
Core skills are essential skills that one needs to have in order to be able to impress at a job interview.
Of course there are also other things like experience, talent, personal appearance which might be important to get your dream job.
I this post, I will solely focus on skills you should have in order to fullfill certain job requirements.
As I am working in the software industry, I intentionally point to jobs in software development. But nevertheless,
the two particular skills I am talking about in this post, are also important in many other industries.

At first, I like to go over some (not all 😉) roles in the software industry and have a brief look at what some of the core
skill requirements* are for them.

### Project Manager
- Leadership
- Planning and forecasting
- Risk management
- Budgeting
- Tracking and Monitoring
- Project management methodologies
- Communication
- Collaboration

### Product Owner
- Leadership
- Knowledgable about the context
- Storyteller
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Decision Making
- Problem Solving

### Business Analyst
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Facilitation
- Analytical Thinking
- Problem Solving
- Decision Making
- Negotiation

### UX Engineer
- Visual Communication
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Protoyping
- Curiosity
- Empathy

### Scrum Master
- Leadership
- Teaching and Coaching Abilities
- Problem Solving
- Conflict Facilitation
- Lean Thinking
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Facilitation

### QA Manager
- Leadership
- Problem Solving
- Time Management
- Communication
- Collaboration

### Test Engineer
- Communication
- Problem Solving
- Collaboration
- Broad technical knowledge
- Serendipty
- Empathy
- Asking Questions
- Creativity

### Developer
- Programming Languages (OOP/FP)
- Data Structure and Algorithms
- Version Control
- Cloud Computing / Container
- Database
- Problem Solving
- Communication
- Collaboration

(*This skill list is not complete at all) 


Do you see the pattern? The two skills which appear in all the different roles? Yes, it is collaboration and communication!
These two are fundamental core skills one must have to excel at job interviews and later on. As we all work with humans together,
we use communication and collaboration daily and thus the better you are in applying them in all kind of situations, the better
your working outcome and satisfaction with yourself will be at the end of the day.

That is why I have excellent and exciting news to share with you! [Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) and I are pasissioned about
collaboration/communication and how we can improve our abilities to apply them in our daily work.
So we came up with the idea of creating a workshop to deliberitly practice these two skills in a safe environment.
We recently have launched our [full day training at Ministry of Testing](https://www.ministryoftesting.com/news/level-up-your-collaboration-skills-with-this-1-day-training-course-from-lisi-hocke-and-simon-berner)
and the first run of it will be on the 9th of July this year! 🚀

[![Collaboration Course](assets/posts/210517/collaboration-course.webp)](https://www.ministryoftesting.com/news/level-up-your-collaboration-skills-with-this-1-day-training-course-from-lisi-hocke-and-simon-berner)

As this will be our very first full day training on this topic, we are already super neverous and looking forward on how the
participants will percieve and respond to it 🙂

If you want to know more about the topic and the things we are teaching in this training/workshop/course, we have recorded a podcast
a few days ago in collaboration with Ministry of Testing. So head over to it and tune in!


And now all to say is: sign up (for a bit of money) for our training and join us on this first ride! (fyi: Lisi's and my earnings
of this course, will be fully given back to the community (in some sort which we haven't figured out yet) 😉)


Cheers, take care and live, love, collaborate, communicate and learn 🙂

#ItTakesTwo #collaboration #communication #pairing #workshop #fulldaytraining #podcast

Collaboration is a Core Skill


A very long time I always struggled to build up my own site and start blogging. I've read dozens blog post written by others so far and always thought: *No, I've nothing special to add from my side*.

But then, a few days after the recent start of [Aleksis Tulonen](http://www.aleksistulonen.com) new fantastic blog site, it suddenly hit me. Thanks Aleksis for the inspiration! I hope I don't hurt your feelings by using the same nice little frameworks. I know, it looks now almost the same as yours ;-)

So here I am and ready to blog.



The Birth


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!


The Proposal


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


The other day I've had a discussion with some dear fellow testers on how it would be possible to report unit tests in a pretty way.
After having a closer look into our dev teams karma.conf.js file in our codebase, I stumbled over the
[karma-jasmine-html-reporter](https://www.npmjs.com/package/karma-jasmine-html-reporter) and the
[karma-coverage-istanbul-reporter](https://www.npmjs.com/package/karma-coverage-istanbul-reporter) plugins.
Nice I thought, but how could we get the first one into a pretty html file? Well, just add the
[karma-htmlfile-reporter](https://www.npmjs.com/package/karma-htmlfile-reporter) to your devDependency by simply doing
``npm install karma-htmlfile-reporter --save-dev``. This will then add it automatically to your package.json.

There you go, have fun with the pretty report.

(What’s ``–save-dev``? That’s an option that updates the installed packages in the ‘devDependencies’ section of the package.json file. It signifies that a developer will need this package to work with the application, but it’s not required to run the application i.e. in production.)


Reporting JS Unit Tests


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


![TeamStar Letter](assets/posts/170918/teamstar-letter.webp)

**Preparations**  
In June [Maja Schreiner](https://twitter.com/majaschreiner) setup the 15th edition of [Agile Testing Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Agile-Testing-Meetup-Zurich/events/241197315/?comment_table_id=483425579&comment_table_name=event_comment) with the intention of having discussions around the topics Continuous Delivery and DevOps. As I'm currently working in this area, I signed up my self for being the second speaker of this event. At that time, the two of us had no idea that at the same time the [TeamSTAR Competition](https://conference.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/teamstar/) was happening. 
In July then, [Diana Flores](https://twitter.com/diaflonew) gave us the hint about it - thanks Diana for that!
So after aligning the description of the meetup to the theme of the this year's EuroSTAR Roadshow, we were in the game and ready to host our local _"The Magic Of Testing"_ meetup on the 28th of August.


**The meetup**  
We've had around 18 participants which joined us on this evening. It all started a little bit in a chaotic way, as we've had some problems in getting the Wifi Beamer working - a clear lack of taking the time to get that thing running on time. Because of that, Maja had to give her talk in a freestyle way without having a slide deck which backed her up. This was quite a challenge but she was brave and dove into it. Well done Maja! She talked about her experiences with _Continuous Delivery using Crowdsourced Testing_. Crowdsource testing is an untouched area for me within I've no experiences at all. Despite the fact that I was desperately trying to get that damn Beamer running, I was able to catch some words and sentences in between. Some of the participants bombarded her with some challenging questions - she did well and mastered them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to write these questions down. For those who are further interested in this topic, can either see her live on the [next stage](http://questforquality.eu/speakers/maja-schreiner/) at the beginning of October, or get in touch with here via whatever channel you prefer.  
Then was my turn to open the coffin and unleash the beast. Of course I don't wanna spoil too much about my topic in here, as I'm planning to apply for some conferences in the future with it. What I can reveal is, that I spoke about my current ongoing project experiences, where we put automation in testing in a deployment pipeline in order to satisfied the need for having a fast feedback loop. I guess I was talking for around 30min and then out of that some nice Q&A discussions arose which took another 20min.

I want especially say thanks to you Maja, for organising this lovely meetup! A big thank you also goes to all participants who contributed with their constructive questions to it. I'm already looking forward to a follow-up! (Next time we'll have the beamer working from the beginning on.) Last but not less important: thanks [Ronan Healy](https://twitter.com/TESTHuddle) for sending us the EuroSTAR swag!

**Testimonials**  
Besides the feedback we got right away at the meetup this evening, we also got a few feedbacks from the participants via twitter:

TBD

**Further Reading**  
Maja also wrote a [blog post](https://testmotion.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/15th-agile-testing-meetup-zurich-the-magic-of-testing-devops/) about our meetup. Click and have a look at it!

Be happy and go on with testing!

TeamSTAR Competition 2017


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


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


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


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


In the past years, I've always used a Mac for doing daily business at my customers. But at my newest customers workplace, they only accept that you work on one of their provided Win7 machines. That IS a perfect example of regression!  

I love

[![Homebrew](assets/posts/180207/brew.webp)](https://brew.sh)

[![Homebrew Cask](assets/posts/180207/homebrewcask.webp)](https://caskroom.github.io/)

to install all the things on my Mac. So when I had to start working on Windows, I immediately looked for a similar packet manager. I ended up with this:

[![Chocolatey](assets/posts/180207/chocolatey.webp)](https://chocolatey.org/)

And here some first useful commands:  
_choco list --local-only_ (lists all locally installed packages)  
_cup all_ (will update all locally installed packages)  
_choco install ChocolateyGUI_ (will install the [Chocolatey GUI](https://github.com/chocolatey/ChocolateyGUI))

Find the full list of possible commands [here](https://chocolatey.org/docs/commands-reference#command-reference)!

Awesome tooling stuff which is quite handy! Have fun with it!

Brew and Chocolate(y)



A while ago, I came a cross [this](http://blog.eviltester.com/2017/09/overcome-imposter-syndrome-public-speaking.html) enlightening blog post from [@eviltester](https://twitter.com/eviltester) where he is talking about the [impostor syndrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) in relation to public speaking. Upon that I asked myself, isn't every human being to some degree affected by it?

> All the people around me are anyway more intelligent, competent, knowledgable etc. than I am. I've no story, no opinion, no namable experiences and experiments, no outstanding knowhow and passions to share with others.

I think everyone has at a certain point in his life such self-doubts, some have them stronger, some have them less. Ever since we carry this with us, it belongs to us that we compete with and fight against each other to get satisfactory, credibility, Ruhm und Ehre. In the testing community we don't go onto that. We much more share, challenge, support, unite and collaborate. One of the best places to do so is going to conferences - I'll get back to that in a minute.  
But still, the impostor syndrome is all present. (Watch [this fabulous talk by Claire Reckless]() if you're a dojo pro-subscriber.) But how do we overcome this "fear"?  Fear of not being listened to, fear of not being good enough, fear of failure. Well first of all, this is a personal thing, not everyone wants to get out of it. Second, there is also nothing bad about it - it's just sad when someone has a brilliant idea or has made some fantastic experiences and researches which she could share with others, but because of the imposter syndrome got stuck to do so.

[This](https://www.ctohanian.com/blog/2017/11/24/stepping-out-of-your-comfort-zone) is another great post about the topic fear to speak in public.

That's it for today, have fun out there!

Thoughts on the Impostor Syndrome


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


Have you ever heard of [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/)? Yes, no? Well, GitHub Pages let you host your static website files on their servers for free. All you have to do is to create a git repo, push your files and point your domain to it. But how do you do that? Sounds all quite easy, but there are a few steps to follow in order to make you happy at the end.

