TESTHEAD Turns Five Today

With thanks to Tomasi Akimeta
for making me into "TESTHEAD" :)!!!

On March 10, 2010, I stepped forward with the boldest boast I had ever made up to that point. I started a blog about software testing, and in the process, I decided I would try to see if I could say something about the state of software testing, my role in it, and what I had learned through my career. Today, this blog turns five years old. In the USA, were this blog a person, we would say I'm just about done with pre-school, and in the fall, I'd be getting ready to go into Kindergarten ;).

So how has this blog changed over the past five years? For starters, it's been a wonderful learning ground for me. Notice how I said that: a learning ground for me. When I started it, I had intended it to be a teaching ground to others. Yeah, that didn't last long. I realized pretty quickly how little I actually knew, and how much I still had to learn (and am still learning). I've found it to be a great place to "learn in public" and to, in many ways, be a springboard for many opportunities. During its first two years, most of the writing that I did in any capacity showed up here. I could talk about anything I wanted to, so long as it loosely fit into a software testing narrative.

From there, I've been able to explore a bunch of different angles, try out initiatives, and write for other venues, the most recent being a permanent guest blog with IT Knowledge Exchange as one of the Uncharted Waters authors. While I have other places I am writing and posting articles, I still love the fact that I have this blog and that it still exists as an outlet for ideas that may be "not entirely ready for prime time", and I am appreciative of the fact that I have a readership that values that and allows me to experiment openly. Were it not for the many readers of this blog, along with their forwards, shares, retweets, plus-one's and mentions in their own posts, I wouldn't have near the readership I currently have, and I am indeed grateful to all of you who take the time to read what I write on TESTHEAD.

So what's the story behind the picture you see above? My friend Tomasi Akimeta offered to make me some fresh images that I could associate with my site. He asked me what my site represented to me, and how I hoped it would be remembered by others. I laughed and said that I hoped my site would be seen as a place where we could go beyond the expected when it comes to software testing. I'd like to champion thinking rather than received dogma, experimentation rather than following a path by rote, and champion the idea that there is intelligence that goes into testing. He laughed and said "so what you want to do is show that there's a thinking brain behind that crash test dummy?" He was referring to the favicon that's been part of the site for close to five years. I said "Yes, exactly!" He then came back a few weeks later and said "So, something like this?" After I had a good laugh and a smile at the ideas he had, I said "Yes, this is exactly what I would like to have represent this site; the emergence of the human and the brain behind the dummy!"

My thanks to Tomasi for helping me usher in my sixth year with style, and to celebrate the past five with reflection, amusement and a lot of gratitude for all those who regularly read this site. Here's to future days!