
# TL;DR
This is a post about what I can give you and take out when I join your conference. The inspiration for this post, was initiated by attending the first [AgileTD Open Air in Cologne (Germany)](https://openair.agiletestingdays.com/).
Over the last two years, I got very critical about me joining conferences. Am I going to conferences to be cool? What can I actually take away from conferences?
What can I learn from being away from work and the stuff I love to learn and experiment with at home? What are the benefits and trade offs?

# Questioning myself
Questioning myself brings me a lot of new insights what I really care about and what less or not at all. In general I am a person who
loves when someone is going deep in their topic they present. Of course this is not always possible due the limited time we as speakers
get. But I prefer topics that are narrowed down and explain why and how someone solved a specifc challenge they faced. There are plenty of talks
that will tell you: You should do this and this, and this depends on your context. I have enough of scratching the surface - also I need to get away
from it.

# What can I give you?
In my sessions (talks or workshops) at your conference, I'll give the audience a unique learning experience. What I like most is giving full or half
day workshops. Less time is not optimal and not such a deep enough learning experience for the attendees. So please make sure you give enough room and
space so that people can grow.

# What can I take out?
What you can give my is a network of interesting people, a new location I haven't been before and a cultural experience.
If I engange with people, having discussions and learning with them, is out of your hands. If everything goes well, then there
are also some interesting sessions which spark my interest. What I can get out of them is not in your hands.
So what can I then get out? Well, speaking at your conference will give me the opportunity to challenge myself in front of other human beings.
I can make experiments, learn from my mistakes and see if a topic is intriguing to people. People can challenge me by asking questions.
I am not perfect and so are also my talks and workshops not perfect. But I got better at it in the last couple of years 😉

# Twitterverse impressions
TBD

# Conclusion
Speaking at the beach, the wind among you and the sand just lying by, is pretty cool. So this was a whole new speaking experience for me.
At the beach I also met some wonderful human beings which I have had some great conversations with. Also having the opportunity to finally
doing Lisi's and my workshop in person and gain some great new insights and feedbacks from the participants, showed me where I/we can improve
on in the future. These three things, were for me the most incredible and valuable thing I got away from these two and a half conference days.
So all in all, it was cool and the conference location was, I have to admit, very nice.

- [Clare Norman](https://twitter.com/ClareCatherine6)
- [Guna](https://twitter.com/guna_lv)
- [Vera Bäumchen](https://twitter.com/VeraLittleTree)
- [Ina Hölzel](https://twitter.com/Ina_Hoelzel)
- [Anastasia Chicu](https://twitter.com/anastasiachicu)
- [Uwe Gelfer](https://twitter.com/WizardOfAgile)
- [Bart Knaack](https://twitter.com/Btknaack)
- [Samuel Nitsche](https://twitter.com/Der_Pesse)
- [Joâo Proença](https://twitter.com/jrosaproenca)
- [Vernon Richards](https://twitter.com/TesterFromLeic)

Thank you!

A special thank you goes to:
- [Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) for all the hard work and the countless hours we have spent during our online sessions in the last 2.5 years
for creating such a powerfull and engaging workshop on the timeless topic of pairing.
- [Jan Eumann](https://twitter.com/JanEumann) for the 5G mobile access point which saved our asses during the workshop.
- [Marie Drake](https://twitter.com/mcruzdrake) and [Michael Kutz](https://twitter.com/MichaKutz) for burning some calories by running
in the area of the blackfoot beach.

![Blackfoot Beach](assets/posts/220526/atdoa22.webp)

This was my first and at the same time also the last in-person conference for this year - now I need a rest and want to focus on other things which
I deeply care about and want to work on.

Learn, share, challenge and smile 🙂


Agile Testing Days Open Air 2022


# TL;DR

Finally it is here. It took me quite a while to form my experience report on how I percieved my first in-person version of the all famous Agile Testing Days Conference
in Potsdam, Germany. What often hinders me to write a post like this one is, that it takes me such a long time to actually finish it.
But occasionally I do write to reflect what I have learned at conferences. Also this time I draw a few lines in my editor to digest
what I have experienced. So I sat down this weeks after AgileTD and started typing.

If you think it is a waste of time for you to read on, feel free to fast forward and have at least a look at my amazingly
created sketchnote art work. 😉

# First in-person conference after 2 years

If have applied for [AgileTD](https://agiletestingdays.com/) for many times in the past, till I have had the chance to present at the [last year's online
edition](https://simonberner.dev/atdonline20). This month I finally had the opportunity to join my first in-person, real life, withouth any virtual barriers version of Agile Testing Days in
[Potsdam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam). I was so much looking forward to give there my first Git combo session (talk and workshop).
The conference was massive, intens, overwhelming, heart warming, astonishing, surprising and frustrating at the same time - I will tell you why at
the end of this post.

First I want to make a pause and scribble down the most intriguing key learnings which I am taking away from this conference edition:

- Meeting new and old people in-person was super fun and valuable.
- Actively listen and ask follow-up questions before you judge a human being in any way.
- Try to limit your options when you are overhelmed.
- Push yourself forward, change and learn new things when you feel stuck.
- Sustainability is imerging rapidly everywhere in our industry. Its time to open our eyes and use our resources wisely.
- Approach people and try to engage with them. Don't expect them to do the same back.

# The Arrival

## Saturday 13/11/21

I safetly landed in Berlin airport and then around 40minutes later arrived with the AgileTD taxi at the Dorint Hotel in Potsdam. It was very quite at
that moment and it felt somehow weird as I stood all alone in the entrace hall of the hotel. 😅

I knew that I was probably the first one arriving on this Saturday, but I did that by purpose to have time to cool down a bit before
the storm of people coming in began. What I like doing when arriving early at a conference is, to explore the place, the city,
the area by going for a walk. It is such an exciting thing to have a look a new unknown cities, go for shopping and doing whatever I feel like.
Oh boy, how I am enjoy doing this.

After a little tour and back in the hotel, I already felt the nervousness arriving of soon meeting tons of people. I did some
preps for my upcoming combo session, practice some sketchonting and already started structuring this post.

Then I went out for dinner, again all alone. There are some really nice looking restaurants in Postsdam. I finally managed to take a desicion and
chose going for some delicious japanese food at the [Buya Ramen](https://www.buyarestaurants.com/buya-ramen-potsdam.html) located right in the center.

