Category Archives: Teach things

Assistive technology, Teach things

Things which were not on my 2024 bingo card

A while ago I was one of the translators of “Agile Testing Condensed” by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory. I used dictation and screen readers to translate text from Englich to Dutch. One of my blog posts about my experiences got the attention of a test company on the internet.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-test-reporting-tools-2024-lambdatest-bpjye/?trackingId=a42I9SPaRE6%2Bp0mTX7tDuw%3D%3D

This spring a school of my kids organised a job event. I talked about testing and finding interesting bugs. The challenge for me was to tell about testing using an absolute minimal amount of technical stuff.

I got remarkable notification of the Club of Ministry of Testing. I was in the top 10 of people with the highest numbers of days visiting the Club om 2023.

With GDPR in my mind, I reported an incident about a data leak. I got a response.

My strangest feat of this year was drinking coffee, while reading a book on the table and looking forward instead of down. I did not use a straw. I was reading braille.

Beginning 2024 there was no news about the Dutch Braille Challenge. Then I heard, that the second edition would take place. The goal is to stimulate people to use braille. There were groups for absolute beginners, people with some basic skills, and experts. The goal is to stimulate people to use braille. There were groups for absolute beginners, people with some basic stills , and experts.

This summer I saw the quantum processor and a Babbage machine in the Science Museum in London. A quantum processor is very fast processor, but must be handled with special care. The Babbage machine was a calculator developed 200 years ago.

This July I felt the underground while sitting on a bench.

This year I wrote some blog posts about testing, System 1, and System 2. I added new lyrics on “My Favourite Things”, “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, and “Miss American Pie”. A music teacher one challenged me to make song texts which rhymed. It took me a few years to accomplish the feat with “Miss American Pie”.

Speaking, Teach things

Bonus Workshop Preparation Stage

Some thoughts:
“Are you really ready for your Agile Testing Days workshop?”
“No. Slides need to be updated. There are concept handouts. I still need to tweak.”
“So what is that bonus stage?”

Dreadful stage

The Bonus Workshop Preparation sSage starts after the dreadful stage, the stage without progress.

Progress can be measured in number of sheets or number of the exercises. I prefer the number of usable ideas for attendees. Customer centric. Sounds Agile to me.

2 weeks before my holiday I was in the dreadful stage. One of my website exercises became smaller instead of bigger. I used all tricks to get a baseline, but I failed.

I realised that I had to step back. The only solution I had was to fall back on an older version of the software. Within a few days I had a better solution.

Bonus stage

Another way to determine the bonus stage is the feedback of my reviewers.

My basic question: were they engaged?
My observation: yes.

I paid attention to words and the way they were pronounced. I looked at the body language. Most important: did they learn something?

What would I more include in my workshop?

  • an one pager
  • list of extra resources
  • a mind map
  • visual clues for exercises

“You can always change your workshop.”
My wife

Proper stage name

Last weekend I talked about my workshop with one of my kids. I told that one reviewer and I missed an obvious bug in the website. I was amused.

I told about some jokes how to illustrate my points. We had a good laugh about it.

The bonus part is also the fun part. The part which will make a workshop good or great.

Mind mapping, Speaking, Teach things

Workshop Mind Maps

Can I make a mind map for a 2  hour workshop?
Nope.

First set

Over a few months I have to give a long workshop about European privacy laws and Exploratory Testing. Sometimes it is tempting to put all the information in one extra extra extra large mind map.

Giving me a disappointing delay in processing information.
Forget it.

Wait. I use several mind maps.

Yes. That is more comfortable.

In this blog post I will show titles of mind maps to prepare myself for my workshop at Agile Testing Days.

It took me months to make these mind maps. This is my way to collect more information than I would be able to share.

This gives me enough space to tailor the workshop on the spot.
Did you ever tried to entertain people for 20 minutes?
I will have to teach people for 2 hours.
Good luck. To me.

Why do I share information about my mind maps?
It will give the delegates some hints what I will tell.
I also want to share my preparation with newbie speakers.

Another reason is to attract more diverse speakers on stage. Preparations is like taking small steps.

There are even sessions for speaking at the same conference.

So what are you waiting for?

In order to avoid boredom I just select a few mind maps for a small introduction.

T
There is no way to predict the people in my audience. So I made a lot of categories. Next to the beginners, I have exercises for experienced testers, testers using tools, and managers.

An experienced tester knows what a dataflow test is. Now I also have to explain this to a manager. But I come back later to DiSSS.

Second set

The framework of my workshop is in the  file ‘Talk Lawful Thing to test 1c’. If this sounds strange to you, I completely understand you. It started as a talk and grew to a workshop.

After a while I could not add new perspectives. So I made some other mind maps.

Resources are things you can use after my workshop. This part seems relatively simple. I only had to put in some good resources in it. I made this exercise challenging for myself by adding information written by women.

A good opening or intro of the workshop sets the atmosphere for the coming hours. If I will casually tell something to complete strangers at the beginning of the workshop, it is because I rehearsed it more than 100 times.

Up till now I could not find a shortcut.
Rinse and repeat.

Third set

Tim Ferris has a never ending serie of experiments.

Yes, I made a typo in the file name. And for me it is about speed.

A mind map with central object Lawful thing – Ferris which has branches DiSSS, Jokes, and CaFE. The branch DiSSS has sub branches Deconstruct, Selection, Sequence, and Stakes. The sub branch café has sub branches Compression, Frequency, and Encoding.

Tim developed some acronyms like DiSSS.

  • Deconstruction is the first action to understand how people perform tasks.
  • Selection is the second task to select which techniques have the most impact.
  • Sequence: what is the best order of actions?
  • Stakes: what’s in it for me?

CaFE

  • Compression: how can I compress the information on 1 page?
  • Frequency: how often should I do it to become good?
  • Encoding: what is a good way to encode the information? Like CaFE.

Is it possible to use these acronyms for GDPR testing?
I think so.
The dataflow test is a good candidate for Selection.
I wrote you I would come back to DiSSS.

The first test session needs extra attention from my side.
During my workshop there are several sessions during which delegates are going to test. Hands on is different from watching. It is like a tennis game with everyone on the tennis court.
And I am the referee.

The mind map ‘20190528 add Lawful thing’ contains information I still need to process.

A workshop is like work.

Speaking matters

In this blog post I share my latest progress on my speaking.
One of my reasons is to get more diverse speakers on stage.

The making and the scale of my mind maps might intimidate newbie speakers.

What I left out, is my adding of nodes in the mind maps over time. This could be days apart.

What I left out, is the long study.
If I add 1 branch to a mind map every day, I have a mind map of 365 branches after a year. I started in the summer of 2018.

If I go in more details, the more branches I will add on a single day.

A talk takes time.