As every year aound this time, testers of germany united to exchange knowledge, experience, feelings, words, tricks, results, …
No, it is not a bazar, not a conference, but the Hamburg QS barcamp (https://qs-barcamp.de)! This time we celebrated our fifth birthday, and is was a true celebration – even online…. 5 years of QS Barcamp!!!
Bingo!
Our attempt to have an as nice warmup as in offline barcamps was to have an experienced “show master” involved and let him lead through the evening, with a Bingo game to get to know each other, a presentation of the tools to be used and some games in the tool gathertown. (You know you are old if you have forgotten how to play Tetris… )
Our “show master” Christian Kram @chr_kram really grew into this role very well! Thanks to him and the audience and the background support (by Jörg Sievers), it almost felt like a party. The last people had a bad start the next morning due to too little sleep ;-).
Also, that evening we decided to help others grow. As our keynote speaker Lisi Hocke @lisihocke had decided to offer her speaker’s fee to Moinworld e.V., the barcampers followed Thomas Rinke’s @thomrinke suggestion to add to it. Sunday evening, we had already 400€ collected!
Growing with Experiments
First thing next morning (we had no brakfeast together.. 🙁 ) was the keynote of Lisi Hocke: “Growing an Experiment-driven Quality Culture“. Everyone was impressed… I do not know what all I took out of this but here are some of the main tweets that hit my heart:
I now plan to set up my own experiment, something like:
Hypothesis: If the team tries out the benefit of a specific typical test mangement benefit I only see, they can be easier convinced by conducting an experiment with it.
Exit Criteria: a test cycle is completed
Timeframe: one wave
Hopefully I find fellow researchers! And hopefully I find the time for it. One of the big questions of the talk and the following discussion: how to find time for learning and experimenting. Here you need to involve “the system”…
I also created my first sketchnote in ages.. and I tell you – the paper was too small for all the contents Lisi had…
For more details, have a look at the slides…
Growing in Open Space Sessions
After the keynote, the open space sessions followed. Using BigBlueButton hosted by a German Provider (Senfcall) was a good descision – not only the stability was fine, but also the functionality was supporting. (And Jörg Sievers (Jogi) helped us through any potential issues). So we had both, a session tool and data protection according to DSGVO.
As usual, I had major problems deciding where to go. Everything sounded so interesting. With four parallel slots you had to take choices. And there always was some FOMO…
I really loved the sessions I participated in. Amazing how much you can learn from and with this wonderful community – even after 30 years of experience. Everybody has different aspects to bring into the room! Techniques, psychology, fun, methods, …
Secondly, the participants in the barcamp made a point in mindful communication. It is so great to be able to feel safe in every session and in every group! But is is also helping every participant to communicate in such a way.
So growing as tester and as human – what else could you expect from a barcamp!
Next year will be a real challenge to top this barcamp!
Before I forget: A big thank you to our sponsors who made this possible!