## Sunday 14/11/21

After a deep sleep, a rich breakfast and preparations for my combo session on Tuesday, I went off for a walk to Potsdam.
The city center of Potsdam impressed me with beautiful cobbled streets, traditional houses, shops, cafés and restaurants.
Later in the afternoon, I finally met [Lisi Hocke]() in real life for the very first time! Long story short: Lisi and I know
each other for a couple of years now, but we only met on the "Internet" so far. 😃 We talked, talked and talked and the time just
flew by. Thank you Lisi for that moment 🤗 After that we met Thomas, Mario and Gerald at the hotel and went for dinner to the [Masala-Haus](https://www.masala-haus.de/).
This was the best indian food I have had in a very long time and I can absolutely recommend that place!


# Conference Journal

## Monday 15/11/21

So here we are, first day of the conference - it is tutorial day. Still a bit sad that my full day tutorial got cancelled due too
few registrations. But yeah, not that much people at the conference this year and also the interest in the topic itself may have led to
that result. Not sure if I shall give it a try again at a future testing conference or eventually take it to a developer conference?
Upfront, I have decided that I want to join Lisa's and Jeanett's tutorial about 'A Path to Holistic Testing'. It was an intensive interactive
workhsop where we have had in groups of about 4 people, a look at how and when testing fits into the whole agile development lifecycle. The day
was loaded with a lot of group tasks and discussions. There weren't any topics in it, which I have had not faced already at some point in
my testing career. But that was ok, as it reminded me again how things can be done differently in one or the other way. 😉
The group constellation I was in, was not that easy. It was quite exhaustive over the whole day staying in this group formation and when we reached
the end at about 5pm that evening, I was just happy that it was over.
  ![A path to holistic testing](assets/posts/211209/atd21-1.webp)
Here some other highlights of that first day:
- I met João Proença in-person for the frist time! We also knew each other only from the "Internet" for the last couple of years.
So finally saying hello to each other eye to eye was a joy!
- At lunch time, I sat at the same table as the grand maestro [José Diaz](https://twitter.com/jdiaz_berlin). Thanks for the nice chat!
- After the tuturorial I would have loved to just lay down and have a rest, but who is going to miss a keynote from Paul and Huib? Noone, because these
  two guys are just hilarious!
- Last call for a great combo: Lisis workshop and my combo!
- Spakers dinner at a see side hotel in Postdam with: [Maryam Umar](https://twitter.com/maryamumar) and her boyfriend and
[Bart Knaack](https://twitter.com/Btknaack) and his son.
We have had a very funny and engaging evening. 🥳 Thank you all!


To finish the day off, I met [Christian Baumann](https://twitter.com/chrissbaumann), [Micha Kutz](https://twitter.com/MichaKutz),
and [João Proença](https://twitter.com/jrosaproenca) at the hotel bar.


## Tuesday 16/11/21

- Keynote by [Dagmar Monett](https://twitter.com/dmonett) about what intelligence means and that artificial intelligence in that sense
does not exist (yet).
  ![Coming to terms with intelligence in machines](assets/posts/211209/atd21-2.webp)

- [Maaikes](https://agiletestingdays.com/2021/session/the-struggle-with-learning-how-to-code/) talked about her struggle getting into coding.
I recognized some similarities with my own learning to code journey. Great, enganging talk! Thanks Maaike 👏🏽
  ![The Struggle with Learning How to Code](assets/posts/211209/atd21-3.webp)

- Then I did hardware prepaprations in the room where my combo session in the afternoon was held. And see there a bugt! 🐛 
The HDMI adapter for my Notebook did not work! So in panic and by the help of the wonderful ATD staff, I had to organise
another one from a hotel technician.
- Keynote by [Maryam Umar]() how she experienced her own learning path to leadership. An interesting journey between the roles of coaching an mentoring.
- Great folks in my combo session, not that much but people but people who where really interested
  in using Git and have asked some challangeing questions - how I love that. I guess now would be the
  a good moment to go with that workshop into the developer community and see how what they can learn
  from it.

- Keynote by [Raj](https://twitter.com/epsilon11) about Toxic Leadership. I did no sketchnote on that one because I was running a bit late into it. To some small degree
I could related to the topic itslef, but the way he presented his experineces and how he concludend things at the end, did not touch me.

- I have heard a lot about the famous Costume MIATPP Award Party Night at AgilteTD. Despite the fact that I am not the biggest party maker, I was looking forward to that one.
With the nice dinner beforhand, it was actually a lot of fun, but somehow it did not catch me enough to go wild 😉



## Wednesday 17/11/21

- In the morning I went for a walk in the park to wake up and refresh my thoughts on the things which I have heard and learned from the first day. As my combo session was over
I layed out my plan what to go for on that day.
- I decided to go for workshops - as I often get more out of workshops than talks.
- Keynote by [Jutta Eckstein](https://twitter.com/JuttaEckstein) She gave lots of insights on sustainability and that we all are in the lead for it.
  ![Agile Comes with a Responsibility for Sustainability](assets/posts/211209/atd21-5.webp)
- Workshop by Huib, Baart and Paul: 'And now for something completely different'. This was indeed a unique experience. Never before I have
  witness something similar as a workshop format than this. In the sense of [Training from Back of the Room!](https://www.amazon.com/Training-Back-Room-Sharon-Bowman/dp/0787996629)
  we as participants had to drive the workshop (almost) all alone. An indeed unique experience, great job Paul, Baart and Huib!
- Keynote by [João Proença](https://twitter.com/jrosaproenca). I was not aware of the paradox of choice and all the things which come along with it.
A very impressive, first keynote by a fantastic man 👏🏽 He is born for the big stage!
  ![Limitless within our boundaries](assets/posts/211209/atd21-6.webp)
- Workshop by Emna and Ard "21st century skills for a tester". This workshop was all about the 4-C-skillset of a tester:
  - Communication
  - Collaboration
  - Creativity
  - Critical Thinking
The topic about the 21st century skills and the 4 C's itself isn't somehting new to me, as it [pops up everywhere](https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/four-cs-21st-century-skills).
- Keynote by [Bruce the Legend](https://twitter.com/bruceonlybruce). Mind blowing, impressive stage performance and best keynote I have ever experienced in a conference so far 👏🏽 Bruce you are indeed a legend!
  ![How to be an Ally to Non-binary Folk in Tech](assets/posts/211209/atd21-7.webp)
- After dinner, I had a nice chat wit Jeanet, her husband and Lisa which then gave my a signed copy of their book Agile Testing Condensed.
- Chat with Samuel and Micha where Samuel explained to us that you can get a JSON directly via SQL from an Oracle DB without
  writing anything in between.
  
