One year of blogging

29/11/2015 by Christian Kram | Filed in review, testing | Comments Off on One year of blogging

Oh, wow. It’s been one year since I started this blog and joined twitter. I guess that justifies some kind of retrospective.

Why did I actually start at all?

Last year I read the book Branding yourself by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Since I was kind of disappointed with my working situation at that time, I found the ideas presented there quite appealing, so I thought to myself “why not give it a try”. Well, not all ideas, but at least the ones about blogging and twitter. Did I establish myself as a brand? I don’t know and don’t really care too much. I got myself a new job in the meantime and will be joining a new company in March, so if that is your measure of success, I succeeded. But I don’t think it is really about establishing yourself as a brand. The main gain for me and why I keep on doing it, is learning, being exposed to new ideas and to boldly go where no man has gone before. Uhm, well, maybe just to go where I haven’t been before.

What has happened during the last year?

It was a busy year, that’s for sure. My focus at work has been shifting away a bit from testing since I took on my current role as a product owner. My interpretation of that role is still somewhat from a tester’s point of view. Besides work I tried to get my toes wet in testing topics as much as possible. My greatest input have been blogs and webinars. As for blogs I really like the rss feed at ministry of testing as it is quite comprehensive and lists blogs for all kind of testing aspects, which is a really great source of information. If I had to choose one blog that I liked reading most, it would probably Katrina Clokie’s, I really like her writing style and the content is splendid as well (and this is not to diminish all the other great writers out there). Ministry of testing is also a great resource for webinar in terms of the dojo presented there. Test huddle has nice webinars as well. But in general I try to keep an open eye on what is offered on twitter. There is really plenty out there. Talking about twitter, this has been a great resource for me. I try to be active, but sometimes I find it hard to have real discussions and it really seems that all the interesting discussions happen when I am either asleep or at work (and that are different times of the day!).

What I have really grown to appreciate is weekend testing europe. I couldn’t make all sessions, but those I joined were really cool and had dedicated people in there. Last but not least: I took the BBST foundations course and it didn’t disappoint me. Quite to the contrary. I already posted some figures about it (you know, basketball coaches and stats…) and will post a more comprehensive review in the near future.

What about the next year?

What really stands out for me (except from reverting back to testing jobwise) is visiting a testing conference. I visited some smaller local meetups or ASQF events, but judging from all the excited tweets and blogs, there seems to be more out there. So that is really on top of my list. And not just because of this:

Patrick Prill blogged about his first ever conference visit and that made me even more wanting to go there.

Number two on that list is taking another BBST course as I think that these are really worthwhile and support you at broadening your horizon.

I don’t know if I have to put it on such a list, but I am going to continue blogging as it really helps me rounding out my thoughts and ideas about certain topics.

No stats?

Okay, I admit it: I love stats! So here are the top three for some blog related categories:

Some comments on those stats. As far as countries are concerned there really is a big drop off after those with many countries with smaller numbers. I didn’t get the whole world map in the wordpress app colored yet, so that’s maybe a goal for next year. Or a bug: certain countries don’t work properly in there (hello, UK). The top posts differ in as far as the communication post has recieved quite some views when it came out, while the other two have a steady number of search engine hits. Among the least visited posts I would recommend the Teams post as the one that is most interesting and offers some insights on teams based on my coaching experience.

So, thanks for the first year and cheers to the next one!