### TLDR
![GitHub Pages](assets/posts/180401/githubpages.webp)

#### The First Musketeer - Domain Registrar
* Buy your personal domain at one of the [domain registrars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar) out there

#### The Second Musketeer - Cloudflare
* Create a free account at [cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com/)
* Add your domain to it
* Go back to the registrar and add the cloudflare nameservers to your domain
* Set two A records in the DNS settings to the GitHub Pages servers (192.30.252.153 / 192.30.252.154)
* Create a CNAME record with the name _www_ in the DNS settings which points to your GitHub Pages repo (eg. yourreponame.github.io)
* To use SSL for your site, go to the Crypto menu and set the SSL to _Full_

#### The third Musketeer - GitHub Pages
* Create a [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/) repo and add your domain name as custom domain (Settings ---> GitHub Pages -> Custom domain)
* Push your website code (files) to you repo


### Full step by step documentation
If you need a step be step guide for setting up things, [here is a good one](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/an-illustrated-guide-for-setting-up-your-website-using-github-cloudflare-5a7a11ca9465) and [here](https://blog.cloudflare.com/secure-and-fast-github-pages-with-cloudflare/).

The Three Musketeers


Very seldom you stumble upon an post which is so extraordinary, that you have to share it with the whole world. Such a post is this one here:

[The Origins of Opera and the Future of Programming](https://the-composition.com/the-origins-of-opera-and-the-future-of-programming-bcdaf8fbe960)

As in the past also in the future, software development lies in people forming teams, collaborating and working very closely together. We develop software for human beings and not for machines. [AI](https://www.ted.com/topics/ai) may help us with that, but not replace us!

Thank you Lisi for bringing that post up!

Symmathesy


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


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 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


**Intro**
[Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) is a shining star in the testing universe. I've never meet her in person f2f so far, but all the energy she spreads is crazy amazing. She is all over the place on twitter and has an [absolutely crazy speaking frequency](https://www.lisihocke.com/p/speaking-engagements.html)! On Friday the 24th of August, I've had the honour to join her on her [testing tour stop #17](https://www.lisihocke.com/2018/08/testing-tour-stop-17-pair-evolving-a-mind-map-about-pairing-and-mobbing-with-simon.html).

**When Time Stands Still**
I have to admit I was a bit nervous around 10 minutes before I went online. Not that I would've expected to face the devil in person, no, but because I didn't know which energy will hit me ;) We first started by introducing each other. And that's a thing which I think is absolutely necessary when two people meet for pairing on any topic they want to work on. Already there I recognised, that Lisi is one of those human beings who can listen. Yes just listen, you read it correctly. As simple as it sounds - listen - listening very closely, listening and not thinking anything else, being totally focused, listening that the time is standing still for a moment. Giving the other the full attention and the feeling of being important. That's probably one of the most valuable gifts you can give to your counterpart during a conversation. Lisi is gifted with it.

> _Listen so that you can hear the flowers grow_

**Learning About Pairing And Mobbing While Pairing**
Then we started the [Mob Timer](https://agility.jahed.io/timer.html) and dove into our strong-style pair session. The object under test was <a href="/files/PairingAndMobbing.xmind" download>a mind-map</a> with a collection of information around Paring and Mobbing, which I created prior to our session. First we had a look at [the different styles of pairing](https://medium.com/@maaret.pyhajarvi/styles-of-pair-testing-18970bbad833) which exist out there. When it comes to explain the strong-style driver navigator principle, I like to use the *Rally Drive* metaphor. An excellent way of visualise how strong-style pairing works! The Driver is there to drive the god damn car and the navigator, well he navigates the 4WD. I just recently started with strong-style pairing with one of my teammates, but it's not easy because both of us are new to it and have the tendency to easily fall back into the driver observer habit. Maybe the Mob Timer will help us out here in the future.  
Then we moved on our discussion on the topic of Mobbing and how to get started with it, what the optimal size of a mob can/should be, how time management can look like and how you should treat each other in a mob. *Kindness*, *Respect* and *Consideration* are very important pillars. The first two are quite obvious and don't need any further explanation. But *Consideration*, well this one isn't that obvious in the first place. It's that thing which I mentioned earlier: listening. The driver has to listen very carefully. Of course all the others too ;)  
We were running out of time. Still so much to discuss but so little time. So at the end I asked the question: What are things that one shouldn't do in a Mob? First: don't force anyone to work in a mob, but tell them about it. Second: don't force anyone to stay in a mob, let the person go whatever she prefers to do. Just make sure she is reachable in case of questions and know-how exchange.

> _Don't force, inspire_

**Retrospective**
It was a wonderful pair session around the topic of pairing & mobbing. A very natural and soft blowing breeze followed us throughout the entire session. I didn't feel any uptightness or artificial moment in it, despite the fact we used the Mob Timer. Thank you Lisi, it was magical - our path will cross again.

> _Don't put yourself in a box even when the clock is ticking, go with the mutual flow_

**Book Recommendation**  
One of the most valuable books on this whole topic which I highly recommend is [this one here](https://leanpub.com/mobprogrammingguidebook)!

**Toolkit**
Finally I also have to mention the toolkit we used for our online collaboration, because without it, it wouldn't had worked: [zoom](https://zoom.us/). What I experienced with it so far is great. Great video & audio quality, a super easy to use UI and its [basic plan](https://zoom.us/pricing) is totally free! A really cool piece of collaboration software!

**Twitter Feed**
TBD


A Magical Pair Session


You know what the cool thing is when you're passioned about something? You LOVE to learn all day long! The day even becomes to have too less hours for all the awesome stuff which is happening every single minute out there!   
So, there is this learning group thingy happening out there, initiated by [Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) and [Toyer Mamojee](https://twitter.com/tottiLFC). They started it as power duo and over time they formed it to a group of extraordinary ladies and gentlemen by extended it more and more and taking other people in their online learning group - what a nice inspiring idea I thought.  
Some time has passed since then and today I joined in for the very first time.
[Joao Proenca](https://twitter.com/jrosaproenca) has setup this session very nicely with a [lean coffee](http://agilecoffee.com/leancoffee/) table where we all have put in our topics beforehand. The majority of us chose the topic 'Code Coverage' which was posted by [Mirjana](https://twitter.com/mirjanakolarov).

**A word on code coverage**  
*Code Coverage* on its own doesn't mean a lot to us in most cases. Code which is covered by automated tests, gives a bit more context but still not that much, that testers (and probably developers too) could truly understand it. What one first has to ask is WHY it might be a good thing to measure how much from the code base is covered by tests.

> *Code coverage is the percentage of code which is covered by automated tests. Code coverage measurement simply determines which statements in a body of code have been executed through a test run, and which statements have not.*

[source](https://confluence.atlassian.com/clover/about-code-coverage-71599496.html)

For developers which are working daily on the productive codebase, this might be an interesting and helpful guidance towards the awareness of creating checks for the code they write and where they are lacking. For testers it might be a good thing to have an overall view, to know which areas are already covered by checks and which not. All major IDEs these days provide useful features to create visual code coverage reports of the code which is touched by checks and which not. 

**Our session**  
Now back to our session. Joao started off the topic by telling his experiences and the things he is doing around code coverage in his team. They use code coverage in his team to see in which areas of the code they are lacking behind of having automated tests in place. But instead having discussion around "How good is the test coverage of your code", he rather prefers to have discussion around risks and how to finally mitigate it. Toyer mentioned there should be a clear distinction between code coverage on code level vs functional test coverage on feature level. Then [Pooja](https://twitter.com/TechGirlPooja) stated her point of view on the topic by clearly saying that there has to be a clear distinction and one should be able to make a statement regarding automated tests that cover lines of code, exploratory/automated tests that cover the functional aspects of a system and so on. In her current context, the developers are responsible for writing unit tests but the QA department is accountable for gathering the information and show what the coverage metrics for each area looks like. What they also trying to do is get some test coverage from monitoring and logging with tools like [New Relic](https://newrelic.com/) by recording and tracking the events which occur. Here Toyer hocked in and mentioned the tool [Instana](https://www.instana.com/) which he uses for monitoring the system while executing performance tests. I then talked a bit about my experiences and mentioned that whatever you are doing on which (let's call it) test level, it is important to visualise and show your team and stakeholders why, how and what you are doing while testing. The mutual conversion went on till the end and it was interesting to listen and ask further questions.  


**Retrospective**  
It is very energising to be part of such an awesome bunch of testers. The cool thing is that we all come from different nations to learn and growth by exchanging experiences and opinions.
Thanks to all for taking me on board! Looking forward to the next session! Let's ride!

Power Learning Group Session - Discussing Code Coverage


I failed in school at a lot of intermediate examinations.  
I failed the exams in school to go to the secondary level.  
I failed the exam for university entrance.  
I failed in getting my first apprenticeship.  
I failed at jobs.  
I failed at friends.  
I failed in learning my first programming language.  
I failed in getting a certification.  
I failed at my first master thesis.  
I failed in speaking in front of people.  
I failed in giving workshops.  
I failed in getting feedback.  
I failed in getting accepted.  
I failed in listening.  
I failed in stating my opinion.  
I failed in telling what I really want.  
I failed in speaking to people for years.  
I failed in software testing.  

I'm grown older now, more experienced, maybe a bit wiser, but there is one thing I've never stopped: failing.


I'm tremendously grateful.

> _Challenging yourself is never giving up for the things you are passioned about and love doing._

I Failed


What scares me most in my professional live and in my personal development is, to receive negative feedback for things I'm passioned and love doing. It's funny, but that's a thing which always scared me, from school up till today. But why? I think it's the circumstance, that someone may have "paid" for the things you're talking about or delivering. As soon someone has invested their time and/or money, they have automatically high expectations and I hate to disappoint people. But on the other hand, we probably have to be honest and confess that making everyone happy is only possible in an unicorn land.

This year I've reached a point in my life were I no longer need to appeal to someone - I've put that pressure long enough upon me. I no longer have to compete with someone else (unless I like to). That merely means: I don't have to do things because others are believing, doing or saying so. I don't have to do things which I'm not interested in, just to be liked. I don't have to accept a job, assignment anymore just to have a job - I did that several times in the past. A lot of times I was drooling over positive feedback and recognition from others. Of course it's charming and also important to get some nice feedback for the things you're investing your precious time. But what I value even more is to get some individual, honest, constructive, direct feedback for improvement, because I think there is always room for doing so.