## Thursday 18/11/21

All the things come to and end. I was ready, tired and happy to enter the last conference day.
- Lean coffee with Lisa where we talked about remote communication and collaboration, observability with [LogRocket](https://logrocket.com/), [fullstory](https://www.fullstory.com/)
  and many more things. This felt like a very productive 8am-ish early morning.
- Keynote by [Ard Kramer](https://twitter.com/ardkramer) about the/his concept of nudging in testing.
  ![How to nudge your way through agile testing](assets/posts/211209/atd21-8.webp)
- Super cool talk from [Samuel Nitsche](https://twitter.com/Der_Pesse) and its A3-LPC Darth Lama! Best track talk at the conference! Bravo Samuel, I am a fan of yours 😃
  ![Testing in the Imperial Database](assets/posts/211209/atd21-9.webp)
- Keynote from [Vera Baum](https://twitter.com/@VeraLittleTree) about various level of professional maturity (for a tester).
  ![The Tester’s Learning Toolkit](assets/posts/211209/atd21-10.webp)
- Talk from [Bart Szulc](https://twitter.com/BartSzulc) about chaos engineering. I actually expected an introduction (bottom up) to the topic itself, but
instead it was an experience report. Nevertheless, it was good but hard to follow and getting something out of it for me.
  ![Chaos engineering bottom up.](assets/posts/211209/atd21-11.webp)
- Talk from [Tom Young](https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasleoyoung/). An experience report embedded in a interesting talk and story.
  ![Growing Quality from Culture in Testing Times](assets/posts/211209/atd21-12.webp)
- Keynote from [Vernon Richards](https://twitter.com/@TesterFromLeic). An excellent mix of fun and learning about quality coaching. Awesomely delivered
by the one and only Ministry of Testing host Vernon! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
  ![What does the 'Coach' in 'Quality Coach' mean?](assets/posts/211209/atd21-13.webp)

And then it was over - game over for me. My brain was overloaded from meeting and seeing people, sketchnoting, learning - I headed for my room and closed the door.

## Friday 19/11/21

All the good things (and also the less amusing ones) come to and end. So there it was, my last breakfast at the Dorint. This time I
met João, Christian and Emna for an entertaining morning chat. Then saying goodbye to good friends and heading for the airport in
the ATD taxi with the very enthusiastic Emna Ayadi. 🙂

# Conclusion

This conference was massive for me. After two years of not meeting people at all, this was honestly a bit much for me.
I have had some great conversations and met some fantastic people, but I also faced closed groups where it was
hard or even not possible for me to get in and draw some attention. Luckely my sketchnoting style improved over the conference days, which made me happy.
I have learned many things in the last almost two COVID years of home office. Especially what I really want more of and want less of in the future.

Besides all the great astonishing things I have discovered at the conference, I also got frustrated. Frustrated because I was too little prepared for such a big party.
I was aware of that in "normal" years there were/are more than the double count of people on-site, but still, for me it was a huge crowd.
I mentally did not prepare for what could happend at AgileTD. And finally, I expected more, more engagement from my side, to have more different discussions with different people.
I expected to approach people much more actively, but somehow I could not. I also have had the expectation that
people would proactively include me in their conversations, challenge me, get asked to have a chat, drink or dinner with them, but no, unfortunatley it did not happend.
So the best would propably be not to have any expectations at all - I guess.

Thanks to all the people which I have met (again) and have had a chat with:

- [Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke)
- [Emna Ayadi](https://twitter.com/emna__ayadi)
- [Maryam Umar](https://twitter.com/maryamumar)
- [Paul Holland](https://twitter.com/PaulHolland_TWN)
- [Bart Knaack](https://twitter.com/Btknaack)
- [Huib Schoots](https://twitter.com/huibschoots)
- [Samuel Nitsche](https://twitter.com/Der_Pesse)
- [Michael Kutz](https://twitter.com/MichaKutz)
- [Joâo Proença](https://twitter.com/jrosaproenca)
- [Gerald Mücke](https://twitter.com/gmuecke)
- [Mario Specht](https://twitter.com/mwoodpecker)
- [Lisa Crispin](https://twitter.com/lisacrispin)
- [Janet Gregory](https://twitter.com/janetgregoryca)
- Jack Gregory
- [José Díaz](https://twitter.com/jdiaz_berlin)
- [Elizabeth Zagroba](https://twitter.com/ezagroba)
- [Joep Schuurkes](https://twitter.com/j19sch)
- [Tobias Geyer](https://twitter.com/the_qa_guy)

# A last note - on challenging

Challenging each other in a polite, non dogmatic way, is what we need to push forward, innovate, get out of the comfort zone
and bring change for the good. This needs practice, time and the capabilty of active listening to each other. I learned this the
hard way by having had many toxic leaders as my employers and supervisors in the past. Your are allowed to ask questions and
even challenge and disagree with someones ideas, opinions and experiences, but never ever do this in a vialoting way.

Learn, share, challenge and smile 🙂

Agile Testing Days 2021


It's true, I have never attended Agile Testings Days before. I was never lucky enough to get the chance to speak at this world famous testing festival. I have tried it four times (which means 4 years) in a row to get onto its big stages by sending in a few proposals, alone and as a pair with a friend, but no, it should not have been me. Somehow I also never considered joining as a participant, but don’t ask me why - I don’t know.

This year was different, in all the ways I could ever have imagined. From the highest mountains to the bottom of the seven seas and up again  - an emotional rollercoaster.
Well, all ended up with getting invited by [Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) to create a workshop with her and then also having the chance to facilitate two other workshops at the Agile Testing Days Online Edition 2020. Here is what I have experienced form the 9th to the 12th November.

## Monday 09/11
My personal Pre-Conference Day started out with doing some final preparations for the three workshops (Git Foundations on Tuesday, Ensemble Session on Wednesday and Extreme Pairing on Thursday) gave. I checked my infrastructure, especially audio output/input, video and the wifi setup - you never know. I went step by step through each workshop setup again to check if I have a clean setup on my machine. Prepared my sketchnote book, despite the fact that I actually still don’t like sketchnoting that much but I still want to learn and get better at it. Selected my want to go to sessions from the conference schedule. Prepared the Session Schedule for the _Ensemble Session_ which [Elizabeth Zagroba](https://twitter.com/ezagroba) and I did together on Wednesday. Went once more through all the material which [Lisi](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) and I have prepared for rocking our workshop _Extreme Pairing_. Do we have everything in place? Will our Jitsi conference room hold up with the yet unknown amount of participants when they switch on mic and cam?
Then as the final step of the day, I checked the [AgileTD Zone](https://agiletdzone.slack.com) slack team. Looks like as there will be quite a few people online 🙂

Getting nervous but I am ready, let’s take off and dive in!

