Pre-post Note: This is part of my pair blog series where I collaborate with another blogger to write about the same-ish topic. This one is different though, because for now – the pair is not done, or scheduled. This means this post whenever Samuel is done with his post 🙂 For now – you will have to make do with only my perspective.
On the evening of May 12th 2022 – I sent a message that would heavily influence my coming years. I had had a bit of wine. I had jokingly suggested to my friend Samuel Nitsche that we should do a singing pair-keynote. Unexpectedly – he was up for it. So, I sent out a suggestion to a conference organizer we all know to be open to weird stuff. I expected this to just become a funny story. But it became so much more, because to my big surprise, the idea was enthusiastically accepted.
For me, it was all triggered by a song (“Don’t go breaking my heart”) and the age-old “joke” about developers hating that testers keep breaking their code. But let’s dig more into a bit of reflection, the process so far, things I’ve learned and looking a bit into the future!
1997 to 2022: Whatever led up to all of this?
What made me, a non-professional, think it was a good idea to sing on stage in front of hundreds of people? I can think of a few reasons, there are likely a lot more.
# 1
I’ve always loved singing. And I’ve always dreamt of being really good at it. I loved singing in school shows, choirs and similar. And I probably should have joined something like a professional choir – but I never thought I was good enough. The concept of having to audition always scared the crap out of me. So I didn’t. I always wanted to take professional lessons – but I was terrified of being told I wasn’t good enough. And I hate the thought of spending money on something that might not be… valuable. So I never did.
Learning number one: I do not like to spend time and money on things I don’t think I will excel at. This will have to be it’s own post but I know exactly which part of my upbringing makes this so difficult for me. And let’s just say it heavily influences me to this day, in everything from romantic relationships to professional career to even picking a hobby.
# 2
In 2017/2018 I was having a couple of beers with some people from work. I had just had an amazing year. I got a manager role that I really wanted. I started my speaker career and got into an international conference. I made a joke along the lines of “I met all of my goals for the next few years, and then some. What is next? Singing on stage in front of people?” And a few of the people looked at me and said “Well actually, how would you feel about performing at the work summer party?”
Of course, I tried to duck out of it. But not very hard if I’m honest. I really wanted to do this, but was really afraid of not being able to do it well. But, they were really professional and helped me adjust everything to a point where I could do it, and do it well. So – come summer of 2018 I put on gold tights and a gold sequin vest and I went on stage and sang a Swedish Dansband song in front of my entire company. And I didn’t suck. And I LOVED it.
I got off stage, went to my car and drove home to get some sleep before driving to my father’s funeral. Well, I also remembered at that point that I had completely forgotten to pick up his ashes. So, I had a breakdown. I solved that problem. Then I had the car break down on the way to the church. But we got there. Then I had another breakdown when the priest asked how I was. But we made it. I remember making a bad joke about my dad REALLY not wanting to be buried. Noone else laughed. I thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Learning number two: When facing something that feels too big to handle (losing both parents within a year and my guilt and conflicting feelings connected to it) – I hide behind something manageable (I can’t let the rest of the band down so I need to be good enough) and I get tunnel vision and tend to miss everything else (remembering that I said I would bring the ashes because the cost of having them transported were ridiculous and I was going there anyway, why waste money?)
My boyfriend recently said that my DND class is Fighter/Champion with Barbarian subclass. Fighter because they are the battlefield bulldozer, which is very much me when I have a focus. Barbarian because I tend to say “Ok, this scares me and that makes me REALLY mad so I will do it because being afraid pisses me off”. I guess it’s hard to disagree with that, seeing as my first keynote was exactly about this.
#3
Sometimes in your life you meet people who unlock something in you. It can be romantically, emotionally, professionally – many different parts and ways. But what I am talking about here is more along the lines of a muse. Someone with whom being creative becomes easy. I’ve been blessed with two people like this in my professional life – and I wish everyone could have that experience at least once.
The first person was a developer with whom I’ve worked at several companies and working together transformed how I thought about testing, collaboration and automation. It was fantastic, but also very jarring when I had to work with other people in the same company. It taught me a lot about how to adjust how to talk to different people, how to address problems so different people could follow along but also how amazing it can be to be in a team that builds on each other’s strengths and ideas.
