#1 Katrina Cloike – Become someone who makes things happen
Why?
Katrina introduced a model she uses for introducing change called SPIN. This is definitely something i’ll be using back in the workplace!
You can read more about the SPIN technique here: http://changingminds.org/books/book_reviews/spin.htm
#2 Adam Howard – Agents of Testing: Earning your empowerment
Why?
Firstly, the graphics in Adam’s slides were awesome, below is an example. In addition to great slides, Adam also shared his journey from test case perfectionist, through to a context aware tester who has testing agency.
If you are not familiar with the phrase Agent/Agency in this context you can read about it here(I had to do this aswell!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)
#3 – Rob Lambert – Why remaining relevant is so important
Why?
What i love about a lot of Robs blogs, talks and general thoughts are they apply to much more than our isolated testing context. This was also the case with his Keynote on Day 2. How to remain relevant as an Individual in the workplace. He framed this in the context of testing but his ideas apply to every person in a professional career. Here are the 10 behavious Rob thinks highly successful testers(or individuals) should have:
You can read more about relevancy here: https://leanpub.com/remainingrelevant
#4 – Richard Bradshaw – Automation in testing
Why?
Richard has some great thoughts about automation and also has a great style of teaching. In this workshop he introduced the ideas of how to do great automation, what to avoid, what abstraction is and many other topics all using lego. We also worked in groups which helped meet some new people. If you are at a conference check out this workshop, its interactive and has some great learning points!
If you want to get into Richards mind he bares all on twitter @FriendlyTester
#5 – Lightning Talks
Why?
There is some great about short talks. At conferences it sometimes feels like information overload, an hour long talk and your eyes start to glaze over. On day 1 in the evening we had a lightening talk session. The talks were 5 Minutes long followed by a short group discussion. Some great topics came up. My favourite was Neil Studd: Whats wrong with 9 – 5 Testers?
Thanks to Richard Bradshaw for live stream via Periscope: https://www.periscope.tv
See you next year? Don’t forget your Gilet! This Gilet Joke will mean nothing to 99.9% of people who read this. You’ll have to come next year ad find out what it means 😉