{/* https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/embedded-tweets/guides/embedded-tweet-parameter-reference */}

## Tuesday 10/11
The first day started off with lots of tweets already @AgileTD #agileTD and a Yoga session by [Ina Hoelzel](https://twitter.com/Ina_Hoelzel).


Then at 9am, [José Díaz](https://twitter.com/jdiaz_berlin) started his welcome not in unicorn 🦄 style. I like his accent, his love and Spanish happiness for this conference - a very likeable person 🤗 I am already looking forward to the day where I can meet him in person! I just say: 💃🏽


#### It is always about you!
As the first keynote speaker Daniël Maslyn had obviously some technical issues on his side, José had to be creative and come up with a keynote replacement. But what is probably the most straight forward way to find such a replacement? Well he just did it himself at his very own conference by telling us his personal journey: _It is always about you_.


#### My Journey of Pairing and Learning
After the keynote, I tuned into the talk of my learning partner Parveen Khan. A great talk where she reflected on her first learning tour around the globe focusing on challenges all around testing. And yes, after a long time I started with sketchnoting again, will see how this goes. 😉

![Parveen Khan](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-parveen.webp)


#### Code review is (not) for testers?
Is code review something for testers? Can they even contribute to it? Of course we can! Watch out and learn by having a look at comments, size, structure, content, timing of PRs. Large [PRs](https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/collaborating-with-issues-and-pull-requests/about-pull-requests) are often suspects. So have a close and careful look at them. And good code reviews enables a team to go faster, so true. Thanks [Uros Stanisic](https://twitter.com/uros_stanisic) for this interesting talk 👏🏼 

![Uros Stanisci](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-uros.webp)

#### Being a tester after trying almost everything else
Then I sneaked in to the talk by our #PLG fellow and friend [João Proença](https://twitter.com/jrosaproenca). What a fabulous speaker he is. Well prepared and super entertaining! We all can learn heaps from him 😎 Unfortunately I jump in to his session at a very late state, so I did not start sketchnoting.


#### AMA Lisa and Janet
Then [AMA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/IAmA) with Lisa and Janet Gregory on Donkeys and Dragons. But what in the name of heaven could I asked them? Any ideas? Want to give it a try? I came up with the following:

_When we look at a movie like [Shrek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek), then there we find the three common animals: donkey, horse and the dragon. The donkey and also the horse are most often seen as the funny animals. They are the happy ones which make us laugh. Dragons on the other side, are often seen as the monsters, the evil creatures which want to hurt us. So from where do you think comes this perceptions of dragons especially in books and movies? And how about Donkeys?_


#### Keynote: Automation Addiction
Automation? Well, we all have probably already heard of it enough right? But once again and for all: we do not need to automate every thing! We need to have good test strategies which takes care of every aspects of testing and especially finding the balance of exploration and automation. Great keynote by [Huib Shoots](https://twitter.com/huibschoots) and [Paul Holland](https://twitter.com/PaulHolland_TWN) 👏🏼

![Paul Holland, Huib Shoots](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-paulhuib.webp)


#### Workshop #1: Git Foundations
After that it was my turn with my first workshop a this conference: [Git Foundations](https://simonberner.rocks/courses/). The workshop was super exhausting, but a lot of fun and some great questions from the participants. Once more I realised that doing the basic setup in Git is not that quickly done by first timers. So I really have to take this more into account next time. The following feedback from Mariia made my day and was one of the personal highlights I had at the conference. Thank you so much Mariia!


#### Lean Coffee
After that, for a tiny bit relaxation, I went to my first online Lean Coffee with the all famous [Lisa Crispin](https://twitter.com/lisacrispin) as facilitator! This was a nice session with some interesting topics: Here the things we talked about:

![Lisa Crispin](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-lisa.webp)

The main thing I took away from this coffee break is, to immediately get the book [The remote facilitators Pocket Guide](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48993209-the-remote-facilitator-s-pocket-guide) as I am wondering how one can engage people even more for and in remote meetings and workshops. And I also already know who I am going to surprise with that book 🙂 Looking forward to learn tons of stuff about in-person and remote facilitation.

## Wednesday 11/11
As I already noticed on Tuesday, as much as I wished for, but it was (and is) just not possible to join every possible session from early mornings till late in the evening, inclusive social activities - this is so exhausting. Already after one day of online conferencing, I was getting so tired, I tell you 🥱

I started the day with a private session on Git push with Steffen Bromet. I love doing such sessions as it connects me even more with the conference and its people. The last time I did such a similar session was at Let’s Test SA last year and this was such an energising experience.

Then to start the day, a retweet from yesterday:


After that I made up my go to session schedule for the next few hours. Besides the keynotes it was workshop day for me (I can watch the recordings of the talks later on 😉).


#### Keynote: Testing is not the goal!
I have heard a lot about [Rob Meaney](https://twitter.com/RobMeaney) in the past. Especially all around the different models he came up with - impressive work. So I was keen listening to him. There was so much great stuff packed into one single talk, just amazing 👏🏼

_Life is too short to build software that does not matter_

![Rob Meaney](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-rob.webp)

#### Draw to remember: Make Your Own Sketchnotes
As I am a person who can better remember stuff when taking notes and drawings while listening to a talk/presentation, I was highly curious to join the workshop about sketchnoting by [EvelineMoolena1](https://twitter.com/EvelineMoolena1) and [Vincent Wijnen](https://twitter.com/VinWijNL). I did not get disappointed and we participants could, after couple of minutes of intro, start right away with drawing some basic shapes. This was a great workshop and motivated me to use sketchnoting as a remembering tool again more often in the future to record what I see and hear. Thanks Eveline and Vincent for the tips and tricks you showed us!

![EvelineVincent](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-evelinevincent.webp)

#### Keynote: 8 Bit Pro - A gamer's guide to testing
Then a keynote (especially) for Gamers by [Dan Billing](https://twitter.com/TheTestDoctor). This was a super interesting talk which gave an nice overview on how the  gaming industry has evolved over the last past decades. Due to all this home office thingy and spending more time at home, I just recently started playing computer games more frequently again 🕹👾.

![Dan Billing](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-dan.webp)

#### Mental skills training for testers
[Andrei Contan](https://twitter.com/andreicontan) from Romania is a crazy guy. He is a co-organizer of the [Romanian Testing Conference](https://twitter.com/RomaniaTesting) and  a [triathlet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triathlon). He travels to the deepest and darkest oceans of this world to live his passion for the sport. He talked about his incredibly journey in sport and testing and how focusing on the process itself is much more important than the result.

