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

≈ Leave a Comment

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

March 2014 Software Testing Club Atlanta meetup

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by claire in Approaches, Context, Experiences, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking

≈ Leave a Comment

RSVP for the March 2014 meetup of Software Testing Club Atlanta features our own Eric Jacobson’s “Maybe We Don’t Have to Test It” from STAREast 2013:

Testers are taught they are responsible for all testing. Some even say “It’s not tested until I run the product myself.” Eric Jacobson believes this old school way of thinking can hurt a tester’s reputation and — even worse — may threaten the team’s success. Learning to recognize opportunities where you may not have to test can eliminate bottlenecks and make you everyone’s favorite tester. Eric shares eight patterns from his personal experiences where not testing was the best approach. Examples include patches for critical production problems that can’t get worse, features that are too technical for the tester, cosmetic bug fixes with substantial test setup, and more. Challenge your natural testing assumptions. Become more comfortable with approaches that don’t require testing. Eliminate waste in your testing process by asking, “Does this need to be tested? By me?” Take back ideas to manage not testing including using lightweight documentation for justification. You may find that not testing may actually be a means to better testing.

As quality assurance manager for Turner Broadcasting System’s Audience & Multi-Platform Technologies (AMPT) group, Eric Jacobson manages the test team responsible for Turner’s sales and strategic planning data warehouse and its broadcast traffic system. Eric was previously a test lead at Turner Broadcasting, responsible for testing the traffic system that schedules all commercials and programming on Turner’s ten domestic cable networks, including CNN, TNT, TBS, and Cartoon Network. Prior to joining TBS, he was a tester at Lucent Technologies. Eric joined the tester blogosphere in 2007 and has been blogging about testing on testthisblog.com every week since.

When Meetup.com is back up, I’ll link to the page so you can RSVP.

For now, plan to join us on the evening of Thursday March 20th.

Location TBD (Let me know if you want to host us!)

Potty training

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by claire in Experiences, Experiments, Protip, Soft Skills, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Testing Games, Training

≈ 1 Comment

My first experience with testing games was back at my first testing conference when Michael Bolton gave me a testing challenge at lunch: a rubber ball. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I knew I loved games. And that is a key aspect of how games help us to learn: getting past our resistance by promising us fun. Since software testing is a complex mental activity, exercising our minds is an important part of improving our work.

After attending several testing conferences, I can safely say one of my favorite aspects of these gatherings is evenings filed with testing games. (That is, games for testers, not testing video games.) Whether you’re rolling the dice (more, spoilers), deducing when a pen is not a pen, building a tower of pyramids, or shouting out “Set!” as you casually wander past, testers love a challenge.

So it was no surprise that John had his game bag already on the table when I arrived for the STC ATL holiday meetup. What I didn’t expect was Disruptus, a new-to-me game. He explained for a few minutes and then we jumped right in to playing. Almost immediately, I flipped over a card with an image of a toilet and the improve card:

Add or change 1 or more elements depicted in the card to improve the object or idea.

TMI

Skip this TMI stuff!

Since we are currently potty training at our house, this was a particularly relevant subject for me. I started rattling off ideas as they came to mind. John stopped me and said that I wasn’t coming up with new ideas but instead listing things that had already been done. While I agreed, I found that saying each of the knowns out loud helped me to clear my head for the next idea to come along.

Ideas that sprang to mind:

You know, for kids

toilet seat lock for babies just learning to walk
toddler height toilet
step stool for standing toilet training (boys)
separate lightweight plastic toddler toilet – could be portable
folding travel toilet seat for toddler on-the-go
built-in potty seat for toddler years that is easily removed for cleaning
moveable toddler handled seat for better balance
splash guard for boys potty training
tiny plastic urinal – I’d seen one once at a kids consignment sale
toilet target for potty training boys
soft-close lid that doesn’t slam down on little fingers
tie-in to children’s book/video for better motivating child (i.e. matches picture) – with audio/musical accompaniment for better motivating child
toilet with book rack attachment – also good for adults!
tie-in to popular children’s character for better motivating child
And of course Pinterest is awash in toilet training ideas…