The second person is Samuel. We met at Agile Testing Days and kept in touch. We decided to build a workshop together and became friends. Creating that first workshop was a super interesting experience. We are very different in how we approach things. I had created a very structured plan with exercises and learning objectives and in our first work call I remember Samuel listening and then tearing everything down with a “Yeah, that sounds good but I had something different in mind…” His ideas completely contradicted mine and it took me some time just to get past the shock of him not liking my plan (I did mention that I need to excel at things, right?) and how chaotic and different his suggestions were. My brain basically shut down for a moment. And then it was like it took that broken kaleidoscope of a plan and… just restructured it. And somehow, his creative chaos and my rigid structure becomes something greater. This has been the pattern of our every collaboration since then. I’ve grown to love it. I hecking LOVE being wrong! (If you only let me sulk and panic a bit first…)
So, all in all – you have a person with artistic dreams, with a berserker mindset and a bard partner in crime. How could we NOT do a singing keynote?!
2022 to 2023: Co-creating the pair keynote
We are finally about half-way to actually talking about the musical. But first I want to talk about the keynote – “Don’t go breaking my code” – by far my biggest professional achievement to this day.
Remember, at the end of May 2022 we knew we will get to do this crazy thing – in November 2023. Plenty of time. Except we first both have to finish and present our 2022 keynotes, other commitments, manage our day jobs as well as all the personal life stuff that never ends. In between this, I went through an unexpected divorce which almost turned my 2022 keynote upside down, put me in therapy and meant I had to figure out how to survive as a sole provider. But that’s another story.
Too much time has passed for me to remember the exact timeline but in general I would say we had a few important parts:
- Choosing the songs
- Writing the lyrics
- Writing the script
- Finishing details
- Rehearsing
Choosing the songs
As I mentioned earlier, “Don’t go breaking my heart” was a given from the start. It’s one of my all-time favourite music videos and it was the first thing that came to mind when we talked about how to collaborate as a tester and a developer. This song got to represent our first topic: Ownership, goals and motivation. We felt “Don’t go breaking my code” fit perfectly into the caricature of the evil tester breaking poor developers’ beautiful perfect code.
At some point there were so many different songs flying around in our discussions, I remember being very relieved when we locked it down to Elton John songs. At least that limited us a bit.
For our second song: Samuel really loves the movie Sing. This movie features an amazing scene with one of the main characters, a piano and a leather jacket on a stage singing “I’m still standing”. Great version! It also was a perfect fit for talking about focus, interruptions and helping unblock each other with a little tweak: “I’m still coding”.
And lastly we needed a song to represent conflict of collaboration, setting boundaries and why it can be so damned hard to understand each other. We chose to go with the classic – “Can you feel the love tonight” in some new clothes: “Can we ship the code tonight?”.
Why those three particular songs? Well, they are songs we like and would enjoy working with, and we could easily come up with titles that would fit the original idea. I would say this was very much a 50/50 type of collaboration – we equally contributed to this part.
Writing the lyrics
To start off – I really like writing. And I have always, ALWAYS, rewritten song lyrics in my head. Lyrics matter a lot to me and I tend to remember them easily. One of the weird quirks of my brain is that it often tends to connect pieces of songs to things, which can… cause interesting scenarios. You see, my brain doesn’t just tell me “Ooh this made me think of this song”. No, it pings me that it made SOME connection, and then it will not let me focus on anything else until I figure out the connection, the song and… in the worst case – I sing it out loud. Fun. Sometimes it is helpful and tells me what song, what part and why – sometimes it tells me parts, sometimes it only tells me there IS a connection and then forces me to figure it out myself. When rewriting song lyrics – this strange behaviour actually turned out to be helpful for once. (only other scenario I can think of is in music quizzes)
Because this actually comes really naturally to me. I just find the lyrics online, fit the new title to the top and start reading the lyrics with the new topic in mind. You find a phrase, a part, a line that sparks your enthusiasm – and then you go back over the lines that you struggle with. It is a lot like my other writing – I can never force it, but give it a focus and the words flow. Kind of like how this blog post is already at least a few articles’ worth of words so far.
Interestingly enough, what I learned was that even though we read and hear the exact same words sung in the same way – we will have a slightly different feel of the rhythm and the syllables needed to fit the rhythm. This was difficult for me at the start. Sometimes Samuel needed me to shift a line slightly to fit into his way of singing, which made absolutely no sense to me. But it made sense as soon as he sang it to me.
As for the lyrics, I would say this was maybe 75/25 – with me writing most of the lyrics, Samuel making suggestions and changes, and then tweaking and polishing them together.