**Received feedback this year**  
This year I received on every conference talk I did some negative feedback. What scares me the most on this is, that I unfortunately never received a deep enough verbal or written feedback upon it. No single feedback which let me do some changes, rework, bug fixes on my talks. Did we tester loose the ability to give reasonable feedback to someone? Just we testers should actually now how to give feedback right? Maybe it's also the conference organiser which could do better to make/push this to happened? Or maybe it's the speaker who should plan ahead and give in particular this possibility at the end of a talk?

Nevertheless, I like sharing stuff with the community and maybe one day I'll receive some feedback which is a testers worth ;)

**Looking for feedback: my challenges for 2019**  
For next year I've got a few new challenges in the queue, which hopefully will generate some feedback:  

* Doing my first coding workshop (all alone)
* Doing my first conference talk with some live coding
* Finishing a certification which I've started years ago

All this should help me to gain more confidence in coding for the things I'm requested to do by my customers and of course to learn a lot of new exciting things. But wait a second, first I've to be accepted to speak at a conference, right? No way, there are also so called [unconferences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference) where [everyone](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diversity) is invited to propose a topic, no matter how fancy or not the topic looks like.  
So my first conference I'll attend and contribute to next year is [SoCraTes Switzerland](https://www.socrates-ch.org). Which is a perfect opportunity for me to get the critical eyes of developers as first reviewers on my coding experiments! I'm so excited and very much looking forward to this!

There are other topics in the queue which just wait to be unleashed and touched in more depth:

* Software development design principles (DRY, KISS, [SOLID](http://www.tjmaher.com/2018/12/what-software-design-principles-do-you.html), [etc.](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_architecture_design/index.htm))
* Software development design patterns (Factory, Composite, Decorator, etc.)
* Software architecture in general
* Have a look at the [adventofcode](https://adventofcode.com)
* Do some [coding katas](https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata)

**Finding the balance**  
Finding the right balance between a professional life and a private life isn't easy, especially when you're passioned about all the things your job and the software community has to offer and you want to swallow everything at once whenever possible. I often find myself in the situation where I see a lot of people out there hopping from one conference and event to another and sharing their knowledge. Then I ask myself: do they have more time than I have? Don't they also have to work at some point? Don't they have a private life? Then I recognise, no, that's not my way to go, I couldn't handle meeting that many new people at once and I also love doing other things in my spare time which have higher priority.

**Conclusion**  
My challenge for next year is: extending my technical toolbox by #LearnToCode and sharing and teaching freshly gained knowledge with and to others!

**One more thing #1**  
But how do I measure any success and #achievement from all of this?

As feedback is inevitable for measurement and fundamentally needed to do any further improvements, I'll actively call out for getting feedback during each talk/workshop I'll do next year. The first two people who give me an in depth, honest verbal or written feedback (until the end of a conference) will receive a surprise! So better watch out before you miss an outstanding opportunity ;) All others will receive a smile and a nice discussion.

Looks like that I'll use a bait for getting feedback, right? Yes it is, but I tell you, a bait which is worth it to provide feedback for ;)

**One more thing #2**  
If you have any feedback for the people you care about, please let them know! Take care, have a wonderful advent season and a happy new year!

What Scares Me Most


When you do a ``checkout scm`` in a Jenkinsfile, the [Jenkins Git plugin]( https://github.com/jenkinsci/git-plugin) does a checkout with a [detached HEAD]( https://www.git-tower.com/learn/git/faq/detached-head-when-checkout-commit) reference by default. The consequence of this is, that when you make changes after a ``checkout scm`` and commit them to the remote repo (from Jenkins), these changes DO NOT belong to any branch. This means that this commit and its ancestors are not bound to any specific branch. One useful use case of this is, when you want to create a release where you only change the version number (e.g. in the pom.xml) with a commit, and this commit then shouldn’t be part of e.g. the master branch. Here an example Jenkinsfile which deals with this:
```groovy

def projectName = "my-first-project"
def teamEmail = "me@me.com"
def isMaster = (env.BRANCH_NAME == 'master')

node {
    def mvnHome = tool 'Maven 3.3.3'
    jdk = tool name: 'Java 1.8'
    env.JAVA_HOME = "${jdk}"

    stage('Checkout') {
    	// Checkout in detached HEAD to latest commit from master
        checkout scm
    }

    withNotification {
        version = calculateVersion(isMaster)
        tag = "v${version}"
        echo "Branch name:  ${env.BRANCH_NAME}"
        echo "Build number: ${env.BUILD_NUMBER}"
        echo "Version:      ${version}"
        echo "Tag:          ${tag}"

        if (isMaster) {
            // Change the version tag in the projects pom.xml
            sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn versions:set -DnewVersion=${version}"
            // Commit the changed pom.xml to the detached HEAD commit tree
            sh "git commit -a -m'Release version ${version}'"
        }

        stage('Build') {
            mvnWithSurefireResults(mvnHome, "clean package")
        }

        parallel 'Sonar analysis': {
            stage('Sonar') {
                sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn -B sonar:sonar -Dsonar.branch=${env.BRANCH_NAME}"
            }
        }, 'Dependency analysis': {
            stage('Dependencies') {
                sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn -B -Pdependency-analysis verify -DskipTests=true"
            }
        }

        if (isMaster) {
            stage('Release') {
                /*
                Create a tag with metadata and message, and add the
                tag to our new commit where the detached HEAD is
                pointing to.
                */
                sh "git tag -a -m 'Version ${version}' ${tag} HEAD"
                sh "git push origin refs/tags/${tag}"

                def lines = [
                        "Job '${env.JOB_NAME}' (#${env.BUILD_NUMBER}) has released version ${version}.",
                        "Please go to ${env.BUILD_URL} and verify the tag ${env.BRANCH_NAME}."
                ]
                lines.each { echo it }

                emailext subject: "New ${projectName} release: ${version}",
                        body: lines.join("\n"),
                        to: teamEmail
            }

            stage('Deploy to Artifactory') {
                sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn -B deploy -DskipTests=true"
            }
        }
    }
}

}
 
```

That's it! Have fun and let me know if I have forgotten to mention something important.

Live, Laugh and Learn
Cheers

Jenkins In Detached HEAD

Let's Test 2019 - Africa Speaks


A year of my life has passed and I would like to reflect and look back what happened. I somehow feel the need to let go form 2019 and already welcome some new things of 2020. The last twelve month were an intensive learning phase of test automation, pairing, learning languages and getting rejected at conferences. One thing I learned once more over the past twelve month was: 

> _[Failing and getting rejected](https://simonberner.com/2018/10/28/I-failed/) over and over again is hard to take and can be very frustrating. But giving up on something which I love doing, was and never will be an option for me._

It is a déjà vu, all my life long I had to fight, work and learn hard in order to earn my successes. It belongs to me, it sticks with me, it's a part of me, I know it, life wants to teach me a lesson. May be because of some happenings in my [earlier lives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation)? I am not frustrated any longer from failing, I have learned to live and learn from it.

### 2019 - 11
Here the 11 highlights which stand out the most from the past year (they are not in any particular order):
1. I started learning the version control system Git. First I was very confused but the more I used it the more I got passioned about it. Today I am a Git fanboy who loves to teach and infect others with it.
2. In March this year I participated at the [SoCraTes Conference Switzerland](https://www.socrates-ch.org/), where I did a session about my first steps and experiences with the version control System Git. The session wasn't that super good from my perspective, but it taught me a lot about myself and how I can improve my presentation and teaching style.
3. I applied for speaking at many software testing conferences. [A lot of rejections and just one single success](https://simonberner.com/2019/12/15/Let-s-Test-2019-Africa-Speaks/).
4. I started working on creating an online course.
5. I started doing pair programming (traditional and strong style pairing) at work. I worked constantly in pairs every day for a full month, which was an intensive an exhaustive time. Afterwards I reduced it to 2 days per week.
6. I wanted to facilitate a mob programming session with my team at work, but I never reached the point of actually doing it. My team mates blocked me and I finally blocked myself too.
7. I facilitated my first workshop all alone at a testing conference.
8. I started working on my first full-day tutorial.
9. I applied with two workshops at a developer conference for next year.
10. I continued relearning the Java programming language.
11. I relearned French at my (by now past) customer project.

### 2020 - 13
Next year, the following 13 cool new things are already waiting for me:
1. Beginning of January, I will start a new project and a new job as a Mobile App Test Automation Engineer / Mobile App Tester!
2. A bit later on, I will release my very first online course! So stay tuned!
3. In the middle of the year, I will facilitate my first full-day tutorial at a conference!
4. I hope to have the possibility to do more full-day tutorials and workshops at conferences during the year (a few papers to conferences are already out).
5. With my future new Mobile App Team, I would like to gain experiences in Mob Programming and facilitate my very first Mob!
6. With [Sandra Kambo](https://twitter.com/sandra_yri) who I met at [Let's Test SA](https://simonberner.com/2019/12/15/Let-s-Test-2019-Africa-Speaks/), I would like to start a learning partnership all around Mobile App development and testing.
7. I want to learn the Mobile Test Automation framework [appium](http://appium.io/).
8. With my learning Partner [Parveen Kahn](https://twitter.com/Parveen_Khan10), I would like to learn heaps of new stuff in the testing worlds and give a pair talk with her about our learning journey at [AgileTD 2020](https://agiletestingdays.com/).
9. With the Power Learning Group, I would like to learn new fancy stuff, sharing experiences and finally meet all of these lovely human beings in person at a testing conference.
10. I want to face and pass the exam to become an [Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 11 Developer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Certification_Program).
11. As writing is probably the most difficult thing for me, I want to try to release small blog posts more frequently.
12. I want to do more coding by using [freecodecamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) and [codepen](https://codepen.io/).
13. I want to learn to use the [QWERTY keyboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY), as I heard it is very convenient for coding.


Now I wish you all a happy new year and may healthiness and happiness be on your learning path! And don't forget:

>>>> _It's a long way to the top if you wanna Rock 'N' Roll!_

Live, Laugh, Love and Learn

Catch you later!
Cheers

From 2019 Into 2020


Starting a [Gratitude Jar](https://josierobinson.com/journal/how-to-use-a-gratitude-jar) is a wonderful way of giving THANKS. Thank you [Anne-Marie Charrett](https://mavericktester.com/2020/01/02/the-gratitude-jar/) for spreading this nice idea and in particular triggering me to think and set aside a couple of minutes and starting my gratitude jar right here.

