Category Archives: Techies conferring

The Clokie Project

In December 2018 Katherina Clokie, a known speaker, announced to look more outside the Tester community.

My reaction

Amazement, grief.

After a few months I realised that it was not a bad idea.

My change of heart

My wife has some really tough questions I have to answer. The biggest one is:
“What did you learn?”
Right behind each test conference.

So I reduced my number of test conferences and number of hours at the conferences. There are still some really good conferences like TestBash, Agile Testing Days, and European Testing Conference with plenty of awesome few insights.

I attended a lot of other conferences and after a while I would be just happy to pick up something new.

There is more to gain at a conference if you only know the basics. With more than 20 years of experience it is a way less.

It was time for my Clokie project.


Time for a small flashback to October and November 2018. I already had looked outside the Test Community.

Here are some notes from Infosecurity 2018:
In case of doubt treat data as personal data. Zip code and house number are personal data.

In EU there are several privacy government organisations, but they have different focus on privacy issues.

Steps in case of data breach:
Secure proof
Look in the logging
Determine scope
Communicate
Remediate
Learn

A change of behaviour can indicate an identity theft.

The way of accessing data in the cloud is the weakest link.

In GDPR, the European Privacy Law, a penalty is used to let the company feel the pain instead of putting a company out of business.

GDPR is not applicable for dead persons. But there can be other laws which are applicable for dead persons.

Meet the expos

How to attract people to an expo? Goodies, free access, and talks.

Some Healthcare and ICT notes of me in random order
Anonymize pictures, determine objects of interest, and annotate them using smart software.

First step is vision and then involve stakeholders like care providers, health insurers, and suppliers.

Patient panel discovered that 60 % of the patients want a personal health environment.

Care providers like hospitals and doctors are stimulated. They get money on basis of results and not on actions taken.

Law of customer’s rights. E.g. A care provider should only get information which is needed for the care to be provided.

Misconfiguration is becoming the weakest point in defense.

Meet the meetups

010dev is a small meetup in Rotterdam. It has Dutch characteristics like gezellig (cosy) and Buy Own Drink. It is in a pub after all. Once in a whole while it is in a company.

During my meetups there are no lectures, but I still listened a lot. As a tester was I am able to follow the small talk and tech talk?

In a few hours a lot of subjects passed. Programming languages, projects, and new trends were discussed. Somehow I could understand bits and pieces.

Developers.nl had a more traditional format for the meetup: free drinks, free meals, and free lectures.

I went to two meetups. The first one was abstract. It was about architecture. What are good guiding principles to set up a complex environment?

The second meetup was about vue.js. This was a challenging one. I had only basic knowledge about JavaScript and HTML. So I read some ebooks about vue.js which are based on these languages.

This talk was more understandable for me. The speaker shared some tips about vue.js.

How to speed up the performance by loading the needed content in 2 stages? First the necessary stuff was loaded for the web page. The rest followed while the user had a first impression of the page.

Looking under the hood

My blog has been made with WordPress. One day I was blogging and a conference in Rotterdam was announced in the dashboard.

There were some particular benefits: 25 Euro for a ticket including lunch, an environment friendly environment, meeting other WordPress users, short traveling distance.

As a tester I had not had a chance to attend a talk about accessibility. I honestly don’t understand this.

This conference offered more talks about this subject than I could process. I skipped the last ones.

Another interesting subject was security headers. It is possible to make WordPress secure. I was thinking that a header only contained some information.

For the interested reader have a look at my conference digest mind map.

Finishing thoughts

Retro: did I learn more than previous years?
Yes.

But what did I pick up in those previous years?
Mostly subjects related to programming and law. Less about testing.

Just made me think.


On Twitter Trish Koo placed a thought provoking tweet. In order to become better in software development  you have to learn both testing and programming.

Conference Digest Mind Map

This is my small tribute to Tony Buzan, who died on April 13th 2019. He was the inventor of the mind map. Rest in peace Tony.

Mind map with central object "Todo Wordcamp Rdam 2019 v1a" with main branches presentations, Notes, Goodies, Books, and Actions. Main branch presentation has sub branches Stomme post, Hashtag, http headers, Get fast and Live.  Sub branch Hash tag has sub sub branches #ewmrtc and a part of an URL. Sub branches  Goodies has sub branches Camera sticker and highlighter. The main branch Actions has sub branches 404, host, security.txt, xmrpx.php. Markers, and “words pictures”. The sub branch Markers has sub sub branch Backpack. The sub branch host has Csp and .htacess. The sub branch Books has sub branches “safe website”, “performance wordpress site”, and “SEO starters”!