Writing the script
This was probably the most challenging part for me. Partly because I NEVER write scripts for my talks. My normal process is to start with an idea, put everything I can think of into slides, and then while building the slides and polishing them – I move ideas and thoughts around until I have a slide deck that I can use to talk with little notes. (Mostly because I’ve learned that I can’t trust to be able to see my speaker notes on stage – so they have to trigger the right memories)
The musical keynote had a meticulously thought through, timed and detailed script. We didn’t necessarily follow it perfectly, but it was there. And this is a lot closer to how Samuel normally works.
And while I am GREAT at writing when I have a focus – the openness and vagueness of our idea blocked me completely. So for this part – it was definitely a 75/25 split to Samuels favour. He wrote most of the script, and I made suggestions for changes. And then of course we had to make sure our own parts were written in our own voices, while sticking to (or enhancing) the original ideas.
Lastly – trying to time it and then remove, remove, remove. Some darlings were hard to kill but the end result is, IMHO, brilliant!
The interesting part about writing the script, which was by far the most time consuming part, is that the further we got into the process – the more I could contribute. The more structure we got in place – the more creative I could be.
It is also really amazing to look back and see how our own collaboration, the conflicts we had along the way – and the trust and respect we have for each other – shaped the story and made it into something very different to where we started out.
Finishing touches
If you have ever seen one of my talks, and one of Samuel’s talks, you know how different our styles are. His talks are performances, they have effects, they have side kicks. I avoid sounds, movies and props like the plague – because I am terrified they will fail.
Well, for this – Samuel got to go full on extra everything. We had sound effects, movies, lighting effects, we had glow sticks. At one point Samuel even goes out of the room, leaving me alone to sing a solo part. For this part – I just sat back in awe. Ok, I put a veto on having a smoke machine and I tried to get a confetti cannon but Samuel is definitely the producer of this show!
I don’t think I will ever change my own style but I also learned that I can let go of worry if I trust my partner. And I completely trusted Samuel to handle everything connected to this, and I trusted myself to be able to follow instructions. (It might surprise people, but I am EXCELLENT at following instructions and taking orders. I am an amazing sous-chef in situations like this).
Rehearsing
While I know that rehearsing takes time, I also know I can do it. I know I can shove big chunks of information into my brain and remember it. What I didn’t know was how incredibly difficult it would be to rehearse singing over link. Even the slightest delay or shift made it almost impossible for me to sing.
We basically scrapped any singing practise together, it just did not work well. Instead we sent recordings of ourselves singing for the other person to practise with. Since I am also a great copycat, but completely unable to do things like “Can you try singing it one octave higher?” – Samuel had to do a lot of work on recording different versions and send them to me, until we found a version that we could both work with.
I also learned I am unable to sing something I haven’t heard, something different to the way my brain tells me is RIGHT. I am grateful Samuel managed to work around this part and accept the times it was just not possible for me, such as singing a certain melody or variant that would have sounded better – and just allow me to sing the way I could.
We took a few singing lessons with a voice coach. Those were really helpful for Samuel, but the delays and the challenges with me understanding music lingo meant they were mostly stressful for me. I could not understand a lot of the instructions she gave us, which made me feel stupid and doubt myself. What helped me most was listening both to recordings of myself and us together. And all of the trailers and cameos that Samuel made along the way. Those were so much fun!
Learnings
This was by far the most fun, and challenging project I’ve done so far. I learned so much about myself through working through these challenges. Some of these things were:
- When met with something that clashed with my own idea – I often need to step back and let my brain rearrange itself. And while that is happening it is really important that I understand what is going on, can articulate that struggle, and that the other person understands that this does not mean I hate the idea or will fight it, I just need to change my own reality first.
- I struggle (A LOT) with critiquing someone I care about. Even when I know the person wants my input, I have to fight through several layers of resistance and wanting to not be difficult. This also goes the other way – I struggle with getting critiqued and separate it from my view of myself. As a manager, this is incredibly important to know about myself, because it is basically one of the most important parts of my job! If I can’t give and receive feedback – how can I help people grow, and grow myself? I was not prepared for how much harder it was to think the same way when collaborating with a friend.
- Feeling like I don’t do enough. While I logically know that I did the biggest part of some aspects of this show, I felt really really bad for how much I leaned on Samuel for others. Especially in times when my energy was low or I had to focus on other things – and Samuel was fully into this. I felt like I was never enough. This was really helpful to work through, because I realized how much I constantly feel this way in all aspects of my life – and how being able to say that out loud helps. Basically – this keynote was the best self-therapy I could ever ask for.