So I open my jar and put in the following slips:
> _I am thankful to have such wonderful close human beings around me._

> _I am grateful for all the things I am able to do right now._

> _I am blessed with a job which I am very passioned about and love doing._

> _I am happy that I can learn from all the people around me, no matter where they come from, what they are doing and what they are passioned about._

> _Thanks to my employer for making it possible to experience all the different roles in all the projects I have been a part of so far._

> _Thanks to my employer for giving me the freedom and richness to learn from all the different teams, people, cultures, challenges and perspectives._

> _Thanks to my #PowerLearningGroup and every single members of it. Thanks Lisi, Lilit, Mirjana, Viki, Diane, Toyer, Joao and Dragan for being here and learning with me. You are all an inspiration! (I am already looking forward to that moment when I meet you all person one day)._

> _Thanks Sandra for reaching out to me and though triggering another journey of learning and sharing for this year._

> _Thanks to Lou, Cindy and Matthew who welcomed me with open arms at their conference._

> _Thanks to my learning partner Parveen who initialized our #LearningPartnership last year. I am so much looking forward to the upcoming month._

> _Thanks Gerald for riding with me in the world of performance testing the last few years._

> _Thanks to the team I have been a part of at my past customer project, you are all amazing, continue like this._

> _Thanks to all the conference paper reviewers, you do an amazing job and I know it isn't easy to make a choice when you get tons of great papers._

The Gratitude Jar


## Intro
Creating a [CSV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values) out of a list of data (test results or any other kind) in Java, isn’t a big thing these days. But creating a file in Jenkins, feeding some comma separated values to it and then saving that file to your Jenkins build, is a bit trickier if you have never done it before. So here is the challenge I recently got:

_Out of some test result data, create a CSV file which can be opened in MS Excel and make that file available in the specific Jenkins build job so that it can be downloaded as a test-result artifact by the people of department X._

Cool challenge isn’t it! I love doing such stuff! Let’s cut this in some eatable pieces by using the [pomodoro technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique):
* Structure the Data
* Create a CSV file in Jenkins and make it available as artifact
* Write the data to the CSV file
* Download the CSV file from the Jenkin3s build

Sounds easy, right? Well, it does, but if you haven’t done that before, it may take you a while to figure out how to put the puzzle pieces correctly together in code. Let’s have a look at the solution I (and a working mate, 4thank you buddy!) came up with.

## Structure the Data
Data in its raw form is like a pile of unsorted stones. It is hard to process raw data. First we need to structure it to become handy. Putting data into a data structure, is a way of organising data so that it can be accessed and used efficiently.


![Data Structure](assets/posts/200410/apache-datastructure.webp)
([Source](https://www.csetutor.com/classification-of-data-structure-with-diagram/))

For our example we are going to use a Java ArrayList which implements the List interface and add some test-result data to it.

![code datastructure](assets/posts/200410/apache-code.webp)

Great, that was easy right? Now that we have our little structured data set in place, let’s have a look at how we can create a CSV file in Jenkins.


## Create a CSV file in Jenkins and make it available as artefact

![Apache Software Foundation](assets/posts/200410/apache-jenkins.webp)  
([Source](https://jenkins.io/))

These days, a [Jenkins pipeline](https://jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/getting-started/) is implemented within a Jenkinsfile. The Jenkinsfile is version controlled alongside all the rest of the code. A Jenkins-Job will then read the Jenkinsfile from the repo, build up the pipeline accordingly and execute the specified stages.
To create a file in a Jenkinsfile we can do the following:
(For reusability purposes, we first create a variable for the file name.)

![def fileNameCsv](assets/posts/200410/apache-filenamecsv.webp)

Then, as part of a stage, we write the file and save it in the current build workspace as artifact:

![stage fileNameCsv](assets/posts/200410/apache-stagefilename.webp)


## Writing the Data to the CSV file
To write data to a CSV file in Java, we can go two ways. We can either use the java.io package and write the code on our own or we can use a third-party library. Let’s have a look at how we could implement this with our own bare hands.

### Do It yourself
As we already have our data at hand, we need some sort of magic to convert this List of Strings into a line of comma separated values. This can be done with the help of the Streaming API:

![method convertToCSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-convertcsv.webp)

Before we go on and write that CSV String into a file, we also have to think about [escaping of special characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_character) which could appear in hour data (e.g. single or double quotes, new line, backslash, tab, backspace) and which [character encoding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_encoding) we want to use. Let’s keep things simple and focus only on escaping commas (,), quotes ('or") and new lines (n) in our data String. Fields containing commas or quotes will be surrounded by double quotes and double quotes will be escaped with double quotes. We'll eliminate new lines and replace them each with whitespace. For this we create the following method:

![method escapeSpecialCharacters](assets/posts/200410/apache-escapespecialchars.webp)

With all the things from above in hand, we can now finally write the data to the CSV file:

![method writeCSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-writecsv.webp)

Writing the implementation for creating a CSV file can quickly become quite complicated when we start thinking of how we have to handle special characters and character encoding. Luckily there are a few third-party libraries available for working with CSV files in Java which handle this for us flawlessly.
Let’s have a look which CSV library I have chosen and how you can write a CSV with it.


### Using Apache Commons CSV

![Apache Software Foundation](assets/posts/200410/apache-foundation.webp)  
([Source](https://apache.org/))

The [Apache Commons CSV library](https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-csv/) has many useful features for creating CSV files. The CSV component of the Apache commons project is under the umbrella of the [Apache Software Foundation](https://apache.org/) and is actively maintained; that is why I have chosen it.

Also here, as we already have the data ready, we just need to do the implementation for writing a CSV file:

![method writeCSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-writecsvcommons.webp)

As you notice, we don’t have to bother with any additional implementation for dealing with the escaping of special characters and character encoding. We just have to specify which encoding we want to use and that’s it! The rest is handled by the library itself.

## Download the CSV file from the Jenkins build
Finally we can run our Jenkins-Job and while waiting, we drink a cup of tea. Once the job has finished, we head over to the Artifacts section, download the .csv file and open it in MS Excel. Job done!


![Jenkins Artifact](assets/posts/200410/apache-jenkinsartifact.webp)


![MS Excel CSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-excelcsv.webp)

Of course this is probably not the best solution on earth, but we have had a lot of fun to come up with this implementation and make our internal customers happy with it!

Creating a CSV-Report with Apache and Jenkins


## Intro
[Cypress](https://www.cypress.io/) is currently the Test Automation solution per se in the JavaScript web world. The hype is ongoing and seems to be unbroken and unchallengeable. I heard lots of stuff about it but actually have never used it so far. Then one day I stumbled over Marie Drake’s blog post about [Modern Web testing with Cypress](https://www.mariedrake.com/post/modern-web-testing-with-cypress) and that gave me the kick to give it a try myself. Has testing really evolved with cypress the same as the web did in the recent years? Is cypress really that simple to set up and work with?
Well let’s see!

## Let’s begin
Cypress has some [trade-offs](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/references/trade-offs.html#Permanent-trade-offs-1) and limitations, that is for sure. But is it missing other important things which are important to me as a Mobile Test Automation Engineer? Unfortunately yes it does. Cypress currently won’t make it into my mobile testing tool belt 😢, because it does not support:

- remote execution
- other languages than JavaScript
- 3rd party cross-browser testing tools
- Mobile Test Automation for Android/iOS Apps

([Source](https://slides.com/mariedrake/comparing-testing-tools-cypress-vs-selenium#/21))

But nevertheless (and I guess cypress isn't build for doing Mobile App Test Automation anyway), let’s experiment a bit with it and do some baby steps in Web and API testing.


## First baby steps
The installation procedure of cypress is easy. Here are the things I did in particular order to get cypress flying:

1. Install [node js](https://nodejs.org/en/download/)
2. Initialise a new nodejs project with: ``npm init``
3. Install cypress with for that specific project: ``npm install cypress --save-dev``
4. Open up the project in my favorite JavaScript IDE ([VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com/) 🎙 or [Webstorm](https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/) 🌪 or shall i just use both at once 🤔)
5. Open up a terminal in the IDE and hit ``npx cypress open`` to start the Cypress Test Runner
6. Additionally I have had a look at the official [Getting Started](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/getting-started/installing-cypress.html#System-requirements) to gain more insights.

That’s about it, six steps and I was done with setting things up for my very first cypress project! Pretty slick isn’t it?

First I started out with a very simple test using [Mocha](https://mochajs.org/) (which is build in to cypress) for creating the [sample_spec.js](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps/blob/master/cypress/integration/tests/sample_spec.js).

![sample spec](assets/posts/200501/cypress-sample1.webp)

Next up I enjoyed myself by creating a [Cucumber feature file](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps/blob/master/cypress/integration/Google.feature) with the corresponding implementation behind it. While developing and debugging or bug fixing cucumber scenarios, one can put the smart tag _@focus_ in front of a scenario to just run one (or of course more) scenarios (out of many scenarios) focused.

![google feature](assets/posts/200501/cypress-google.webp)

Lastly I wanted to experiment a bit with [API testing](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps/blob/master/cypress/integration/tests/sample_api.spec.js). The most challenging part here was to create a proper working [API POST request with a proper body](https://docs.cypress.io/api/commands/request.html#Method-URL-and-Body) 😁 

![google feature](assets/posts/200501/cypress-sampleapi.webp)

All in all: [writing some first baby tests](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/getting-started/writing-your-first-test.html#Add-a-test-file) and [testing these tests](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/getting-started/testing-your-app.html#Step-1-Start-your-server), fells very smooth and is actually pretty straight forward.

I am looking forward to working more on such small experiments 😉.
Here is my repo if you are interested:

<div class="github-card" data-github="simonberner/cypress-baby-steps" data-width="400" data-height="" data-theme="default"></div>
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/github-cards/latest/widget.js"></script>

## Plugins
The [list of plugins](https://docs.cypress.io/plugins/index.html) is quite impressive. In my baby-steps project I currently use the [cy-api](https://github.com/bahmutov/cy-api) for api testing and the [cypress-cucumber-preprocessor](https://github.com/TheBrainFamily/cypress-cucumber-preprocessor) for the feature file Gherkin thingy (thanks [Toyer](https://twitter.com/tottiLFC) for pointing me to this one!). Of course there are tons of other things I want to dive into and explore 🧭!