> _Whenever you want to quit, remember that you have paid for it_

![Andrei Contan](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-andrei.webp)

#### Workshop #2: Ensemble Session
Then my second workshop I did at the conference was the ensemble session together with [Elizabeth](https://twitter.com/ezagroba). We split up the crowed right at the beginning and so I ended up with having Paul Holland, Christian Baumann, Thomas Rinke, Mazin Inaad, Hannah Rauschel and some others (sorry I forgot your names) in my group. But it was so embarrassing right a the start of our groups session, because I could not found this 🤬 give remote control button in Zoom. But yeah, after we sorted that out, we then finally had a really constructive session with lots of successes and laugher.

#### Intergalactic Game Night - Angie Jones wins it all
I guess the highlight for the whole testing community on that day was, that the all famous [Angie Jones](https://twitter.com/techgirl1908) won the Agile Testing Days Award for being the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person ([MIATPP](https://agiletestingdays.com/miatpp/)) in 2020! She brought [Test Automation University (TAU](https://testautomationu.applitools.com/) to life and did tons of other great stuff for the testing community in the world. So well deserved, congratulations Angie!


To call it a day, [Lisi](https://twitter.com/lisihocke?s=20) and I did some late night final preps for our workshop on Extreme Pairing. I am getting nervous - once again 😬

Then I needed some rest... 😴

### Thursday 13/11
The third and last conference day started with another big welcome note by Jose.

#### Keynote: Beyond the bugs
[Rick Tracy](https://twitter.com/KITesting) invited us in his keynote to have a look at how testers impact projects based on specific money calculations. Very hard to grasp for me, but nevertheless, interesting viewpoint. Thanks Rick! 👏🏼

> _I don't know really what Testers are doing_

![Rick Tracy](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-rick.webp)

#### Workshop #3: Extreme Pairing
The long waiting is over! After months of careful and thoughtful preparations, the moment arrived where [Lisi](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) and I could finally unleash our workshop called: Extreme Pairing! 🚀🦄 Our first _going to production_ went off like a firework! Everything and I mean really everything, ran so smoothly - no hiccups - as if we would have done it already several times in a row. Working with Lisi is fantastic, she takes it literally to perfection and beyond. I could write much more on all the things we have experienced while preparing this workshop and what you as participant will get to see and learn. But you have to experience it yourself the next time. This workshop is one of the main rollercoaster in my life and thus means a lot to me. 🪄I am happy and grateful - and so I am looking forward to where this workshop will take and lead us in the future.

> Thanks Lisi for inviting me on to this journey with you and for the opportunity to share our passion and happiness with many more people in the future 🤗



#### Automatic Accessibility Testing for All
A11y workshop by Anne-Cecilie Haugstvedt was a great intro and experience into the world of Accessibility testing of Web-Sites. Great topic, super interesting and well done! 👏🏼

#### Security Tooling in Your DevOps Pipeline
Then I joined the talk about Security in the CI pipeline from Nancy Gariche. She told us how the security process moved from Waterfall model over to the Agile and finally to DevOps landscape. Also this talk was super interesting - but my energy for writing dropped drastically. Thanks Nancy! 👏🏼

![Nancy](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-nancy.webp)

#### Let it go 🎶
Final keynote by Nicola Sedgwich about Let it go. By “Let it go” she means: Let go from the discussions we have about e.g. Cypress vs Selenium (or other tools9 and better invest that time and energy to improve the testing reputation and process overall!

![EvelineVincent](assets/posts/201124/atdonline20-nicola.webp)

### Further Resources
You want to read more on how this years's edition of AgileTD felt like? Then I highly recommend you to have a look at [Lisi's fantastic personal experience report](https://www.lisihocke.com/2020/11/agile-testing-days-2020-recharging-my-batteries.html)!

Wow that was pretty intensive - giving three workshop in three days was a bit... well I would not say too much... but enough! 😁

A special thanks goes to Lisi, Elizabeth and Joep for creating the amazing Ensemble Sessions also over the last past month! Looking forward to more in the future 😁

Bye bye #AgileTD Online 2020! See you next time - all you lovely unicorns!

AgileTD Online 2020

Let's Test 2019 - Africa Speaks


The Nordic Testing Days 2018 took place from the 6th - 8th of May in  Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn is on the north-eastern coast of Estonia and borders the Gulf of Finland.

Also on this conference I was in for the first time and that as a speaker. Again I was very excited to have the opportunity to join for the second time a tutorial done by the all famous [Angie Jones](https://twitter.com/techgirl1908).

### Tutorial Day
_Wednesday 6th of June_

On the tutorial day I joined Angie's _Advanced Automation for Agile: UI, Web Services, and BDD_. This tutorial was about getting us deeper insights how you can build a automation framework for checking UI & API stuff. Here the dependencies which we used:
* cucumber-java8 (as the BDD Java lib)
* selenium-server (as the browser driver)
* junit-jupiter-api (JUnit5 as the assertion lib)
* rest-assured (for Testing REST services in Java)
* cucumber-junit (for running the Cucumber BDD REST services Integration-Tests)

To build this automation framework (consisting of the main framework part with Page Objects, Components, [POJOs](https://www.quora.com/What-is-POJO-in-Java) and the testing part with the cucumber feature files, Step definitions to glue the feature files with the framework code) I could actually practices [TDD](https://hackernoon.com/what-is-so-wrong-with-tdd-aa60112aadd0) for the very first time in my life - what a moment, I tell you!

### Conference Days
_Thursday 7th of June_  

__From Being A Tester To Changing The Way QA Is Done: My Trials and Tribulations__ _by Kristel Kruustük_  
In here keynote, Kristel told us her story from being a student in testing back in 2010 up till today, where she's running as CEO her own company called [testlio](https://testlio.com/). Here some of the things which stand out the most for me:

* I had an Idea and just ran with it
* [techstars](https://www.techstars.com) was an awakening call to business reality
* Entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs
* You either have a bad product or a bad sales agent
* With funding comes increased responsibility
* Building a great team takes time
* Always keep the big picture in mind
* Constantly re-examine yourself
* You can't make everyone happy
* Self-doubt can be one of the hardest obstacles
* Keep the momentum and keep deliver value to customers

> Never give up!