Quick breakdown of my mind map

On my smartphone I use Mindjet Mindmanager. It is a rather dull looking mind map program. I can add colour, but that will slow me down. For me mind mapping is jotting ideas as fast as possible.

My first action was to make my conference notes readable. My handwriting is quite awful. The use of sketchnotes did not improve the quality significantly.
Just wait and see.

My notes were about WordCamp Rotterdam 2019. There were some really technical talks. It is almost impossible to translate technical stuff like settings of analytics programs or Cascading Style Sheets to images.
Yeah. You’re right.

Okay. The Notes branch was needed as a reminder that I would read my notes without thinking too long.

Almost immediately I added a branch with presentations. If needed, I would read the presentations in slow speed. Just before blogging I realized I made an error. I opened Twitter search and entered the hashtag “#wcrtm” and “slides”. #wcrtm stands for WordCamp RotTerdaM. All the presentations of the interesting talks popped up.

Another branch is Goodies. These are gifts of sponsors. I lost my highlighter somewhere. I marked this branch with a red cross. Then I remembered that I had a camera sticker from a previous conference, which I found and placed. So I marked this branch with a green V. For the English people: Jack in the box.

I got some booklets / books about SEO or Search Engine Optimalisation, performance of a website and website security. The reason, that I did put this branch under the central object, was to balance the tree. This tip was given by a business consultant. The way I interpreted was that I had to avoid a mindmap with too few main branches.

Back to my Books branch. This branch contained information which I could use. Not immediately, but it was something I could not put away lightly. The Goodies branch was more like: done and forget.

Now comes the most important main branch in my mind map: Actions. Sub branches were added during my note cleanup.

This website still had no proper 404 screen. Yes, there are some plug ins, but is there a more elegant way to solve this problem? Also too many plug ins will slow down my website.

During the conference there were lots of configuration suggestions. As a newbie WordPress administrator I asked, how I could configure this. The answer was to contact the host provider. Actions from my side could collide with actions from the host provider. Bracing for impact.

I still have to place a security.txt on my website. More information can be found in securitytxt.org.

On the web I read some disturbing information about Xmlrpc.php. On the conference it was strongly suggested to remove it.

Another action was to collect all my markers for future notes. A final action was to put extra information about text in my pictures in the Alt Text.

Depending on my progress and feedback of my host provider I will adjust my actions in my mind map.

Skin in the game of diversity

So I had my own piece of constructive feedback for tech conferences a few weeks ago.
Okay you may call it a rant. It was close.
Actually it was. For a good cause. Diversity.

As a blogger I could just lean back.
Now it was time for my action. Skin in the game.

Target One

This year I was on a test conference. The number of female speakers was low. Some male speakers might say:
“Let’s double the number of female speakers. Fine with us.”
“Thanks guys.”

There was one female co speaker. That makes two female co speakers.
Wait. Now let’s look at the incredible number of female keynote speakers of 0.
2 times 0 makes 0. If this would be quadrupled or octodupled, it would remain a disappointing 0.

In my experience there are more great female testers than 2 in the Netherlands. Let’s give them a place on stage. Main stage please. Thanks in advance.

In the past no correspondence was possible about the proposal selection process of this conference. Discussion takes time especially with Dutchmen. So a bit of transparency might help.

“You’ve got a question. What is your question?”
“I think that there are great stories of women out there. We don’t have the time to coach them.”
“Just go to techvoices.org
[Update: TechVoices was formerly known as Speak Easy.]
“But this is a Dutch conference.”
“Indeed. But English is no problem for the attendees.”
“There are no Dutch coaches.”
“That also worries me a lot. A testing country without Dutch speaking coaches is strange.”

My first tweet to the conference was a wish for 2018: more female speakers than in 2017. No reaction at all. That was my target practicing. Next.

The next tweet was aimed to the chairman. I remembered two announcements of keynote speakers:

  • “When I was in London for BCS, I met [white male speaker]. I was quite impressed with his talk, so [ ….]”
  • “The other keynote speaker is [white male speaker] . I met him at TestBash Netherlands. “

Now let me stress that I am impressed with the test experience and knowledge of these keynote speakers. Now imagine two female keynote speakers and my reaction would be double wow.

Ready, aim, tweet.
My friendly request to the chairman was to have a look at a list of female testers in case of keynotes.
The answer was considerate: some of the ladies had already spoken as keynote speakers, but he would try to get other ladies on stage.

