This year I had the opportunity to attend
the Let’s Test testing conference in a location not too far from Stockholm in
Sweden. The idyllic Scandinavian backdrop for this conference assisted with
creating the kind of environment that other testers have told me is unique to Let’s
Test, one in which there seems to be a conspicuous absence of cliques and ego
that I had been told is often quite present at some of the other bigger test
conferences throughout the globe, resultantly creating an environment that
seemed both friendly and laid back.
This friendly environment that I
experienced definitely provided the event with more of a community-driven feel,
with many a tester that I encountered more than happy to just have a chat or
just hang out. This same more inclusive nature is reflected in the talks
themselves, where every talk included the requirement for an ‘open’ part. These
open sessions required the presenters for each talk to put aside a specific
period of time with each talk that invited an open discussion from those
attending, but they also often contained friendly banter and related conversations
which sprung up from these open sessions too.
This more open environment though was
hardly the only merit of this conference, more importantly, and what brought
many of the people (and even speakers) there was the more progressive nature of
the talks themselves. Rather than just having talks that got lost in academics,
technicalities or discussions about specific practices there were a significant
number of talks that focused on ideas and perspectives. More specifically, and
where I felt there was the greatest value to be found, was the re-framing of
specific ideas and perspectives.
Various of the talks that I attended
brought up subjects that reflected ideas of my own but presented those ideas in
a new light, re-framing those same ideas. The power of re-framing is a skill
that has great value to the craft of testing (but is also a skill that has
value that extends way beyond the craft too). The reason for this is that the
ability to appropriately frame an idea or perspective can be the distinctions
between the ability to successfully advocate / sell an idea or have it fall on
deaf ears.
So much of the effectiveness of the testing
craft can be measured by our ability to communicate ideas and have those ideas
understood. Given this, having a new way to frame an existing idea provides the
tester with another potential approach for sharing the idea with others. In
addition to this, an idea that has been re-framed in a way that connects with
other testers has a greater potential to spread and be adopted by those
testers.
Whilst the conference did have a focus on
the ideas from the Context Driven Community, I found that numerous of the ideas
aligned with my own ideas or presented variations of my own ideas, ideas that I
had independently developed, yet I still found common grounds here.
The conference also held Test Labs sessions
run by James Lyndsay that provided a fun hands on way to do some actual
testing, without any real formalities and in an environment that was not too
serious, but gave testers an opportunity to flex their skill without having to
burn too many brain cells in the process!
For any tester looking for a conference
with some progressive ideas on testing, an opportunity for an honest and open
dialogue on the subject and a pretty sweet location I’d definitely recommend
checking it out next year either in Australia (for the first time) or back over
in Europe.
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