CAST, A sneak peek

In my last post I promised to release a sneak peek of my CAST presentation. Even though I'm infamous for being too optimistic and missing deadlines, that promise will actually hold true.

So... what will I talk about?

The story
In May 2012 the first ever Let's Test conference was held.

When I heard about this conference it immediately grabbed my attention. It was just a train ride away, the tester's I wanted to meet would be there and the general setup felt spot on for me.

So I prepared myself to just bash into my manager's office and demand he sent me to this amazing conference but... that never happened.

Instead I convinced myself, I wasn't ready.

Just over a year has passed but in just a few days I will present at CAST; an opportunity I got thanks to writing an abstract just 8 months after missing Let's Test. Today I am the tester, I before Let's Test told others I wanted to be but never dared to become... All that is quite a transformation and how that transformation could happen is what I will walk you through.

Actual content
There are of course a million things contributing to this change, many of which are highly context dependent. But I will highlight four that I think have been key, and try to extract as much practical and useful content out of those as I can. I will actually not list them here but in my 2012 reflections, you can see all of them in action and some of them described. The big difference between that blog series and this presentation is I won't focus on what I actually did (like reading blogs, meet testers, change job etc.) but rather the mechanics that made them happen. To explain that I need an example so even though I said I wouldn't, here is one of the four "chapter": My skill development list. In the presentation I will explain the list in great detail including what made it work, what problems I encountered and how I dealt with them.

I want more!
Okey, okey, that wasn't very revealing but let me give you something that is: Here is my latest skill development list and personal manifesto. In common they have cliché names and that both are very much relevant to this presentation.

Also I can tell you there will be an exercise...

... You will be asked to answer several questions (to yourself)...

... and you will see this guy in many shapes and forms:

Thanks to IBM and Jojo Mendoza for the original pictures that made this guy!

If that's not revealing enough you'll simply have to come and watch my presentation: Making learning my top priority, at CAST.

See you there!