- I don’t have control issues, I have trust issues. People have often told me I need to learn how to let go of control – but what I figured out is that I can let go of everything, If I trust the people I work with. But I do not give people trust easily, and I trust technology less than most things. What do I trust? My own ability to tell stories and wing it. And I trust Samuel. And while I worry myself to pieces trying to plan ahead, once I need to ACT, I am a machine. My boyfriend who was in the front row (both literally and figuratively throughout the preparations) told me it was like flipping a switch. As soon as I walked on stage, I looked completely at ease, happy and professional. 2 seconds before, I was falling apart and was forgetting big chunks of the script.
2024: The Owl Problem – putting on a full blown musical
As usual when I step off a stage – I go into somewhat of a zombie mode. There is a stage where you are high on the experience, you get a lot of initial praise and reactions from people – but mostly I feel a struggle reconnecting to reality, or maybe normality is a better word. This was no exception, except perhaps more than usual amounts of pride, because while I know I can pull off a good talk – I think this actually was BOTH a good talk AND we actually sounded great. Not perfect, but most definitely better than people expected of two amateurs. I think someone said they expected a karaoke night-level of quality and got proper singing and a real show.
It did however not take long until Samuel told me of his new idea – a full blown musical. I remember feeling tired and worn out but I also remember not hesitating at all. I said yes of course. I also said I would need time to recover before I could be of any actual help.
Samuel, on the other hand, was incredibly inspired and focused in the months after. I was… not. And I felt so guilty for it.
For months, I could barely muster any energy or excitement and I struggled with some of the initial ideas. When I am not in a good place – my square brain needs square. It cannot handle round, oval or triangular. I felt really bad for not loving every idea. I hated how I felt like a nay-sayer. How I didn’t automatically have ideas for cast, for songs, for theme. I disliked some main themes. I didn’t like the songs. At least – that is how I remember it now. Looking at the cast, the list of songs and the draft of the script – I see myself everywhere. I cannot remember if this is because that period of negativity was shorter than I remembered, or if I forgot a period of positivity before that big dip – but it makes me happy.
In the list of songs there will be parts that are clearly very close to my heart. There will be parts that I automatically thought about when the main theme was decided. And there are parts that are so clearly Samuel that it makes me smile. But it is not the 100% Samuel show that it felt like early this year.
The cast is mostly Samuel’s choice – but I had a hand or two in it, which I am happy that I managed to contribute with.
When it comes to the script and the lyrics – a lot of the same dynamics from our pair keynote repeated itself, except some songs are mostly Samuelt lyrics with touches of me, and some songs are me with input from Samuel. The script is just as heavily written by Samuel as our keynote, but enough of me to feel like I didn’t completely abandon him in that giant piece of work.
My biggest input so far has been shifting some of the sub-themes. There was a part that I strongly disagreed with – to the point it could have become a conflict – but thankfully we are safe enough with each other that I could force myself to explain why I couldn’t get behind it – and that’s all that was needed. What felt like an insurmountable difference in my brain was just… a slight shift in the end. Which is another great learning for me – words and phrasing can matter more than you know, and sometimes it is perfectly fine to just say “I don’t understand why it matters to you, but I can accept it – would it feel ok with X instead?”.
Working with other people is, of course, challenging as well as rewarding.
- I have to face the fact that we have actual professional singers in the group. This means I won’t be the best. I hate it. But I am aware of it, I can articulate it, I can handle it.
- Since it still won’t work well to practise together – we can build on the learnings from last year and work more, earlier, with recordings. We can also use some tricks we learned and use that to our advantage.
- I know my voice, my strengths and weaknesses better. I also TRUST my voice more, which makes me less stressed about saying what I can and can’t do.
- Deadlines are our friends. I am not the only one who needs a foot in my butt to finish stuff.
- Being explicit and transparent is crucial. Say what you need, what you can do, what you don’t want to do. The sooner the better.
- Even though we can’t meet regularly – we can hype each other up by sharing our own progress, challenges and fun.
We have a lot of work left to do, but we will make it. I am not even worried at this point. We have the songs. We have the cast. We have a script. We have a safe space with a conference + a group of organizers that I trust will handle anything we throw at them. The rest can be solved along the way.
If you want to look, read or just know more about the Owl problem, I got you!
We have a couple of Trailers available.
One that is very much Samuel and One that is very much me.
We also have this amazing episode of Pepe’s bar with the entire cast:
And of course – more information in the Agile Testing Days program.