Adult toilets

Dune’s Fremen stillsuit (okay, so that’s not real…)
water-conserving toilets – high efficiency, multi-flush options
recycling water from washing hands for next flush
elevated tank to use gravity for flushing
recently read an article about posture and advantage of raising feet using step-stool
bidet attachment that I saw at a co-working space
soft seat vs. hard seat
toilet scent spray that a friend mentioned to me & has ridiculous commercial
elongated seat
elevated seat for elderly with limited range of motion – vs. seat riser/handles
foot pedal to raise/lower the lid without using hands
putting the seat back down in the first place
self-cleaning – or at least those tablet attachments
germ resistant surface
I’d once seen a toilet with an automated toilet-seat-cover replacement system
I’d seen more exotic toilet options in a local farmer’s market store
a friend explained the composting toilet to me
chemical toilet/waterless toilet for big events like outdoor concerts
urinals – I’d seen a public outdoor urinal in Amsterdam that was just two large crosspieces for minimal privacy
device allowing women to stand for urination – thanks, Twitter!
chamberpots
outhouses

Things I’d never heard of

Glow-in-the-dark toilet seat – this would be a big hit with the kids!
Squat toilets
proximity sensor
toilet seat warmer – including power saving mode!
electric lifting seats for the elderly
female urinal
sound cloaking
toilet slippers
pretty much anything shown in Cars 2 when Mater visits the restroom

Motivation

Of course, it wasn’t until much later (esprit d’escalier) that the thing I really wanted to improve came to mind: I hate toilet auto-flush algorithms. As a happy user of toilet seat covers in public restrooms, I always feel concern about whether I’ll have to contend with a particularly sensitive hands-free toilet. Despite my years of experience, I have not yet mastered the art of evading the motion sensor while placing the toilet seat cover.

I would love to rewrite the algorithm to some set pattern of motions that would distinguish between someone leaning toward the seat to place a liner – and so avoid germs – and someone leaving the stall having completed her errand. Even clap-on, clap-off would be preferable to spray in the face from an unexpected flush.

Protip : My husband takes a 2 foot length of toilet paper and blindfolds the sensor. Manual flush never felt so good.

Training through play

So now that you made it past TMI, let’s get back to the notion of testing games for training testers. Do testing games help testers learn how to test? Many testers are making an argument for this.

John Stevenson is one of them. He uses Disruptus to encourage disruptive thinking that leads to innovation – in testing. Create, Improve, Transform, Disrupt: these 4 approaches are important when designing and executing tests. Finding new ways to remix our tests helps us to focus on things that matter but to approach them in a new way, extending our coverage of various paths and potential usage patterns. My experience with only a few turns of this game left me invigorated and encouraged to try new things at work.

How have you used games to learn about testing?

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

≈ Leave a Comment

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!

STC ATL Lean Coffee #1

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by claire in Agile2013, Approaches, Experiences, Experiments, Lean Coffee, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking, Volunteering

≈ Leave a Comment

Over the last few years, I have been getting to know other software testers here in Atlanta. Frequently, beginning this new acquaintance is such a positive experience that the other tester urges finding others similar to us to meet more regularly. This is such a common outcome that I am no longer surprised when first conversations end this way.

I don’t have much experience with the particulars of sifting through a large tech community for people interested in hanging out during their personal time to chat about testing software. However, when others insist on giving you a boost, it’s harder to say no.

I have demurred all these requests until now. Eventually it seemed silly to continue to turn down the genuine offers of resources, energy, and enthusiasm. I almost felt bad about denying people the community they so clearly craved. So here we are.

I love meeting new people and engaging them in conversations. However, I realize not everyone is comfortable doing that. I’ve noticed that having a structure to interactions can reduce the social barriers for those who might otherwise hang back.

At Agile2013, I noticed that Lean Coffee was an easy way to get to know a group of strangers, so I thought it would be a good place to start for the newly formed Software Test Club Atlanta.

I have participated in several Lean Coffee events run by different facilitators. I liked the simple style and frequent feedback so much that it was the first thing I brought back with me to work after Agile2013. The format proved fruitful for an internal meeting and so it seemed like a good idea for starting this local meetup.