__How to win with automation and influence people__ _by Gwen Diagram_  
Gwens talk was an experience report from where she joined a team/project which had a total mess of programming languages and test frameworks in place. She spend a fair time to bring order in to disorder and testing awareness where not much from that was there before.
Here some of the highlights I catched:
* Book recommendation: [How to Win Friends and Influence People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)
* Final tool harness: [gauge](https://gauge.org/index.html) and [Java](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28programming_language%29)
* [A shout out to the testing pyramid as a bug filter](https://twitter.com/AshColeman30/status/997426873528352768)
* Toolbelt for test automation: Find what's cool at the moment
* Constant learning
* Pairing
* Mentoring
* Increase team capability

> Should I brush my cats teeth?

__Screw Testing Let's Talk Quality__ _by Anne-Marie Charrett_  
In her keynote, Anne-Marie talked about the holistic view on Quality, which reminded me a lot of Rich Rogers Book [Changing Times: Quality for Humans in a Digital Age](https://leanpub.com/changingtimes). The thing which was really awesome about her talk was, that she came up with a new testing -ility: Qualtability! Here some highlight of her keynote:
* Testing is the headlights of the project
* Quality is value to someone
* Make quality improvement visible 
* You don't get credit for adding a feature, you get credit for reducing cost, revenue...

But wait a second, what is qualitabilty? 

> Qualitability is how easy or hard it is, to know and see the state of quality at a certain point of time.

_Friday 8th of June_

__Stress Test - the anatomy of a burnout__ _by Karen Burns_  
This was the final keynote and the cherry on top of all. Karen told us her very personal story from going into the film industry full-filling her dream and then falling deep down into a burnout because the industry there is so damn barbarous. She didn't directly fall into the burnout no, she faced a couple of different stages till she her head banged the ground:
- Honeymoon
- Fireworks
- Chronic Symptoms
- Crisis
- Burnout (final stage)

A lot of stress these days has to do with the urge to satisfy everyone. At the end its only you, you have to take care of yourself. Therefor, learn to say no!

> Resist the urge, say no!

You can find all my sketch notes from the talks [here](https://simonberner.rocks/sketchnoting/).

### PowerPoint Karaoke
At the end of the first conference day there was, besides some other evening activities, [PowerPoint Karaoke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPoint_Karaoke) happening which was of course open for everyone. Here some impressions:



### Our workshop
I'm a person who is very self-critical and humble. Sometimes this is good and sometime this hinders me from doing experiments. At this point, today, I won't reveal anything of our workshop. I think [the one we did at this conference](https://nordictestingdays.eu/events/workshops/front-line-survival-guide) went quite well. Once more we learned quite a lot from it, especially the things we will do different next time. If YOU would like to have a performance testing workshop at your conference or meetup or wherever, please feel free to reach out to us. You can either contact [Gerald Mücke](https://twitter.com/gmuecke) or me. 


### Thanks  
Thanks [Nordic Testing Days](https://twitter.com/nordictestdays) for having me and thank you all out there you lovely people which I've met and had a chat with:
- [Helena Jeret-Mäe](https://twitter.com/HelenaJ_M)
- [Anne-Marie Charrett](https://twitter.com/charrett)
- [Angie Jones](https://twitter.com/techgirl1908)
- [Corina Pip](https://twitter.com/imalittletester)
- [Gerald Mücke](https://twitter.com/gmuecke)
- [Daniel Knott](https://twitter.com/dnlkntt)
- [Erik Brickarp](https://twitter.com/Brickuz)
- [Gil Zilberfeld](https://twitter.com/gil_zilberfeld)
- [Lars Sjödahl](https://twitter.com/LarsSjodahl)
- [Kyle McEvoy](https://twitter.com/_kmce)
- [Marcel Gehlen](https://twitter.com/Marcel_Gehlen)
- [Johan Sandell](https://twitter.com/sandell_johan)
- [Heiko Linke](https://twitter.com/hlinke)
- [Beren Van Daele](https://twitter.com/isleoftesting)
- [Eric Proegler](https://twitter.com/ericproegler)


NTD 2018


Hi all!  
If you're attending the [Nordic Testing Days](https://www.nordictestingdays.eu) in June this year and have registered for the workshop [Front Line Survival Guide](https://www.nordictestingdays.eu/events/workshops/front-line-survival-guide), this post is the right place to get your notebook ready for it.

**OSX/macOS**  
Follow these steps: 
- Download <a href="/static/assets/posts/180524/ntd18_osx_install.sh" download>this shell-script here</a> to your machine.
- Via terminal make the script executable by typing **chmod a+x osx_install.sh** and then execute it by double-clicking on it in the Finder (the script will install all the necessary applications for the workshop on your machine: IntelliJ CE, maven, Java JDK 1.8, VisualVM and git. If you already have all these things on your machine you're all set. If you prefer to install them step by step from their own installers, do as you like.)
- Open IntelliJ and download and install the Scala plugin by following the instructions on [how to install IntelliJ plugins](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/installing-updating-and-uninstalling-repository-plugins.html) (search for “Scala” in the IntelliJ plugins menu.)

**Linux**  
Install these things:
- [IntelliJ Community Edition](https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/)
- [Install the Scala plugin in IntelliJ](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/installing-updating-and-uninstalling-repository-plugins.html)
- [maven](https://maven.apache.org/)
- [Java JDK 1.8](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html)
- [VisualVM](https://visualvm.github.io/)
- [git](https://git-scm.com/)

**Win7/8/10**  
Download and unzip the following two files to your machine:
- [Tuned IntelliJ Community Edition for Windows](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8hrj5iehd4w3tnn/intellij_idea.zip)
- [VisualVM for Windows](https://www.dropbox.com/s/fumlw7qtw8kxmoc/visualvm_141.zip)

**For all**  
Finally download and unzip the following files to your machine:
- [The workshop project for gatling test-development](https://www.dropbox.com/s/j8pk19th32r71js/git-repo.zip) 
- and [the maven repo](https://www.dropbox.com/s/mamujfn55lbfr43/maven-repo.zip) for it
- [The workshop web app](https://www.dropbox.com/s/dch3nb2nt9qrtt6/webshop.zip)

If you have any questions or face any problems, please let us know as soon as possible by email (simon.berner@houseoftest.rocks and/or  gerald.muecke@devcon5.ch) and we’ll try to help you as best as we can.

We're looking forward to see in June in Tallinn!

Simon & Gerald

Front Line Survival Guide Workshop


The Romanian Testing Conference 2018 took place from the 9th - 11th of May in  Cluj-Napoca. Cluj is the fourth most populous city in Romania and located in the northwestern part of the country.

I joined the conference for the very first time as a speaker. By looking forward to meet familiar, new faces and giving a talk there, I was so excited to join the workshops from [Angie Jones](https://twitter.com/techgirl1908) and [Santhosh Tuppad](https://twitter.com/santhoshst) before the conference day.


