Happy 4th Birthday, TESTHEAD :)!!!

As I find myself having conversations with a hosting company trying to find out why a database provisioning tool isn't working, a number of modules for SummerQAmp are nearing final drafts and re-visioning, and a few talks are being finalized for conference presentations both near and a few months from now, I came to a realization today. TESTHEAD just turned four years old.

Back on March 10, 2010, I posted the very first message on this blog. It was a bit hesitant, but it made the point of what I hoped it would be:

Welcome to TESTHEAD

"OK, why the need for a blog like this? Well, truth be told, I don’t know that there really is a “need” for this blog, but I’m doing this as a challenge to myself. I consider this an opportunity to “give back” to a community that has helped me over the course of many years, as I have been the beneficiary of many great insights and learned a lot from a number of people and sources over nearly two decades.

[...]

this will be a site where I share my own experiences, both good and bad, and what I've learned from them. Expect there to be talk about tools, both proprietary and open source. Expect some talk about test case design (and how I so hate to do it at times). Expect to hear me vent about some frustrations at times, because like all people, I have my share of frustrations when things don't seem to work correctly or go the way that I planned them to. 

[...]

Most of all, expect to get a real person's perspective on these things and an attempt to communicate them in plain English, whenever I possibly can."

So how have I done on that front? Well, it looks as though many of the initial ideas that I had fell by the wayside pretty quickly. This blog does talk about tools, but it's less specific than I think I initially intended it to be, and I think that's for the better. This blog definitely has taken on a human touch and dealt with a number of the things that I have found to be frustrating and interesting, and sometimes both. 

Overall, this blog has become a repository of a lot of interconnected experiences, and the fact is, one thing leads to another. So many of the things I've talked about these past four years I had no idea I'd be discussing when I first started this challenge. I had no idea I'd join AST, become a BBST instructor, spearhead facilitation for Weekend Testing in the Americas, become a guest blogger at a variety of sites, be invited to speak at conferences halfway around the world, be asked to contribute to a body of knowledge for QA Interns, or be a mentor to other up and coming testers. The opportunities that come my way never cease to amaze me, and very often, those opportunities have stemmed, in some way shape or form, from what I talk about here, at TESTHEAD.

Four years, 889 posts (including this one), zeroing in on a half a million page views, and a lot of great friends and interactions. Thank you, everyone, who has in any way been touched by this blog. Thank you for your Likes, your re-tweets, your favorites, your re-pins, your email forwards and any other ways you've helped to share my blog with other testers and interested parties. It seriously means a lot to me, and I hope to keep making this a destination that you will want to keep coming back to. It looks like pre-school is about to end. Time to get TESTHEAD ready for Kindergarten :)!!!