Egotripping helps...

It has been ages since I blogged. Last time was when the EuroSTAR VideoSTAR vote had just opened, which is almost two months ago. Alas I didn't win the competition, but I had tremendous fun making the movie and had some thrills during the voting period. Congratulations to Malini Mohankumar, Sierra Atlantic, India, who will be telling something about Teamwork within a testing team.

Speaking of India, the last two weeks of April I visited the Capgemini offices in Puné, India. I was simply astonished by the country I saw, charmed by the people I met and shocked by the traffic :-). It was terribly hot in Puné, with temperatures sometimes rising above 40 degrees Celsius. I was amazed about the discipline, expertise and eagerness of the people at the Capgemini Global Learning Center. I saw people who developed tools which where brilliant to say at least. I met a group of freshers which were so full of curiosity and where so enthusiastic to interact with the Dutch Freshers I guided and I was awed by the technical expertise of the employees there. I was even in the opportunity to share some of my knowledge by giving classes, which I found a wonderful experience.
Was it all good? well uhm.. no. I got sick, very sick. It took me a week and a half after a returned home to recuperate and be my normal self again and I'm still using pro-biotics to get to my full strength again.

Before leaving for India I visited the Dutch Testing Conference in 't Spant, Bussum. In stead of being a regular attendee, I volunteered to be a booth personnel. This is a very different experience of a conference, where you get to meet loads of people and interact. The downside is that you don't get to see much of the tracks. But luckily the DTC is - for me- much more interesting for interactions than for the tracks, which are more highlevel and scoped for clients than for testers. The Dutch Testing Conference is truly a very nice conference with loads of opportunities to have conversations accompanied by great snacks, food and drinks. If I'm able, I'll attend next year's edition too, as I did last year's edition too.

After my visit to India, I also did my Ethics Debate again at the KVIV in Antwerp. It was a very nice debate, with a small group of very fanatic debaters, Erik Boelen was my co-host there. Prize for the best debater was a piece of a local delicacy from where I live; Beemster (cheese). Apparently it was a prize to fight for, since everybody participated in the debate actively. I heard some great arguments which again proves to me that Ethics in Software Testing are all about the hues of gray, personal feelings and defining and setting agreements. I still would love to do this debate 'overseas' to see if there are marginally big differences in the debates, time will tell if I'm able to do this in US and Asia in the future.

Between my traveling I've also been writing some stuff. I did an article for Testing Circus about my casualty simulation stuff, which was rather large, so I figure they still have to divide it into smaller portions before it gets published. The article was also published in 'AppWorks' (http://www.appworks.nl/)in a Dutch translation and I got some very positive feedback on that one, so that made me proud.
I also did a smaller article for Tea Time with Testers; about how jokes can be used to explain software testing concepts. A more light reading and fun article. It got published in the May edition (http://www.teatimewithtesters.com/). I will publish the latter in some time in this blog, but first TeaTime gets the honors :-)

Another great event I attended was the TestNet SpringEvent. One of my younger colleagues; Eddy Bruin had a track there (theme being: New Heroes) about Ubiquitous Testing. I was so proud to see him pulling the presentation off!
The SpringEvent was at the same day the EuroSTAR programme was announced and YES!!! I'll be presenting at EuroSTAR this year. It's a track about my experiences at Fyra at NS Hispeed, a case-study about end-to-end testing. (Catching a high-speed train)
I'm also setting up the Hello Manchester concept together with the programme committee, which is great fun to do!

Some other very cool accomplishments:
I will be doing my 'Unusual Testing' track as webinar at EuroSTAR WebinarWeek and I get to be the kick-off webinar! (23rd of May, 2PM BST)
My paper got accepted for PNWQC, now I'm very busy with getting the funds together to get there :-), but I'm proud that I've made it so far. I also uploaded my poster-paper today just to make sure I have all items complete if I have the GO. This is SO cool!

This blog is very 'egotripping' I'm fully aware to that, but I guess, for me, this sharing how happy and proud I'm at my work and accomplishments is part of who I am, and I think everybody should be proud and share this when they accomplish something. It's sharing the happiness, passion and the proudness of our work that will make software testing even more a serious profession.