### Workshop Days
_Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th of May_

__Day1__  
On the first workshop day, I joined Santhosh's workshop _Web Application Security Testing_. I follow Santhosh on twitter now for a couple of years but haven't actually met him in person so far till that particular day. It was great fun to finally hug him and see how he fascinated us participants in his workshop. As security is a very sensitive topic, I won't list now here specifically what we actually did and learned. If you want to know more, join one of either his or [Dan's](https://twitter.com/TheTestDoctor) workshops.  
Nevertheless, here a short list of things a black/white/grey hat hacker might think of:
* Information gathering (who is out there, which technology is in use, how vulnerable is it, etc.)
* Social Engineering:
    - Shoulder Surfing
    - Pretecting
    - Tailgating
    - Dumpster Diving
    - Phishing
    - Vishing
    - Baiting / Honeypot setting
* Building trust in the first place and then break it
    
> You have to think and act like a hacker in order to be able to test your application.

__Day2__  
On the second workshop day, I joined Angie's _A day in the life of an Automation Engineer_. This workshop was all about to get us started with Automation of a Web App. As you should do before even thinking of diving into technology and coding, we discussed why and which part of the workshops example web app we should automate by asking the following question:

* What are the main functionalities of the app?
* What is the risks when we don't automate those functionalities?
* How about automating things related to Security and Performance? Are there any risks to address? Do WE have to deal with it or SOMEONE else?

_Setup_  
After that we setup the automation framework in IntelliJ which consisted of Java, Selenium and JUnit.

_Design Patterns_  
Then we discussed the design pattern we are going to use (in our case the Page Object Pattern).  

_Locators_  
Then we discussed what the best element locators are to use and how you can create your xpath expression in such a way that you can reach out to a whole bunch of elements at once in the DOM tree.

* By.id("searchBar");
* By.xpath("//li[not(contains(@class, 'ui-screen-hidden'))]");

Angie's example app for the workshop can be found [here](https://github.com/angiejones/automation-bookstore).

### Conference Day
_Friday 11th of May_

__The Reality of Testing in an Artificial World__ _by Angie Jones_  
Angies talk was about her personally experiences when she had to come up with a strategy to test an AI algorithm for a dress store application. Here the key insights of her talk:

* Learn How it Learns
* Train the System
* What do I assert? (Oracles?)
* POCS Model
* Do I have enough Data for Testing this?
* Bug? (dev: works on my machine)
* Prove the findings


> The future is here, test it!

__Testing through Space and Time__ _by Maria Kedemo_  
This talk was her personal journey from when she entered IT in 2000, till today when she got independent and opened up here consultant company [Black Koi](http://black-koi.consulting/). Here the key insights of her talk:

* Todays buzz words: Automation, AI, ML, DevOps, Blockchain
* Past, Present, Future: while some people already work with future technologies, there are others which still have to deal with technologies from the past
* Challenge your assumptions and break you hypothesise 
* Understand the strengths and limitations of automation
* Titles can be misleading
* What does change in the future?


> Bridge communities

__Accelerating Your Test Execution Pipeline__ _by Bria Grangard_  
Bria's talks was about how you can get faster execution times of your tests in a pipeline. Her talk was guided by the following questions:

* What is a test automation framework?
* What do we automate?
* Are you aware of the testing pyramid?
* How can we get faster?

The key insights of her talk was that when you parallelise your automation, it can give you the following advantages:

* Quick Deployment
* Faster Feedback
* Cross Browser Testing
* Better Test Coverage
* Saves valuable Time

> Parallelise your Tests

__We don’t need more automation engineers!__ _by Bas Dijkstra_  
Bas told us his stories of failures since he started as an automation engineer. Here the key insights of his talk:

* History: I'm sick and tired of repeating myself (Automate all the things)
* Why do we need to automate in the first place?
* Do we really more want more of that? (E2E Testing)
* Automation isn't the holy grail
* Stop the silly automation, collaborate and listen
* We don't need more automation engineers!

> We need better ones!

You can find all my sketch notes from the talks [here](https://simonberner.rocks/sketchnoting/).

### Speaker nominations
A lot of conferences nominate their best speakers and so does RTC. At the party night which happened in the evening of the conference day, I tweeted the nomination:


### Thanks  
The three days of talking to a lot of people was quite exhaustive, but it was definitely worth it. Thank you all you lovely people which I've had some nice conversations with:
- [Maria Kedemo](https://twitter.com/mariakedemo)
- [Angie Jones](https://twitter.com/techgirl1908)
- [Bria Grangard](https://twitter.com/Bria_Grangard)
- [Vera Gehlen-Baum](https://twitter.com/VeraGeBa)
- [Emily Bache](https://twitter.com/emilybache)
- [Alex Schladebeck](https://twitter.com/alex_schl)
- [Andrei Contan](https://twitter.com/andreicontan)
- [Andrei Ghinescu](https://twitter.com/AndreiGhinescu)
- [Santhosh Tuppad](https://twitter.com/santhoshst)
- [Teemu Vesala](https://twitter.com/teemuvesala)
- [Tobias Geyer](https://twitter.com/the_qa_guy)
- [Laurent Bossavit](https://twitter.com/Morendil)
- [Ben Fellows](https://twitter.com/BenGTF46)
- [Richard Bradshaw](https://twitter.com/FriendlyTester)
- [Mark Winteringham](https://twitter.com/2bittester)
- [Bas Dijkstra](https://twitter.com/_basdijkstra)
- [Ard Kramer](https://twitter.com/ard_kramer)
- [Beren Van Daele](https://twitter.com/isleoftesting)
- [Tony Bruce](https://twitter.com/tonybruce77)
- [Sharath Byregowda](https://twitter.com/sharathb)
- [Wim Selles](https://twitter.com/wswebcreation)
- [Maik Nogens](https://twitter.com/MaikNog)
- [Benedikt Woerner](https://twitter.com/benewoe)
- [Kevin Harris](https://twitter.com/Kevin_A_Harris)
- [Göran Kero](https://twitter.com/ghkero)
- [Dawid Pacia](https://twitter.com/dawid_py)

RTC 2018


In seventeen days, I'll start some sort of a mini-marathon. For the first time ever, I'll be speaking at two conferences in three days. I haven't planed it like that at all! It was just pure fortune that I ended up with this schedule. So yeah, why not, it is anyway going to be a quite crazy year in speaking.