## Conclusion
Despite the fact that I as a Mobile App Enthusiast can’t use cypress, I am impressed. Setting up cypress is done within a few seconds, while setting up Selenium needs a bit more of these seconds 😉. The documentation is right before perfection! I have probably never seen such a complete guide and information source for a tool ever before. Bravo and a big applause for that folks 👏🏼!  
I think and I might probably be right, that the test automation space has evolved with that tool, specifically Test Automation in the wild wide web with JavaScript. Cross browser testing just works out of the box and I don’t need to install any additional drivers, that is nifty. Coincidentally three weeks ago, I got asked by a senior JavaScript developer which JavaScript tool for test automation I would recommend. Me as a JavaScript rookie and with not much of an idea what one can do with cypress, I said: “I would probably go with cypress and see how it proves itself in your project.”

Developers and automation engineers like to have a tool in their hands which is as close as possible to the “production code”. And sometimes it even may make sense to integrate an applications test automation framework into the same repo as the productive app code. But writing the right tests is still the hardest part of it all.

>> _In order to develop the right tests you need to explore with a testers mindset the different paths of your application and understand from a business value perspective what your end-users are doing and what not._

I am not finished yet with experimenting with cypress, there is more to come in the coming weeks to my repo.

## A bit of music
I don’t know why - but cypress always reminds me of [Cypress Hill](https://cypresshill.com/) and their two songs from the nineties.

<div className="center">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RijB8wnJCN0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xyqVVfj5qE8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
<p/>
Maybe it’s just me getting a bit older. Let’s see how long cypress can make some noise in the clubs. 😉

Thanks for reading!
Stay safe and happy! 💃🏽


## Further resources which may help
### Blog Posts
[Modern Web testing with Cypress](https://www.mariedrake.com/post/modern-web-testing-with-cypress)
[REST API testing with Cypress](https://www.merixstudio.com/blog/rest-api-testing-cypress/)
[API Testing with Cypress](https://medium.com/@ali.haydar/api-testing-with-cypress-d8c60ed6aa2e)
[Integrating Cypress with Cucumber and Gherkin](https://wanago.io/2020/01/13/javascript-testing-cypress-cucumber/)
[Introduction to E2E Testing with Cypress](https://wanago.io/2019/12/30/javascript-testing-introduction-end-to-end-testing-cypress/)
[Testing with Cypress - Basic API overview](https://automationrhapsody.com/testing-with-cypress-basic-api-overview/)

### Online Courses
[TAU - Introduction to Cypress with Gil Tayar](https://testautomationu.applitools.com/cypress-tutorial/)

### Meetups
[Cypress Meetup Groups around the world](https://www.meetup.com/topics/cypress/)



A Little Bit of Cypress


## Cypress is cool
I like [cypress](https://www.cypress.io/) for automation - everybody does, right? It makes setting up things so smooth and implementing tests so frictionless, as if one has almost nothing to care about. I have made some experiments (and still do) with it in my GitHub repo [cypress-baby-steps](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps) and also wrote a few lines about it in my [last blog post](https://simonberner.rocks/2020/05/01/A-Little-Bit-of-Cypress/). But what about [Selenium](https://www.selenium.dev/)? Note: this isn't another post on Cypress vs. Selenium, no, keep reading on. 😉

## Selenium sucks?
I also like Selenium. But the need there that one has to manually check and download the browser driver (binary artifact) for each type of browser separately, all the time, is just a real pain in the neck. 😩 
The Selenium WebDriver API communicates with the specific browser-driver, which then natively drives the actual browser.

![Selenium WebDriver](assets/posts/200708/selenium-webdriver.webp)

([image source](https://bonigarcia.github.io/selenium-jupiter/#local-browsers))
 
In order to locate these drivers, the absolute path of such a binary file has to/should be exported in a given environment variable (at least in Java) before creating a WebDriver instance:

![WebDriver Path](assets/posts/200708/selenium-driverpath.webp)


Recently I asked myself: Isn’t there a better way of handling all these browser drivers? Automagically, without making my hands dirty? Good news, there is one!

## The next generation of JUnit
JUnit is a unit testing framework for Java and was initially released in 2002 by [Kent Beck](https://twitter.com/KentBeck) and [Erich Gamma](https://twitter.com/ErichGamma). Did you know that it actually originated from [sUnit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUnit)?
In 2017, another ground-braking milestone of JUnit was reached: JUnit 5 was released. I work now since 2 years with [JUnit5](https://junit.org/junit5/) and I really like it. But why do I mention this here? 

## Less Driver Management = Selenium is cool (too)
Well, as I was searching for a Selenium JUnit 5 extension to get around the pain of organising the drivers by myself, I finally found [Selenium-Jupiter](https://github.com/bonigarcia/selenium-jupiter/) 🥳 Once you include this dependency in your project, you simply need to specify the flavour of the browser driver you want to use in a test method and that’s it! No pain and (almost) no problems anymore 😅

![Selenium-Jupiter local](assets/posts/200708/selenium-jupiterlocal.webp)

The whole management of the WebDriver binaries is handled by the [WebDriverManager](https://github.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager) which is used by Selenium-Jupiter.
One can also control [remote browsers](https://github.com/bonigarcia/selenium-jupiter/#remote-browsers) or [docker browsers](https://github.com/bonigarcia/selenium-jupiter/#docker-browsers) with Selenium-Jupiter.

### But how does this actually work?
Selenium-Jupiter uses the dependency-injection extension model of JUnit 5 to inject the WebDriver objects into an annotated (``@Test``) Test-Method. Further more, it does the following:

1. It checks the version of the browser installed in your machine (e.g. Chrome, Firefox).
2. It checks the version of the driver (e.g. chromedriver, geckodriver). If unknown, it uses the latest version of the driver.
3. It downloads the WebDriver binary if it is not present on the WebDriverManager cache (~/.m2/repository/webdriver by default).
4. It exports the proper WebDriver Java environment variables required by Selenium (not done when using WebDriverManager from the CLI or as a Server).

([source](https://github.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager#basic-usage))

Thanks [Boni García](https://twitter.com/boni_gg) for creating and maintaining Selenium-Jupiter! A nice solution to avoid managing the painful boring stuff. It is a joy using it! 🙃

> _All in all, using Selenium with Java was never super easy before. But using it with JUnit 5 in combination with Selenium-Jupiter, is actually pretty cool!_

## Interesting readings about the [_vs._](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/versus-vs-verses)
- [Cypress.io vs. Selenium Test Automation](https://testguild.com/cypress-io-vs-selenium-test-automation/)
- [Puppeteer, Selenium, Playwright or Cypress?](https://www.testim.io/blog/puppeteer-selenium-playwright-cypress-how-to-choose/)
- [Cypress vs. Selenium WebDriver: Better or just different?](https://applitools.com/blog/cypress-vs-selenium-webdriver-better-or-just-different/)
- [Selenium vs. Cypress: Is WebDriver on its way out?](https://dzone.com/articles/selenium-vs-cypress-is-webdriver-on-its-way-out)
- [Cypress vs. Selenium, is this the end of an era?](https://automationrhapsody.com/cypress-vs-selenium-end-era/)

I think at the end of the day, it is not about which one is the better tool and which one you should never use again. Both of them are great and have its strength and flexibility for automation. In your project context, you and your team has to choose which one suites your needs best.

Thanks for reading
Stay safe and happy! 💃🏽


Driverless Automation With Selenium


> This is by far my biggest contribution to the Software Test Automation Community so far!

The long waiting is finally over! 🎉 I am thrilled, overwhelmed and super happy to  announce, that my very first online-course just got released! 🥳 It is freely available on the awesome learning platform [Test Automation University](https://testautomationu.applitools.com/)! 👩🏽‍🎓

The course is called [Source Control for Test Automation with Git](https://testautomationu.applitools.com/instructors/simon_berner.html) and brings 2hours and 56minutes of raw #Git learning power to wherever you are! And of course it does not only apply for Test Automation, no, its concepts apply for the whole Software Development Lifecycle 😉

[![TAU Course](assets/posts/200710/tau-course.webp)](https://testautomationu.applitools.com/git-tutorial/)

At the TAU 50K Party, I had the opportunity to chat with the one and only [Angie Jones](https://twitter.com/techgirl1908) about it. What a delightful moment that was - I tell you. And you know what is best? [Our chat got actually recorded!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQcxNMUuEPU) 🙃

Thank you so much for your kind words Angie!


## A long journey
It took more than a year from the very first mental leap to the moment where I now can hold the finished product in my hands. A tremendous amount of hours went into learning, creating the slide deck, recording, getting feedback from Angie, doing some corrections and re-recordings. There were also moments where I just wanted to stop with it and throw everything away. It was such an exhausting work and sometimes even frustrating to do the countless re-recordings due to dissatisfaction on my side with my own english pronunciation. But now I am super happy with the outcome! All the people out there who have created online courses, lecture videos and so on, have all my due respect.
Despite the fact that it was a hell lot of work, it was also a huge personal development step into the future. I proved myself that it is possible with a lot of passion, stamina and joy to create something which I never would have imagined before. Creating this course and having the opportunity to share it with other people in the industry, is probably one of the most satisfying things I have ever done so far. This makes me such a lucky and happy human being 😁

I shut my mouth now so that you can go and have a look at my course! It is absolutely FREE! If you have any feedback to share, you are more then welcome to get in touch with me. It is by far not a perfect course, I know, but a first step into another very exciting direction of teaching for me.


## Does it stop here?
A huge challenge ends here - or does it now start with all the feedback and additional questions I will get? Next up I will be giving some online trainings on Git and out of that I will see what happens next 🙃

Thank you so much Angie for challenging me on this and for giving me this incredible, outstanding learning opportunity and experience to publish my very first online-course on the Test Automation University platform of [applitools](https://applitools.com/). It is a honor to be among these rockstars there!

<div className="center">
<iframe src="https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:6687353371877351424" height="581" width="504" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded post"></iframe>
</div>
<p/>

Enjoy, life, love, laugh, learn, stay safe and happy 🕺🏽

Released! My First Online Course on TAU!


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


## TL;DR
In my Git courses and workshops, I teach how to write a good commit message. For me a great commit message has to be clean, precise, specific to solve one thing at a time and traceable. But there is actually more precision we can add to a commit message as I recently have found out. The future in using Git is called Conventional Commits and fosters an even more human and machine readable way of writing good messages for our commits.

## It does not need much to improve
I like Git very much, you might know that by now. And I am getting excited like a tomb raider when I discover something new about it. So here is my latest discovery.

