I have a keynote to do in a year. This is the longest lead time to agreement I’ve ever had and creates a whole new problem: how do I know what I want to speak on a large crowd after such a long time from idea to delivery?

Picked up from an interaction that it's not evident to all, that it is different to lead a group of testers in Finland and a group of testers in India, not only because culture but structure that is invisible.

The ones in Finland work for the same company and are direct colleagues under the same management.

The ones in India appear like they work for the same company, but within the company they are providing a contractually different service.

Assuming the contracts were same is a result of not ever been reviewing (creating) those contracts and aware of their options.

Requirements aren't raw materials. They're hypotheses, often incomplete, contradictory, and frequently wrong.

Critically realistic funny without sugarcoating is my tribe. "AF is a collection of md-files" as a summary of something awfully abstract but damn it's honest on this AI stuff. When we confess to that, we can start working on the slicing of those md-files for consumption by busy people and comparing what they contain, beyond the hand wavy magic of assuming your words improve the probability of words in return just because they came out of you.

Idea of the day: the only worthwhile mentorship is hiring a person to grow with work. Short attention is inspirational at best and rarely leads to insights changing behaviors.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" on a stage, while I intentionally excluded myself from multiple shots on principle:

I opted for a smaller room just to make a point on discomfort from a track chair on the larger room.

I opted out of a party just to make a point that closed group party does not grow an open and inclusive community.

I should work on the sadness I feel about the state of things, or rather, finding ways to ignore it rather than letting it live in my head rent-free.

On series of honest but maybe I should have not said it...

Someone asked me if I would be up for joining their company's podcast series as a guest, and I responded with an enthusiastic yes of course, happy to join as invited.

Then continued with the idea that I have taken the not being invited for 2.5 years despite my general visibility and openness to say I would be delighted to join anything as a message. To learn that I was probably right, and the control over that decision of silence is in fact intentional.

Calling out things does not win all hearts. If any.

One of the talks today was about an improvement project for *regression* perspective of version upgrade testing.

If I picked the facts right they:
- used 6 months of workshops to create sense of ownership and a key features checklist per domain expert group
- cut down effort of testing by 50%
- cut down number of found issues by 50%

Kind of less effort -> less results.

I think they were saying that ownership (with comfort-creating 'test cases') got people in the mindset that they would test less for regression purposes.

I felt like the amount of theatrics on basically time-boxing testing to smaller effort was heavy on this one.

While there are things I was trying not to day today even if I wanted to, I said some things I would rather not as soon as I said them.

I used a wrong name of a community colleague, completely mixing up two people. :msnshame:

I listened to a talk of a young professional, recognizing the positives she was said as things I was said when young. Growing up takes away some of those things. Seeing that pattern as someone with 20 more years was not the right thing to note in that moment, even if it was honest observation from having listened to someone with very similar place, but shifted back in time.

Thinking that new version is automatically regression testing seems to be a popular approach where we ignore naming if the real risks of change. We forget to pay attention to the new and valuable that comes in with a new version.

A year ago I built a proposal on testing when (if) we get to do this huge system integration thing. Yesterday it landed as ‘we now need someone to do what you planned - immediately’.

I had not heard anything in the meanwhile. Laughing how long the cycles of my work being successful can be in this scale.

Yesterday was speaker’s dinner for today’s testing conference, and I chose dinner with Koodia pinnan alta (Code under the hood) podcast guests instead. That’s one inspirational crowd with discussions on the greatest things the Finns build in technology.

Feeling great for having been a part of that story and on dinner’s since. This one was last as the podcast retires.

Today at track 2 where only one of the speakers got to the list of being looked forward to by track 1 chairman. Looks awfully gendered.

Men on the big room. Women on the little. And we are so equal we don't need to do anything about it. 🤦‍♀️

End of my interim fractional manager position for 12 cloud native developers. Handed them over end of business yesterday to a new manager that took 6 months to find, hire and start.

I’d like to think I left them better than I found them. Tallied quite nice growth in things they’ve now tried in AI, and they have no pending HR tasks of missed deadlines on feedback and stuff.

Feeling great for finishing assignments. Last week is was system to production, this week it’s this team.

Here's a thing I find myself explaining:

The fact that you are working on *this public material* is data that may not be public on a company.

Sometimes it is, other times it isn't. We need to have better conversations on classifying data about our actions, in addition to our data.

We got to talking about my spy scripts that collect up to date statistics about people in particular roles. Turns out that into a tester's 13 years in the company, fits 6 managers and 2 out of them that write scripts for their work: first and most recent. I wonder what that says about us.

When I asked for someone else this time, they give me someone else but a smaller stage. From 350 to 100. But I take that as better option than showing up to the track chair they clearly can't let go for our session.

Someone (again) used AI to "help" me fill my experiences into a client bid documentation. I wish they didn't. If they would have given me the empty template, I had structured way of working through my experiences that then generates the information needed.

Fixing someone else's AI slop is full time work.

I specialize in cleaning up messes. I guess that is what ‘testing’ really means. The state of business when it moves to me is often behind the expected level, even on the mundane and routine.

I have now exercised my right to ask for someone else twice for purposes of conference speaking.

Both times it is men who unintentionally make me feel uncomfortable. I have done it from the experiences with men who intentionally make me uncomfortable.

Do I regret asking to change people who I interact with on stage? Usually not. Would I if I didn't? Possible.

The power we have over things is very limited, and exercising any control over personal comfort other than walking away silently is most likely punished.