Hello Again! Have you Missed Me?

 Every once in a while, I have spent less time updating and participating in my blog than I want to. However, I wasn't aware that I had yet to make any posts since 2023! Part of this has to do with using a variety of other avenues to communicate and being in a mode of looking for work and doing contract work for the duration. It has left me little time or attention for blogging.

That, however, led me to realize that it was violating my prime reason for making this blog in the first place. That was a promise to learn in public and share what I learned along the way. I have learned quite a bit over the past 16 1/2 months since I held my last full-time job and my current gig (more on that later ;) ). I'll be blunt, much of my time and attention has been hunting for work and getting the chance to do interesting work. I've developed course material for teaching manual testers to become SDETs. I co-authored a book with Matt Heusser on "Software Testing Strategies" and while I am happy that it has been well received, I'm realizing I've been terrible about actually talking about it and what's in it. I've worked on a variety of writing assignments, one of which was writing landing page content for a QA company in South America that wanted a more human touch in how their information and services appeared to an English-speaking audience. That was a neat experience and one I learned a great deal about how to improve my writing for a different audience. 

I had several opportunities to develop and deliver talks that are built around the material in our book, which means I have stepped out of my comfortable wheelhouse of Accessibility and random topics and getting to look at some interesting challenges. I talked about the puzzle pieces of good testing and had the chance to deliver them a few times. Matt and I have presented a few times now on Lean Software Testing (which we should mention is not the same or related to the LEAN startup) and it has turned into a great way to look at the way we test and how to help organizations and individual testers improve their overall testing efforts (and often without having to ask for permission ;) ).

As I am at PNSQC this week, my history of doing live blogging to capture my thoughts and impressions still alive and well. I realized that PNSQC 2023 was the last in-person event I attended, and thus it has been a year since I've done these. Apologies or you're welcome, depending on where you fall on that sentiment.

It's good to be back. Let's try to keep this conversation going.