Atomic Habits book review

 

Atomic Habits is becoming a popular book about dealing with you own habits.

The book is an easy read, where concepts are presented in a way that they are not new stuff that you wouldn´t know otherwise, but as you progress with the reading, these concepts are nicely coupled together.

Concepts like the Cue -> Craving -> Response -> Reward loop we use for habits, and the reason why we do things. ( Outcomes, like writing a blog post -> Processes, like being able to regularly write  -> Identity, being a writer). 

And the same reasons why we don´t do other things.

Those concepts are explained along with real examples of people with strong habits that were able to achieve great goals in life.

 I did enjoy this reading, and if you are this far on my post, I can recommend it to you, my friend.

TestBash UK 2023

Back to TestBash !

It´s my first international conference after Covid, and since I now have a training budget, it felt great to travel to the UK and meet other testers, again...

TestBash and the events hosted by the Ministry of Testing have been a key resource in my development as a Software Tester, starting with a trip to Brighton back in 2013 and following so many events I don´t remember all of them. It felt nice to get back and reengage with the testing community.

The conference.

The conference happened in The Titanic Hotel, 15 min north from Liverpool center. Nice venue, good food, excellent company.

We had one big room for the talks, and 3 rooms for workshops.

The programme was one track of talks, two tracks of workshops and then smaller 20 min workshops happening in one room with several 10p tables, one workshop per table.

We were short of 500 attendees, it was a nice medium sized conference where you get to know many people at the end of the two days.

All speakers would deliver a workshop, and this was cool, so if you would listen to somebody giving a talk and would like to deepen in the subject, you had the chance to attend to the workshop and get first hands experience about the matter.

My plan and notes.

Initially I didn´t have any target for the conference, but once I saw the programme, and used the app to select tracks and workshops I wanted to attend, Training and mentoring and automation were my main interests, so there I got my plan.

I went to talks about automation, about why not to get the bottleneck on the project when you are writing tests, about accessibility issues, and how they impact 15% of world population, accessibility features are one human right, nice for some, and vital for others, and how they will impact even you, my friend, as you get older.

You too can learn some Simple Tests For Accessibility Every Tester Should Know is you feel like.

I went to a workshop to better understand GitHub actions and set up and ran my CI :D

And a workshop about learning, and coaching, and using (Who, Where, What, How, When) instead of (Why) when having my sessions, to help drive the conversation.

And consider that it is Time to Think and when you are listening, understand what your reactions will be, if you are going to (Understand what they say, Crack a joke, Destroy the argument)

Here a list of Culture Books, if you feel like, enjoy the trip.

It has been a great conference, I am really happy to get back to these events.

Liverpool.

Since the conference would end on Thursday evening, my wife took a Ryanair from Alicante to Liverpool, and we spent the weekend together with the kids.

We visited Liverpool, Conwy and Chester, and as a tester who has been testing text fields for a living, I almost made it to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch station, it was just three stops away.

But hey, we´ll get back to Wales for sure, and I´ll get my selfie in the station sign that has been in my skeleton key file for these long years, annoying developers and frontenders who tough that their town name field could perfectly render any input.

Life is what happens while you make plans...