A commit in Git is an object which points to a so-called snapshot object whereas the snapshot object then references the actual files we want to save in our local repository. In other words: the commit command is used to save changes to our local repository after staging them. However, when you create a commit, Git will ask us to add a message to the commit and that is what is called the commit message. A commit message lets us identify the changes we have added to the local repository with that commit. Now you can imagine that the better such a message is formulated, the better you and others can understand why this commit is/was needed (and which bugs may have been introduced ). By forcing us to write precise commit messages, we more and more realize that the less we put into one single commit, the better others can review (reviewability) our PRs. And not only that, but by improving our writing style we can also improve the readability and traceability of our changes we put into a repository.

## Conventional Commits or How We Will Use Git in The Future
Since I started out with using Git and digging deeper into it by creating an [online course for TAU](), giving workshops all over the place and gaining real world experiences with it at my customers, I started to care about writing good commit messages. Because besides all the nice things we gain with it from above, we also will get a shiny commit history on our main production branch (and of course on other branches, depending on the branching strategy we choose).

Recently as I was out there, I stumbled across [Conventional Commits](https://www.conventionalcommits.org/) - a simple guide on how to add a human and machine readable format to commit messages.
But how does now a good commit message look like according to this guide? Here is how the structure looks like:

{/* https://www.gatsbyjs.com/docs/working-with-images-in-markdown/ */}
![Conventional Commits](assets/posts/201221/conventionalcommit.webp)

#### Header
The header with the _type_ is mandatory and has to be a one liner. The _scope_ in the header on the other
hand is optional as it is project specific ([here an example from the Angular spec](https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/22b96b9/CONTRIBUTING.md#scope))
For example an exclamation mark (!) might be used to draw a reviewer's and later on a readers attention.
Then using a [gitmoji](https://gitmoji.dev/) right after the colon (:) makes it even easier to spot what
changes a commit introduces. Even if someone is unfamiliar with the message itself, one can quickly understand
the general idea behind a commit. But be aware that not all of the remote repository managers out there do support
gitmojis (e.g. GitHub does support them!). The _subject_ contains a detailed description of the change.
In order to write a great subject, one should:
- use the imperative form (e.g. correct and not corrects or correcting)
- not capitalize the first letter
- not putting a dot (.) to its end.

#### Body
The body is optional. If used, it should contain the detailed motivation of the change.

#### Footer
The footer is also optional. If used it can for example contain the reference to the (GitHub, JIRA) issue which is meant to be solved. Further it can also contain a breaking changes block like in [this example here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QrDFcIiPjSLDn3EL15IJygNPiHORgU1_OOAqWjiDU5Y/edit#heading=h.j8e4paqkfz0q).

### An example
But how would I apply the new things learned from above? Here a first example of commit message I came up with:

![Conventional Commits](assets/posts/201221/commitmessageexample.webp)

## Now it is on us
Now it is on us to go back to our projects at work (and of course also our private ones) and experiment, practice and improve the thing we do by applying conventional commit messages. 😄


## Extensions

Here are some IDE extensions which support us in writing conventional commit messages.

Visual Studio Code Extension:
[Conventional Commits](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vivaxy.vscode-conventional-commits)

IntelliJ Plugins:
[Conventional Commit](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/13389-conventional-commit)
[Commitlint Conventional Commit
](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/14046-commitlint-conventional-commit)

Of course there are [tons of more tools available](https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/#tooling-for-conventional-commits)

## Resources
- [Conventional commits - The Future of Git](https://dev.to/colewalker/conventional-commits-the-future-of-git-32gg)
- [AngularJS Git Commit Message Conventions](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QrDFcIiPjSLDn3EL15IJygNPiHORgU1_OOAqWjiDU5Y/edit#)
- [Commit Message Examples#1](https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/#examples)
- [Commit Message Examples#2](https://gist.github.com/qoomon/5dfcdf8eec66a051ecd85625518cfd13#examples)
- [Commit Message Examples#3](https://github.com/qoomon/git-conventional-commits)
- [Semantic release](https://github.com/semantic-release/semantic-release)
- [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/)


## Why should I do this again?
Conventional commit messages makes it easy for your teammates and 3rd parties to tag along and contribute to a common code base. Further it makes it easy for tools to process commits.


The future is here and from 2021 onwards on I will use [![Conventional Commits](https://img.shields.io/badge/Conventional%20Commits-1.0.0-yellow.svg)](https://conventionalcommits.org) 
 
 
I hope you have learned something new as I did.

Enjoy, stay safe and be happy 🙂


How We Will Use Git In The Future


I have come a long way the past years with the version control system [Git](https://git-scm.com/). At first, I was pretty scared of even
touching Git on the cli. Not long ago, I even asked my team mates to run Git commands on my machine to fix things for me. 😞
Time has past since then and a lot has changed in my life. I got brave to take much more "risks" of constantly learning new things
on the go and keep asking myself: What can possibly go wrong when you don't know stuff yet?

Today I am a huge fanboy of it. On this page, I collect all the nice little things I've crossed so far in the **w**ild **w**ide **w**orld about Git.
If you have some other cool stuff which I could add, please ping me, thanks.

> _Not only the selection and usage of a tool makes you invincible, no, mastering by explaining it to others is what makes you a real superhero._

Even Senior Devs are struggling using Git!  

So grab one of my [courses](https://simonberner.rocks/courses/) and get enlightened! 😅

#### gentle intros and a bit more
* [WTF is Git?](https://codeburst.io/so-wtf-is-git-fa7daa0e0271)
* [Oh Shit Git!?!](https://ohshitgit.com/)
* [GitHowTo](https://githowto.com/)
* [Git is simpler](http://nfarina.com/post/9868516270/git-is-simpler)
* [Git the simple guide - no deep shit!](https://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/)
* [The thing about Git](https://tomayko.com/blog/2008/the-thing-about-git)
* [Thinking like a Git](http://think-like-a-git.net/)
* [Git refcard](https://dzone.com/refcardz/getting-started-git?chapter=1)
* [A Git manual for beginners](https://medium.com/@ahmedmahmoud.eltaher/git-manual-for-beginners-7932a6523d2f)
* [Create a .gitignore file for your project](https://www.gitignore.io)
* [10 Git commands you should know](https://towardsdatascience.com/10-git-commands-you-should-know-df54bea1595c)
* [Quick reference, GitHub Cheat Sheet, Visual Cheat Sheet](https://devdocs.io/git/)
* [Git Reference](https://git-scm.com/docs)
* [Why Git is better than X](http://web.archive.org/web/20090210020404id_/http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/#the-staging-area)
* [What Is GitHub?](https://www.howtogeek.com/180167/htg-explains-what-is-github-and-what-do-geeks-use-it-for/)
* [Visual Git reference](https://marklodato.github.io/visual-git-guide/index-en.html#basic-usage)
* [Learn Git branching](https://learngitbranching.js.org/)
* [A Grip On Git](https://agripongit.vincenttunru.com)
* [How to create your first GitHub project](https://medium.com/free-code-camp/a-beginners-guide-to-git-how-to-create-your-first-github-project-c3ff53f56861)
* [Git/GitHub tutorial](https://medium.com/@nickcapurso/a-tutorial-on-git-and-github-from-installation-to-pull-requests-7f158faf2695)
* [What do I need to know about Git](https://medium.com/swlh/what-do-i-need-to-know-about-git-5017bde0b572)
* [Advance your test automation skill with source control](https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/how-advance-your-test-automation-skills-source-control)
* [Git-it, learn Git and GitHub](https://github.com/jlord/git-it-electron)
* [all things git - the podcast about Git](https://www.allthingsgit.com/)
* [Getting started with Git](https://riptutorial.com/git/topic/218/getting-started-with-git)

#### setting up a repository
* [init, clone, config](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/setting-up-a-repository)
* [clone](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/setting-up-a-repository/git-clone)

#### how to setup git
* [Installing Git](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git)
* [Setup Git](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-First-Time-Git-Setup)

#### git config
* [Configure Git to use a proxy](https://gist.github.com/evantoli/f8c23a37eb3558ab8765)
* [3 ways to setup author information](https://advancedweb.hu/2017/07/25/git-author/)
* [Basic Git configuration](https://lobotuerto.com/blog/basic-git-configuration/)
* [Manage line ending LF and CRLF with Git](http://blog.coultard.com/2018/10/lf-would-be-replaced-by-crlf.html)

#### git commit
* [git commit -am"message"](https://teamtreehouse.com/community/git-commit-a-m-new-message-commits-all-changes-so-what-happens-when-i-just-type-git-commit-m-new-message)
* [How to Write a Git Commit Message](https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/)
* Specific to GitHub: [Commit together with co-authors](https://github.blog/2018-01-29-commit-together-with-co-authors/)
* [How can I change the author name / email of a commit?](https://www.git-tower.com/learn/git/faq/change-author-name-email)
* [What is a commit?](https://dzone.com/articles/learning-git-what-is-a-commit?edition=544295&utm_source=Daily%20Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Digest%202019-12-01)

#### git fetch
* [What does fetch really do?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44473483/what-does-git-fetch-exactly-do)
* [fetch vs pull](https://www.git-tower.com/learn/git/faq/difference-between-git-fetch-git-pull)

#### git fast forward
* [What?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29673869/what-is-git-fast-forwarding#29673993) If Master has not diverged, instead of creating a new commit, git will just point master to the latest commit of the feature branch. This is a “fast forward.” There won't be any "merge commit" in fast-forwarding merge.
* [Fast forward merge or rebase ?](https://blog.developer.atlassian.com/pull-request-merge-strategies-the-great-debate/) A fast forward merge is a merge where the HEAD of the target branch (e.g. master) can just be forwarded to the latest commit of the pulled (e.g. feature/xyz) branch. If there are commits in between, because the target and the pulled (PR) have diverged, there is no fast forward merge possible and a merge commit will be created! A merge commit contains two parent commit, the latest of the target branch (e.g. master) and the latest of the be pulled (e.g. feature/xyz) branch. A merge commit incorporates the changes from these two parent commits into the target (e.g. master) branch.
* [What does fast-forward mean?](https://www.quora.com/What-does-fast-forward-mean-in-Git
)
* [Fast forward and branch mgmt](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/git-fast-forwards-and-branch-management-329977726.html)
* [Fast forward git merge](https://ariya.io/2013/09/fast-forward-git-merge)