My tweet had an unexpected side effect, which I had not anticipated. A case of collateral praise. One female speaker reacted with “cool and Very proud” to be on this list.

Target zero
A few weeks ago Rosie Sherry pointed to a whole discussion about #PayToSpeak. As a speaker it is the norm to pay your travelling and accommodation costs. Both Rosie and I don’t like this.

I reacted with a Balanced Conference Card.
Just answer enough questions with Yes and you have a balanced conference.

“Why was TestBash target 0?”
“It was not. TestBash is one of the conferences focused on balance.”
“Why did you call this paragraph ‘Target 0’?”
“It is an inside joke.
Programmers always count from 0.”

Anyways my blog post ended up in the newsletter of Ministry of Testing. Thanks.

A week ago there was another discussion about female speakers. I pointed to my blog post. Somehow I ended up as an ally.

Target Two Too

Next tweet target was a huge European test conference.
You know: this size fits only one in Europe.
I actually was hesitant to send a tweet, but a disappointed tweet of a famous tester about another male lineup at a conf pushed me out of my comfort zone into my action zone.

Now comes the scary part.
The program chair had no Twitter account. A few years ago this was already mentionable according to his track chair. So I picked the conf itself.

I thought it was good to praise the conference organisers for actions taken for a diverse lineup this year. The aforementioned famous tester was also pleased with the steps taken in the past. So I retweeted her reaction with the request to keep up the good work.

This left an unaddressed program committee.
I tweeted a female member of the program committee to repeat the success of diverse lineup of this year. She did not react.

The conf did. Gender bias was taken care of by making the proposals anonymous. Reads good to me.

Target Two Too

By now you know the drill:

  • Pick a tech conf.
  • Make a compliment and/or request.
  • If you need a link or blog post
    https://mindfultester.com/a-balanced-conference-card/
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/need-new-speakers-han-toan-lim
    https://agiletestingdays.com/blog/125-awesome-testers-you-should-keep-your-eye-on-always
    https://abstracta.us/blog/software-testing/influential-latin-american-women-testing-need-know
    speaking-easy.com

    [added later, see reason below ]

So if you want to have more diversity, you have my permission to use these actions.
Excuse me for scaring you.

Some tech confs have questions about diversity.  I respect their point of view. I heard really good stories about first time speakers supported by Speak easy. Now know aw Tech Voices.
Oops let me add this to the list above.[v]

Conferences want praise from their attendees. So give New Voices a stage like Agile Testing Days. You know what: those first time speakers have a lot of keynote potential in themselves.

Little thought experiment

Bio 1: I am a white male speaker. My dad sent me to the best schools and universities, because he could afford it. I now work at a Fortune 500 company.

Bio 2: I am an African American woman. I grew up in the Bronx. We were really poor. The only times we saw a computer it was on the television.

One day I was invited by Per Scholas. They thought I was bright. I laughed. They suggested something with computers. Me and computers, I could not stop laughing for 1 minute.

Anyway I got some really good teachers. And I could touch a computer without some comment like:
“Hey, what you’re doing?”
It was not that difficult to pick up things. It was logical.

For me the time with Per Scholas was like a Christmas story. After school it would be back in the shop selling veggies. You know what. I got a good job offer. Ain’t that great?

“Wait you are writing everything down.”
“Sure.”
“But that is not a good bio.”
“I assure it adds so much flavour.”

Of course I am biased, if I see those bios.

  • A very influential tester once told me, he would like to follow the Per Scholas course. And he is already good.
  • These days I have to learn a lot just to keep up. What could this woman teach me about struggling and keeping faith?
  • I want to see the underdog.

Okay recruiters, don’t send me mails now.
I have a disappointing message for you. Both bios are fake.
Because this is a thought experience: you know like imaginary or hypothetical or dreamed up.

Target Me

Now what is all that stuff about skin in the game?
Good question. Which needs a good answer.

If I get accepted by a tech conf and there is big unbalance, then I will bail out.
I won’t speak.
This talk will be dearly missed on my CV and my Conference Speaker Bingo Card,  but that is my skin in the game.

Side notes

  • I am going to submit to 2 #PayToSpeak confs in the next few weeks. Although I don’t like this.
  • One conference is part of yearly package deal membership under 100 Euro. This club offers a lot to the testing community. So I give something back.
  • One conference is so nearby I lose a small amount of money for travelling. I can sleep at home.
  • And I want break my streak of speaking every other year. In the meantime I have this, a blog to practice my speaking skills.