I'm looking forward to meet & greet some great folks, make new testing friends and try something new: sketch noting on the sessions I'm going to listen to in these three conference days. I guess that this is going to be very exhausting - but no pain no gain. I've almost no clue about sketch noting, but can look up to two professionals: [Marianne Duijst](https://twitter.com/marianneduijst) and [Ekaterina Budnikov](https://twitter.com/KatjaBudnikov). Their sketch noting is just amazing, impressive, remarkable! Go and check  out their sites:

[marianneduijst.nl](http://marianneduijst.nl/sketchnotes/)  
[katjasays.com](https://www.katjasays.com)

It will probably take me ages to get on to that level they both are sketching on, but that's ok: start little, be humble, practice and have fun ;)

Hopefully I can report back my sketch noting experiences in a next blog post from the two conferences.

Here is a first attempt which is part of the slide deck of my talk _Testing In The Pipe_:

![GitHub Pages](assets/posts/180223/racetrack.jpg)

Two in Three


After 6 years I'm very much looking forward to be again on the program of the [Swiss Testing Day](http://swisstestingday.ch). That's the place where my public speaking actually started and I'm very grateful for having had this opportunity back then.  

So if you're interested in the topic I'm going to talk about, please don't hesitate an watch my intro:

<div className="center">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m5a94LcG0bU" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>

Swiss Testing Day 2018


I'm super happy to announce that I'll be part of UKSTAR 2018 next year in London! All what I can say for now is, tune in and watch my intro!

[Testing in the pipe - UKSTAR 2018](https://ukstar.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/submission/testing-in-the-pipe-5388/)

UKSTAR 2018


I'm getting nervous at the North Head of the Sydney Harbour National Park (Northern Beaches Area):

<div className="center">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L6A3C8PryT4" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>

Australian Tesing Day 2017 - Part3


Just want to share with you folks out there some happiness from todays announcement on twitter:

_Oh my god, it's real and the date is coming closer! I'm so excited about joining #AusTD17!_

Australian Tesing Day 2017 - Part2


There are these moments in life where everything seems to stand still for a few seconds.
Last Wednesday (on the 2nd of August around 9pm) it happened, a deep emotional moment hit
me when I received the message that I got accepted to speak at the [Australian Testing Days 2017](http://www.australiantestingdays.com/)!
Even today as I’m writing this post, I still can’t believe it, I feel deeply honoured, is it for real?
Sydney is an important part piece home for me because a part of my family is living there which I very
much love and care about. Now I’ve finally the opportunity to visit them again after 17 years.

From the Testing-Community there is a bunch of awesome testers down there which I very much looking forward to meet.
I’m looking forward to meet [Anne-Marie Charret](https://twitter.com/charrett), [Rajesh Mathur](https://twitter.com/rajeshmathur),
[Rich Rogers](https://twitter.com/richrtesting) and of course a few more.

Let’s give you now a little teaser of the topic I’m going to talk about on the 30th of October in Down Under:
A few weeks ago I’ve had the opportunity to give a brief introduction on how the Test-Strategy in my Team looks like.
It was just a small part of an regular online session we have in the project I’m currently working in. I think it was
quite well received by the participants but I wasn’t that satisfied with myself - I can do better, much better than
struggling over my own pronunciation. Out of that dissatisfaction, I got the desire to make more out of that short
presentation - a conference talk. So, I’m going to talk about my current working context which is loaded with heaps of
cool stuff like Deployment Pipelines, Automation, DevOps, bleeding edge technology and a great team spirit. I planning
to talk about a mummy by touching stuff from some great books ([Continuous Delivery](https://martinfowler.com/books/continuousDelivery.html),
[The DevOps Handbook](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26083308-the-devops-handbook), [The Phoenix Project](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-project)
and [Testing in DevOps](https://leanpub.com/testingindevops))

See ya! ;)

Cheers

Australian Tesing Day 2017 - Part1


The [Let's Test conference](http://lets-test.com/) in Europe is coming to its end. The final salute will happen on the
15th-16th May this year in the beautiful atmosphere and nature of [Runö](https://www.runo.se/konferens/eng/).
[Gerald Mücke](https://twitter.com/gmuecke) and I will be holding a workshop regarding Performance Testing.
I think this will be a great combination (Dev/Test) for all attendees. It will also be a completely new and fantastic
experience for me to getting even more in touch with a development perspective and toolkit in performance testing.
If that sounds like something exciting to you and you're up for, then by all means join us and get inspired in testing by writing some code.
Our workshop will be one of the last ones among others over there, so it's up to you now.

The Final Salute


Submitting a proposal to a conference needs some overcoming - at least for me. It is 4 years a go when I did it the last time and got accepted with it. Now you probably ask yourself "What the f* took him so long in doing it again?" Well I hadn't got the desire and didn't feel the need to share something with the world. Yes honestly, look out into the testing community, all these great people with their great talks, blogs, workshops, classes and so forth, I always felt as someone who has nothing to say additional alongside to all this awesomeness.

**The Pain**  
Just recently I came across the submissions for Test Bash Netherland, Swiss Testing Day and TestCon Vilnius. I suddenly felt a inner outcry pushing me: "Now kick yourself and go get them man! There is nothing better for learning as to put yourself into an uncomfortable situation! It doesn't matter if you fail!" Oh I hate failing, only the thought of it is enough and I shut down completely - I try to avoid that under all circumstances. Someone could be angry at me and finally don't like me anymore when I fail - that's my pain I carry with me. "NO STOP THIS!" I thought, in order to master the one's weaker self, I have to go out there and get to speak at a next conference.

**The Idea**  
Besides all these awesomeness out there, what shall the topic be I'm going to talk about? Can be there anything new which hasn't be spoken out yet? We humans evolve over time and so there will be always a new story to tell, it doesn't actually matter if someone else already talked about the same topic. The personal experience is what finally differs and matters the most. So we came up with a nice topic which keeps us busy all day long at work. Yes you've read it right, there is a WE... but I'll come to that in another post.

**The content**  
So what's the content of a good conference proposal? I came up with these main points so far:
* Every sentence must be strongly worded, clear, understandable and accurate
* Highly focused on to the main message
* Reduced to the maximum
* Loaded with passion and energy
* Takeaways for the audience must sound fresh, crispy, exiting

It doesn't have to be revolutionary, something completely new or pathbreaking. What I think is important the most, that it is something form your personal experience where the reviewer can feel your enthusiasm for it. Have you any good points I didn't thought of?

Ahh, now you finally want to know the content of our proposal itself? I won't tell you that right away, I'll reveal that in a future post.

**The CFP**  
We are almost finished with it and ready to submit. The deadline is the 31st of July for #TBNL2017 and 9th of September for #STD2017.


Put your lights on, stay tuned and happy testing in the mean time!