#### git merge
* [Git Merge](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/using-branches/git-merge)

#### git rebase
* [Rewind and reapply](https://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/git-rebase/)

#### git merge vs git rebase
* [An introduction](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/an-introduction-to-git-merge-and-rebase-what-they-are-and-how-to-use-them-131b863785f)
* [The diamond shape](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16666089/whats-the-difference-between-git-merge-and-git-rebase)
* [Rebase interactive to cleanup is awesome in the coding lifecycle](https://www.atlassian.com/git/articles/git-team-workflows-merge-or-rebase)

#### git push
* [An alternative to push -f](https://medium.com/fishbrain/an-alternative-to-force-pushing-in-git-85c6f55991c8)

#### git reset and revert
* [Remove untracked files from the working tree](https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-remove-untracked-files-in-git-/) with [git clean](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clean)
* [Atlassian Tutorial](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/undoing-changes/git-reset)
* [Reset vs Reset](https://www.git-tower.com/help/mac/commit-history/undo-commits)

#### git cherry-pick
* [Official doc](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-cherry-pick)
* [Cherry-pick 101](https://dzone.com/articles/cherry-picking-with-git)

#### git configuration
* [Manage line-endings on your machine!](https://help.github.com/en/articles/dealing-with-line-endings)
* [Set code as default git editor](https://blog.soltysiak.it/en/2017/01/set-visual-studio-code-as-default-git-editor-and-diff-tool/)
* [gitattributes](https://www.gitattributes.io)

#### git flows/branching models
* [Gitflow Workflow](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/gitflow-workflow)
* [Gitflow vs Trunked Based Development](https://codeburst.io/trunk-based-development-vs-git-flow-a0212a6cae64)
* [From Git Flow to TBD](https://team-coder.com/from-git-flow-to-trunk-based-development/)
* [Code Reviews in TBD](https://team-coder.com/code-reviews-in-trunk-based-development/)
* [Lean Git Flow](https://github.com/KevinSheedy/lean-git-flow)
* [5 types of Git workflow](https://buddy.works/blog/5-types-of-git-workflows)
* [4 branching workflows for Git](https://medium.com/@patrickporto/4-branching-workflows-for-git-30d0aaee7bf)
* [Basic Git branching?](https://dzone.com/articles/basic-git-branching?edition=585294&utm_source=Daily%20Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Digest%202020-03-05)

#### git rerere
* [What is it?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49500943/what-is-git-rerere-and-how-does-it-work)
* [Fix conflicts only once](https://medium.com/@porteneuve/fix-conflicts-only-once-with-git-rerere-7d116b2cec67)
* [Automatically fixes merge conflicts](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/the-git-rerere-command-automate-solutions-to-fix-merge-conflicts-d501a9ab9007)

#### git log and diff
* [Lets learn git log and diff](https://dev.to/maurobringolf/lets-learn-git-logs-and-diffs)

#### .gitignore
* [generate gitignore](https://github.com/generate/generate-gitignore)
* [A collection of .gitignore templates](https://github.com/pe-st/gitignore)
* [gitignore.io](https://www.gitignore.io/)
* [gitignore generator for visual studio code](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=piotrpalarz.vscode-gitignore-generator)

#### .gitattributes
* [.gitattributes Best Practices](https://rehansaeed.com/gitattributes-best-practices/)

#### commit message
* [How to Write a Git Commit Message](https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/)
* [Writing Good Commit Messages](https://www.toolsqa.com/git/writing-good-commit-messages/)
* [How To Write Proper Git Commit Messages](https://medium.com/@steveamaza/how-to-write-a-proper-git-commit-message-e028865e5791)

#### git hooks
* [Git Hooks](https://githooks.com/)
* [Git Hooks for Automation](https://medium.com/better-practices/git-hooks-for-automation-135c62bca7d7)

#### Git cleanup
* [git garbage collection](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-gc)
* [git prune](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-prune)

#### rewriting history
* [Different ways of rewriting history](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/git-interactive-rebase-squash-amend-rewriting-history)
* [Changing the author of past commits](https://www.git-tower.com/learn/git/faq/change-author-name-email)

#### cheat sheets
* [Git visual cheat sheet](https://ndpsoftware.com/git-cheatsheet.html)
* [cheat-sheets.org](http://www.cheat-sheets.org/saved-copy/git-cheat-sheet.pdf)
* [Git tower](https://www.git-tower.com/blog/git-cheat-sheet/)
* [GitHub training kit](https://github.github.com/training-kit/)

#### Git repository manager
Here are just a few repository managers which you can choose from. All of them emphasise the collaborative work for a team.
* [GitHub](https://github.com/)
	* [What is GitHub?](https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/what-is-github/)
* [GitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/product/source-code-management/)
* [Bitbucket](https://bitbucket.org/)
* [GitBucket](https://gitbucket.github.io/)
* [Gogs](https://gogs.io/)
* [Gittea](https://gitea.io/)

#### Git clients
* [Best Git GUI Clients](https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/best-git-gui-clients/)

#### Git tools
* [tig - text-mode interface for git](https://linux.die.net/man/1/tig)


#### Documentation done with Git
* [GitBook](https://www.gitbook.com)

#### tricks
* If you use GitHub as remote repository manager and you do pair programming, add this to the commit message and then you and your pair will get the git commit credit:  
`Co-authored-by: your name <yourgitemailaddress>`
`Co-authored-by: your co-author <theirgitemailaddress>`
* [A visual log for Git command line](http://baylus.com/vlog.html)

#### talks, workshops and courses
* [30min talk by David Baumgold](https://bit.ly/2iBw6jG)  
* [1h workshop by David Baumgold](https://bit.ly/2tLTjXM)
* [1h talk by Lorna Jane Mitchel](https://bit.ly/1XbrgLW)
* [Some courses to master Git and GitHub](https://medium.com/javarevisited/7-best-courses-to-master-git-and-github-for-programmers-d671859a68b2)

#### doc & books
* [Official doc & GitPro Book](https://git-scm.com/)
* [The hidden feature: git rerere](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Rerere)
* [Git reset demystified](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Reset-Demystified#_git_reset)

#### other nifty stuff
* [Lord of the files: GitHub](https://www.wired.com/2012/02/github-2/)
* [MyOctoCat](https://myoctocat.com/)
* [GitHub Cards](https://github.com/lepture/github-cards)
* [What to install](https://github.com/jlord/git-it-electron#what-to-install)
* [Learn git branching](https://learngitbranching.js.org)
* [Git GUI Clients](https://git-scm.com/downloads/guis)
* [Git Guide](http://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/)
* [Reimplement Git from scratch](https://wyag.thb.lt)
* [A Git clone written in Rust](https://github.com/mastertinner/wit)
* [Gource - the ultimate version control visualisation tool](https://gource.io/)
* [GitHub Browser Code Tree Navigation](https://www.octotree.io)
* [GitHub's mascot in variations](https://octodex.github.com/)
* [GitUp](https://gitup.co)
* [Windows: Git with cmder](https://www.rahulpnath.com/blog/setting-up-git-credential-manager-for-windows-with-cmder/)
* [Windows: Setting up Git with cmder](https://www.awmoore.com/2015/01/14/setting-up-git-and-cmder/)
* [GitPitch - Modern slide decks](https://gitpitch.com/)
* [gitMemory](https://www.gitmemory.com) can provide actual and interactive information in viewing a project's repository and it's memory. You can see the number of open issues and closed issues in an interesting display, as well as the programming language used in a project, along with contributors who join them.
* [When You "Git" in trouble](https://hackernoon.com/when-you-git-in-trouble-a-version-control-story-97e6421b5c0e)
* [GitHub Universe](https://githubuniverse.com/)
* [~(tilde) vs ^(caret) vs @(at sign)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26785118/head-vs-head-vs-head-also-known-as-tilde-vs-caret-vs-at-sign/26785200)
* [Skip WorkTree](https://dzone.com/articles/gittip-skip-worktree?edition=560291&utm_source=Daily%20Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Digest%202020-01-04)
* [Top 20 Git Commands](https://dzone.com/articles/top-20-git-commands-with-examples?edition=572291&utm_source=Daily%20Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Digest%202020-02-06)
* [Lesser known Git commands](https://hackernoon.com/lesser-known-git-commands-151a1918a60)
* [Git History](https://www.browserstack.com/blog/open-source-spotlight-git-history-with-rodrigo-pombo/?goal=0_02cca1920b-0570205c23-289476501&mc_cid=0570205c23&mc_eid=3ed43e9ad0)
	* [Git History on GitHub](https://github.com/pomber/git-history)

#### cool blog posts
* [A gentle intro to Git](http://thethinkingtester.blogspot.com/2019/05/a-gentle-introduction-to-git.html?m=1)
* [Six tips for Git success](http://thethinkingtester.blogspot.com/2019/05/six-tips-for-git-success.html)
* [Git aliases](https://compiledexperience.com/blog/posts/git-alias-2019)
* [A simple Git workflow for GitHub beginners and everyone else](https://towardsdatascience.com/a-simple-git-workflow-for-github-beginners-and-everyone-else-87e39b50ee08)
* [Start Using Git on the Command Line Like a Pro in Five Minutes](https://medium.com/better-programming/start-using-git-on-the-command-line-like-a-pro-in-5-minutes-36a6e0007e9f)
* [How to Git on a Team](https://medium.com/@johnemaddox/how-to-git-on-a-team-9e03539466c)
* [Several Git posts from Srebalaji](https://gitbetter.substack.com/)
* [Rookie Git Mistakes To Avoid](https://towardsdatascience.com/rookie-git-mistakes-to-avoid-45919c0058f8)

#### GitHub specific things
* [Preserving open source software for future generations](https://archiveprogram.github.com/)
* [Replacing Master with Main](https://medium.com/better-programming/github-replacing-master-with-main-is-a-huge-win-for-inclusion-in-tech-bf517478275b)

I also have a GitHub account where you can follow my moves. Of course I will follow you back if you want to share something 🙃

My Journey Into Git


# TL;DR
WebP is an image format for the web, developed by Google and initially release in 2010. All the [major browsers natively support](https://caniuse.com/?search=webp)
WebP.

# I have never heard of
I have never heard of the modern image fromat [WebP](https://developers.google.com/speed/webp) before. Just recently
when I was developing my new personal website, I stumble over this modern image format from Google. But what is it and why should
we care and use it anyway instead of the good oldies JPEGs and PNGs?

