJayKay80 and Niyi!

Short cuts

28 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by claire in Approaches, Context, Experiences, Experiments, Social media

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For more than a year now, I’ve been shopping around for a hairdresser who could provide the ideal haircut. The first two attempts were incomplete, poor likenesses of the beauty I had in mind. I had a clear vision of the intended result, but I lacked the vocabulary to communicate that vision to professionals who could implement the solution. I had fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! (No, it’s not never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.) I knew it when I saw it but I couldn’t articulate it. So frustrating!

So I turned to the internet for solace. I perused numerous galleries of smiling women with hair of various lengths, shapes, and hues. In order to find the images I needed for my initial point-and-grunt interface – a printout of images pasted into a document for my first two appointments – I had to first identify the search terms that would produce optimal matches. I quickly cycled through searches from the generic “short haircuts” to the slightly more specific “bob hairstyles,” feeding my learning back into my process. As I progressed toward an exemplar of the captivating coiffure, I began to build a jargon file – and a Pinterest board.

Natural language is ambiguous and context dependent, so any requirements described in natural language are rarely complete. … This is especially problematic when something seems obvious but we need domain expertise or knowledge of a particular jargon to understand it fully. – Gojko Adzic

Stylist jargon:

short haircuts
cropped hair
bob hairstyles
asymmetrical bob
graduated bob
stacked bob
angled bob
long bob
layered bob
inverted bob
severely angled stacked bob

I don’t know whether those terms produce crystal clear images in your head, but I could see that these terms had a wide range of interpretations even among fashionistas.

An example would be handy right about now

I have heard it said that social media is a time suck, with Pinterest often held up as the mother of time sucks. However, I disagree. For my purposes, Pinterest was a fabulous tool for collecting all these visual bookmarks in one place, building a virtual gallery of hairstyle models as a communication tool.

When I booked my appointment online, I had included only a link to the first image I had found that was a rough approximation, leading her to ask upon my arrival whether I was the one who had sent her the Rihanna photo. (Of course not! That was Nicki Minaj!) That early draft of my request submitted in advance had given her time to mull over the idea.

I am pleased to say the result was exactly what I had hoped for and I will be visiting the Madam LV Salon again. Ultimately, being able to show this gallery to my hair craftswoman convinced her that my request was not a lark, that I had done my homework, and that my Pinterest board was in fact a specification by example.