If you haven’t read it yet, you may like to start with the first part of my Agile Testing Days 2021 summary.
Wednesday
I started Wednesday with a Lean Coffee. At the Agile Testing Days this is traditionally facilitated by Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin.
We discussed a good number of topics, such as how to get folks to try new ways, ways to practice testing and the role of testing/testers. I like this way of quickly covering a broad field of topics, to give people input to work with. I recommend tying this format, if you haven’t done so yet.
Jutta Eckstein‘s keynote “Agile Comes with a Responsibility for Sustainability” covered the three main parts of sustainability:
- People, the social equity bottom line
- Planet, the environmental bottom line
- Profit, the economic bottom line
See for example the Wikipedia article about the ‘Triple Botton Line’ for more details. I find that these aspects are all incredibly important and also believe that we, the community of software people, have a shared responsibility to help achieve improvements in all three areas.
The second keynote on Wednesday was João Proença‘s “Limitless within our boundaries”. He explained nicely how limiting options can improve creative work. His example were his Band that got completely stuck, when they experienced the possibilities of a music studio for the first time. It’s the same in most other contexts, including software development. I very relaxed presentation style and body language. I found it super nice that he reminded me, that I recommended submitting a session to the Agile Testing Days – and I am really, really glad I did.
The session “Resistance is futile” by Anne Colder & Jantien van der Meer, was about how to facilitate changing behaviour. The session was Star Trek themed and I am luck I survived in my red shirt. 🙂 Details about the model of “The Rider, the elephant and the path” are, for example, available at https://www.creativehuddle.co.uk/post/the-elephant-and-the-rider. I like the way they explained the model as well as the exercises to illustrate how it can be used.
For me Bruce Hughes‘ keynote “How to be an Ally to Non-binary Folk in Tech” was next. It was brilliant, hilarious, sad and helpful. The standing ovations she received were absolutely well deserved. The blog post appache attack helicopter wrote at https://undevelopedbruce.com/2020/07/06/non-binary-in-tech/ explains what was covered in xer keynote. I recommend reading it. To her ‘appache attack helicopter’ is an acceptable pronouns BTW. See: https://undevelopedbruce.com/about-me/ (read that as well, I may help further understanding the complexities of existence). Lisi Hocke tweeted a great summary of this keynote:
The last session I attended as Søren Wassard‘s “Digesting Poets Society”. A very nice, relaxing and emotional bonus session about another way to get creative: Poems. We mostly heard English poems, but also one from a Welsh author, recited in Welsh by a Welsh (and no other than Bruce).
Pahahahaha I love how you actually used Apache Attack Helicopter as a pronoun. Made me laugh out loud. Your commentary on the conference is great.