# Why should we care?
WebP provides an image format which has excellent compression. WebP mages are much smaller in size than other older image formats
and this at a comparable quality. But why did I stumbled over it? Well as I was buidling this new website here, I used
[Google Lighthouse](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse) to check whether my site audits well for performance, accessibility,
progressive web apps, SEO and more. At first the performance score I got, was at around 30 - which is really poor. One action I then took then, was
to convert all the used images from JPEGs/PNGs into the WebP format. This massively increased my performance score to now up to 99%! But
I guess that's not only the image format which fosters this high score, there is also some other magic tricks like the used tech stack and the hosting service
behind this.

These here are my current scores I get from measurements with Google Lighthouse! Honestly, I am super proud of them 😅

![lighthouse report](assets/posts/210201/lighthouse-report.webp)

I really like the WebP compression technique for adding much smaller images to the web. Especially when it comes to mobile devices
where images can consume a lot of bandwidth and battery life, small compressed images are a must.

# How to use
How am I going to use wepb to convert existing jpg/png images? Well, there are a lot of different ways how you can use
webp. I will briefly mention two of them in here.

## CLI tool
A pretty stright foward way is using the encoder _cwebp_ on the command line to convert images:

````
cwebp -q 80 flower.png -o flower.webp
````
Or use the decoder _dwebp_ to do the vice versa:
````
dwebp flower.webp -o flower.png
````

Check the [full documentation](https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/using) for a detailed guide on all the detailed
compression settings.

## Imagemin WebP Plugin
The [Imagemin WebP plugin](https://github.com/imagemin/imagemin-webp) can be used to convert your existing images on the fly
right in your code when building the site.

## Verify WebP usage
As I already mentioned, you can use [Lighthouse](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse) to verify that all images
on your site are being served using WebP. Run the Lighthouse Performance Audit (*Lighthouse > Categories > Performance*) and look
for the results of the Serve images in the audit. Lighthouse will list any images that are not being served in WebP.

![Lighthouse](assets/posts/210201/google-lighthouse.webp)

# Animated WebP, what?
Sure you can also do that! If you can see the animated [Nyan Cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat) below in your browser, then your browser supports animated WebP!
[Here some advantages and disavantages of using animated webp.](https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq#why_should_i_use_animated_webp)
![Lighthouse](assets/posts/210201/animated-webp-supported.webp)

# Closing
WebP is an excellent replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF images. With that being said, WebP offers both lossless and lossy compression.
My key takeaway is, that using .webp instead of .png or .jpg, allows my website to load much faster than before. The overall user experience
gains tremendously and the user won't be reminded of the bad old days of dial-up anymore. Especially browsing via mobile networks,
is now much more of a joy. Well then, its up to you to also give it a try, go forward and put WepP to your webs content!


Cheers, take care and smile once in a while 🙂

# Resources/References
➕ [WebP Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP)  
➕ [Using WebP Images](https://css-tricks.com/using-webp-images/) (by [Jeremy Wagner](https://twitter.com/malchata))  
➕ [Use WebP images](https://web.dev/serve-images-webp/) (by [Katie Hempenius](https://twitter.com/katiehempenius))  
➕ [WebP in its 10th year](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wrXKvnPfZg)  
➕ [FAQ about WebP](https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq)

I Have Never Heard of WebP



Types as prefix in [conventional commits](https://simonberner.dev/hwwugitf), are used to set the overall context of the applied changes in a commit message.
With a type, a viewer should be able to quickly understand what the intention of the commit is. So e.g. is it a new feature
or some documentation that is added with a particular commit. It often happens to me, that I am unsure which type in particular
I finally shall use in my commit messages. The conventional commits formatting, is heavily inspired by the
[Angular commit message guidelines](https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/22b96b9/CONTRIBUTING.md#-commit-message-guidelines).
I have collected a few types so far and put together a small cheat sheet in the table below with some common examples.
All you have to do is, to find a proper description for your specific commits. For doing so, ask yourself the following question:
**What will my commit do once it is applied?**

| Syntax        | Description                                                       | Example                      |
|:--------------|:------------------------------------------------------------------|:-----------------------------|
| feat          | addition of some new features                                     | add a new navbar             |
| add           | changes to add new capability or functions                        | add google track id          |
| blog          | new blog post                                                     | add a new blog post          |
| cut           | removing the capability or functions                              | remove tags                  |
| fix           | a bug fix                                                         | fix layout issue             |
| bump          | increasing the versions or dependency versions                    | update cypress-axe           |
| build         | changes to build system or external dependencies                  | switch from npm to yarn      |
| make/ops      | change to the build process, tooling, infra, deploy, recovery     | add sonarqube config         |
| ci            | changes to CI configuration files and scripts                     | add new ci stage             |
| doc           | changes to the documentation                                      | update README                |
| test          | adding missing tests or correcting existing tests                 | add a first test             |
| chore         | changes for housekeeping/cleanup                                  | remove unused files          |
| refactor      | a code change/cleanup that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature | cleanup abstact class Cat    |
| style         | changes to the code that do not affect the meaning                | brush up main page           |
| optimize/perf | a code change that improves performance                           | reduce image sizes           |
| revert        | reverting an accidental commit                                    | revert dependency update     |

<br/>
I hope you can use some things from this cheat 🗒️ in your daily commit life.

Cheers, take care and smile once in a while 🙂
 
## Resources
➕ [become the best git user](https://medium.com/@github.gkarthiks/conventional-commit-messages-in-git-47b04129fffa)



Conventional Commits - Types Cheat Sheet


# TL;DR

By providing a type and a scope in the header of a commit message, it is often a lot more obvious where changes are applied and
can be found before even digging into the files that are part of the commit.

# We like you too when...

*We like you too when you write clear, specific and short commit messages in our project.* This sentence follows me ever since I am
using [Git](https://simonberner.dev/git). And you know what? They are absolutely right! Having good commit messages which perfectly
describe the commit history, are essential for a projects traceability, finding/fixing bugs and code documentation.
This is the fourth part of my Git series and this time we will have a deeper look at the **optional scope** we can add right after
the **type** in the header of the commit message.

I already briefly mentioned in my first post [How We Will Use Git In The Future](https://simonberner.dev/hwwugitf), the optional field
scope can be used to gain a readers attention even better to tell them in which area in the code something has changed. As you by now probably
can imagine, defining and using a scope depends of course on its used context.
As I can't come up a this point with a general list, I have nevertheless tried to come up with some examples based on the types cheat sheet
from my [last post](https://simonberner.dev/cctcs).

# Examples of using scopes


| Header Type with a (Scope)       | Header Subject                                                    |
|:---------------------------------|:------------------------------------------------------------------|
| feat(*header*)                   | add a new feature to the header of a website                      |
| add(*iOS14*)                     | add iOS14 capability to appium capability config                  |
| blog(*ReactJS*)                  | add a new blog post about ReactJS                                 |
| cut(*feedback*)                  | remove ratings feature                                            |
| fix(*footer*)                    | fix a styling bug in the footer                                   |
| bump(*cypress*)                  | increase cypress from v1.0.0 to v2.0.0                            |
| build(*npm*)                     | add lodash as dependency                                          |
| make/ops(*artifactory*)          | change url to artifactory                                         |
| ci(*jenkins*)                    | add a unit test stage                                             |
| doc(*readme*)                    | update the readme file with a new TODO section                    |
| test(*search*)                   | add a new test for the search feature                             |
| chore(*assets*)                  | remove unused static assets                                       |
| refactor(!)                      | change oauth2 implementation                                      |
| style(*font*)                    | change main font to Newsreader Extra-light 200                    |
| optimize/perf(*images*)          | use webp instead of jpg/png                                       |
| revert(*aboutus*)                | revert the adding of personal emails                              |
| rename(*View*)                   | rename the viewer                                                 |

# Wrapping up

I hope you get some inspiration form the above examples for another day in your commit life. And remember, you don't have to
use a scope, you can if you like to add more context for a viewer.




Cheers, take care and smile once in a while 🙂


Commit Message with Scope


# 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


# 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
I am by far no JavaScript expert, but for my personal website, I am from now on using [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) and [tailwindcss](https://tailwindcss.com/) running on [netlify](https://www.netlify.com/). With that [Tech Stack](https://www.mongodb.com/basics/technology-stack) in place, I get a [score](https://www.digitalimpulse.com/heartbeat/google-lighthouse-scores-how-important-are-they-really/) of 100% in each category from Google Lighthouse!

![Lighthouse Report](/images/posts/230114/lighthouse100.webp)

## Hexo + GitHub Pages
Long time ago I started out by creating my very first website with [Hexo](https://hexo.io/) running on [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/). This was an awesome setup, blazing fast, reliable, cheap and easy to deploy - I can totally recommend it!

## Gatsby.js + Netlify
But then all of a sudden one day three years ago, I felt bored and not challenged in using it and so I decided to create a new website this time with [Gatsby.js](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/). Developing within the ecosystem of Gatsby.js was a whole new experience for me and took my knowledge to a next level. It offer super cool plugins, extension and libraries one can use and fool around endlessly. Also the site I built with it, looked pretty cool, especially having react-particles as background in place in dark-mode looked super cool. But the time I had to invest in building and maintaining it was enormous as I am not a JavaScript Pro in any way. Since I started investing all my precious learning time in iOS Development, it bothered me more and more that I had to invest so much time to keep running my site.
Then just lately I had to announce resignation while trying to upgrade from Gatsby4 to Gatsby5. I spent days in analyzing errors, fixing them step by step - with no real success at the end of each day. One who knows the pain best is [Wes Bos](https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1613009277899210752) - and he is an absolute JavaScript Pro. So I gave up on Gatsby.js and searched for a new tech stack.

## Next.js + Netlify
The world of Web technologies is always on the move, fast paced growing and ever changing. There is no perfect framework and decision making which one to choose at the end for your purpose is challenging. Next.js is a framework build on top of React that helps us build a truly blazing fast and outstanding user experience much easier. Compared to GatsbyJS 4 which I was using before, it seems to me to be the much better fit for my personal website. Light to develop with, less 3rd party dependencies needed and other fancy stuff which I don't actually need. Feels good to be up and running again after not being able (due my failed trial of upgrading to Gatsby 5) to publish any blog post for the past 2 month.


Learn, smile, help and be happy, cheers 🙂

<hr/>
### References
- [Pros and Cons of NextJS](https://pagepro.co/blog/pros-and-cons-of-nextjs/)
- [Introduction to Next.js](https://dev.to/iamdevmarcos/introduction-to-nextjs-5f9b)
- [freeCodeCamp(Learn Tailwind CSS)](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-tailwind-css/)

Collaboration is a Core Skill

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Product Owner

Business Analyst

UX Engineer

Scrum Master

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