Carnival of Testers #9

April was an active month blog-wise on a number of fronts. There was some conference activity, some planned and some spontaneous. Spontaneity was also seen on the testing front with the much-tweeted #parkcalc.

A real variety from new announcements, some detailed analysis and other thought- and discussion-provoking posts - exactly how it should be!

Enjoy!


Charting

• Anne-Marie Charrett wrote a piece on combining mindmaps and mnemonics. She even makes her mindmap available if you want to download it. Anne-Marie also compiled a list of the testing tips from the first Tag Tuesday #dttip.
• Reinder Otter posted a slideshow on Self-Organisation. If you're into self-organizing teams then take a look.

Confering
ACCU2010 was hit by the flight restrictions over Europe from the Islandic volcano - I won't even try and spell it (the one beginning with E and followed by lots of vowels.) Some people made, some didn't and some had to make alternative arrangements.

• Peter Haworth-Langford wrote about his session with James Bach.
• The Friday got a good summary from Thomas Ponnet's viewpoint, here.
• Lisa Crispin's flight didn't make it over but she wrote about the other opportunities that she took. There's always a silver lining to every volcanic cloud!
• Possibly the post that generated the most interest from the ACCU arena was Robert Martin's take on software testing and professionalism. This not only generated lots of comments, tweets but quite a few blog posts.

ST&P announced their dates and call for participation at STP Con 2010.

• Matt Heusser presented the case for attending as an opportunity, here. Will you answer the call? I'm tempted!

The UK Test Managers' Forum also got represented in the blogosphere.

• Stephen Hill's rounded summary of the day was posted, here.

The end of April saw Star East 2010.

• Yvette Francino produced a write-up on the conference with a video interview with James Bach, here. Have you ever been fired by all the right people?

Community
A new weekend testing started in April - we saw the first WTANZ session. Very cool!

• The first blog announcement came from Marlena Compton.
• Write-ups of the first session were provided by Oliver Erlewein, here, and Keis, here.

Clouds
Volcanic Ash from Iceland prompted a few blog posts in April.

• Zeger Van Hese drew parallels between volcanic activity and systems thinking.
• Santosh Shukla reflected on the opportunities of being stuck in London due to the ash cloud. Another silver lining fellow!
• The open space Open Volcano 10 was initiated due to folks being stranded. Rob Lambert put down his reflections on the day.

Clouds of the volcanic kind were not the only topics for consideration. Cloud computing got a few mentions in April - more on that in a follow-up!

Calculations
The ParkCalc subject generated a lot of activity - blog posts, tweets and a follow-up debrief. Great ad hoc testing opportunism!

• Matt Heusser got the ball rolling by drawing attention to it as a testing challenge, here. A surefire way to grab attention!
• Selena Delesie posted the first response, with lots of good observations.
• Other takes came in from Keis, here, and the European Weektesters, here.
• Jon Bach ran the de-brief and Matt did the write-up.

There were many more interesting posts that I didn't write about now. They haven't been forgotten and will caught in another post looking at longer term trends...

Until next time happy reading!