Another good idea for starting something new is affiliating with established allies. Since one of my benefactors was part of the Software Testing Club community, I thought co-branding made a lot of sense. I led the idea of extending their brand to the United States since doing so would bring more people together worldwide than I could on my own. I wanted our nascent local group to be connected to the larger world of testing enthusiasts from the beginning. That would support the new members’ sense that each of them is not alone, the connection that drove creating this group in the first place. This is really a community building itself. I just happen to be in the center of it.

I love helping people to connect deeply with one another, so it seems only natural to put in the effort of providing the means for others to come together. Now that I work in social media, setting up channels for others to find us and join in the discussion was my first step. I want to be discoverable so that other local testers who feel the need for connection won’t have to wait so long for me to happen along.

I really appreciate that local businesses are supporting our efforts to make time to tackle difficult questions in testing and to share what we’ve learned through our professional and personal experiences. So you will definitely hear me being vocal about thanking them. I wouldn’t choose to do this alone and I’m encouraged that others think this is a cause worth the investment. I’m confident that we’re building a strong community of thoughtful and curious folks who give each other’s ideas a chance.

At our first meeting, I facilitated the Lean Coffee format since I didn’t want anyone to feel put on the spot to take over something they hadn’t experienced. Since we had 15 other in-person attendees and 3 online folks, this was a much larger group than normal. Although I recognized that groups of this size would normally split, I thought keeping everyone together would be better for cohesiveness.

We did use a simple personal kanban board. Each person had a chance to contribute topics. Due to the size of the group, each person had 3 dots to vote on which topics had priority. We established a 5 minute interval between votes to continue. Then, I added a “mercy kill” rule that after 10 minutes we had to move on to the next topic. I wanted everyone to experience the variety of Lean Coffee and knew that our topics were so complex that they could easily take over the entire time we had to meet. Those topics we still wanted to pursue went into our future meeting backlog.

As a result, we covered all of the topics that had received a vote. When items in the To Do column had an equal number of votes, I picked one to be the next to proceed to the In Progress column. Any topics we had covered sufficiently went into our Done column.

While this execution wasn’t a strict interpretation of Lean Coffee, it was a perfect adaptation to our purposes. The conversations continued after we had officially ended and people are looking forward to getting together again next month. We had lots of leftover pizza and beer, possibly because we were too engaged in the interaction to step away to enjoy the refreshments. All in all, it was a great investment of my time and I look forward to doing this again and again.

Please join us again this coming Thursday for another rousing Lean Coffee! We will have a WebEx available for virtual attendees, so tweet us to let us know you want to join in. See you then! Or on Twitter, Software Testing Club, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc

Software Testing Club Atlanta’s 1st Lean Coffee topics

7 dots:
- (1st) Who should “own” test automation? dev/test?
5 dots:
- (4th) Testing in SAFe
3 dots:
- (2nd) ATDD and/or BDD
- (2nd) Specification by Example – getting started
- (3rd) Exploratory testing
- (5th) Testing in Kanban – its own column? encourages handoffs?
- (6th) Test Manager Role on Agile Team
- (7th) How to integrate off-shore testers w/agile teams
- (8th) Hiring GREAT people – finding testers
- Logic Flow Analysis and test coverage
2 dots:
- (3rd) What is breakdown of time/resources for: exploratory/scripted/automated testing (rough %)
- (9th) Test/programmer pairing – success stories? Does it work?
- (10th) Testing Meetups near us and around
- Creating User Acceptance Testing
1 dot:
- Let’s get speakers! Topics?
- What do you use to test multiple browsers?
No votes:
- When to Automate?
- What avenues do people use to find out about testing methods/tools?
- LAWST Workshop in Atlanta?
- Developers don’t test (?!!) (What?!!)
- Test metrics
- Whole team testing – good idea? How to get it working?
- Gov’t shutdown & testing

aclairefication

~ using my evil powers for good

Category Archives: Software Testing Club Atlanta

March 2014 Software Testing Club Atlanta meetup

Potty training

TMI

Ideas that sprang to mind:

Things I’d never heard of

Motivation

Training through play

STC ATL Lean Coffee #1