Just came back from ukStar 2018 and I thought I’d summarize my experience while still fresh in memory.
So, first of all: I only had the change to attend 1 of 2 Days. Day 2 actually had a lot of interesting talks that I wish I could have attended but unfortunately I had to go back home.
Day 1 consisted of 2 keynotes, 1 workshop-session and a bunch of tracks.
First off: starting keynote by Christina Oharian was awesome. She is a great speaker and had a very interesting story to tell about how to grow a community. Great way to start the day! I felt very energized and got a few ideas to try out with out own competence forums.
Next off was workshops and I had chosen to attend Empowering People Through Play by Christina Oharian and Nicola Sedgwick. We got to try out a few games that can be used to get teams to talk, think about what they do or just energize people. I met my old friend the Lego Duck once again so of course I was happy 😀 Biggest take-away from this was definitly when we had to draw a post card from instructions given by one in the team. Then describe the post card on a sheet of paper and then Another team had to draw out post card from our requirements.. Let’s just say we did a quite poor job, even if we tried mnd maps. As I am a big fan of mind maps I felt a bit bad about the result but the biggest thing with Visual models is of course the iterative process from first rough sketch to refined model and we only had one shot. Oh well! It was great fun and I’m sure to try it out with one of my teams!
Next was a track about Quality of Things which was interesting but a bit to far away from my own work to really get everything. Was quite interesting to sew the problems that occur when you have to test things like smoke detectors!
The came Blockchain Applications And How To Test Them by Rhian Lewis, an Amazing woman I’ve talked to online in our Women in Testing-Group. She was so much fun to listen to! Great body languange, great energy and I had no idea block chains could be used for so many things! I actually want to try it out, even it I have no idea what for…
The middle of the day is a big blur. I had to stay out of a few tracks due to being overwhelmed with the amount of people and nerves for my own talk so after lunch I stayed and talked to Christina, Nicola and Dan Billing which was so much fun. Lovely people! Mentioning people I talked to I also have to mention Harry Girlea. He is 13(!) and already more experienced as a speaker than me. So wish I had gotten the chance to see his talk, can you believe once he is old enough to vote he will be considered a senior tester! A guy to keep an eye out for.
Ok. Next up was the fantastic Marianne Dujist with Self-Organizing the 24h GoForIT Innovation Challenge. A great inspiring talk about innovation and not keeping people back. You rock Marianne!
Then the trio of 8-minutes talks that I was part of was due and I had the privilege to finish off the talk after Kinga Witko (Make IT Accessable) and Rick Tracy (Testing Tests and where to test them). 8 minutes felt impossible when I started out. Remember, this talk is something I’ve done a lot in the last year but usually 30-60 minutes! I Think however I managed to strip all of the story and just keep the core. The what, how and why of Visual modelling.
After a few drinks with my lovely friends in Women in testing it was time to go back to the hotel and pack. Lovely seeing you all, can’t wait for the next time.
I got a question about Writing a blog post about Visual modelling and I will try!
