by Yicela Cordoba
I am a Colombian woman very passionate about the topics of QA and software development. I have 10 years of experience in testing and I am always interested in attending new events that allows me to learn new trends and contribute my knowledge about QA.
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a job offer and this was successful for me at Huge, an advertising agency of Brooklyn creating digital solutions for many clients in the United States. Huge has an office in Medellin, Colombia where I live currently. I am so happy at Huge because I can learn a lot and practice different types of testing like Exploratory testing, mobile testing, automation testing, and accessibility with agile methodology that allow me to have successful results.
Due to my level of English comprehension, I proposed to improve my level and I requested to study license abroad, unpaid for 6 months. I decide to go to San Francisco to study because it is a city where I can have many experiences related to technology. It was the most amazing experience of my life.
In San Francisco, I did a lot of networking with people such as testers, developers, project managers, and scrum masters through the group in Meetup. I attended many events and conferences related to technology and innovation. I participated in a scholarship with the Girl Develop It team for Latin people living in San Francisco. I won the scholarship and I attend a Slack company program to learn HTML and CSS. I created my first web page. I met and shared knowledge with many talented people.
While I was studying in San Francisco I was looking for new events related to testing, but I did not find any event about testing in San Francisco. One day I was reading my twitter about and I read a tweet from Ministry of testing. I asked myself why I didn’t find it there before. I spend many hours reading and I was impressed with a lot of content about testing.
While I was exploring the website, I read about TestBash, the big conference about testing which would take place in San Francisco. It was my good luck that I was living in San Francisco, like I mentioned before. When I looked at the conference date, I noticed that it would take place in November. I was so sad because I wanted to attend but my trip back to Colombia would be at the end of September.
With all the hope of participating, I read all the information about the scholarship and I proceeded to write to Richard Bradshaw (@FriendlyTester), who after some weeks gave me the great news about my request being accepted. I was so happy, although I worried about my trip. I didn’t have money to travel again to San Francisco, but I had a lot of desire to attend this big event. Finally, I could to found the money for the ticket from Colombia to San Francisco just for 3 days. I wrote to Richard to confirm I would attend TestBash.
The event was amazing, the people, the talks, the services, the gifts and all-inclusive were incredible for me. Â I had never been to an event so important to me.
I learned a lot about the talks, such as mobile testing, automation testing, bug handling, generating test data (It was amazing), test in production, AB- testing, new tools to test, testing front-end - back-end and learned more about regression tests.
"The 99-second talks", to me, was one of the coolest parts of the TestBash conferences. Anyone - speaker, organizer, or attendee - can get up on the stage and talk for 99 seconds about any topic they like. I very much liked the talk from Ash Coleman (@AshColeman30). It was amazing!!! After TestBash, I was inspired and motivated.
This has been an incredible experience for me. I want to thank all the people that made it possible Ministry of Testing, Richard Bradshaw, Angie Jones, Ash Coleman and The Ministry of Testing Scholarship Fund. It was incredible to meet with QA’s from around the world. I enjoyed and learned a lot.
After participating in this experience, I want to be the ambassador of the testing community in my country, to transmit all the knowledge acquired and have the possibility to continue connecting with thousands of talented testers in Latin America. Together we will be able to grow the Ministry of Testing community and generate connections and value for our beautiful profession.
I appreciate all the help you gave me with the scholarship and the great opportunity to meet very talented people and learn a lot. Thank you for all your generosity, support, encouraging, talented, determined, and passionate community members.
See you at the next TestBash :)
Author Bio
Yicela Cordoba is an experienced QA engineer who is passionate about the topics of QA and software development and learning new things. For the past 10 years, she has been focused on a variety of applications - from small mobile applications and e-commerce websites to big enterprise e-banking solutions.
Yicela Cordoba graduated from Faculty of System Engineering, University of Autonoma Occidente. She has an MBA in project management director from University Viña Del Mar and she is certified as PMP. Currently works as a QA analyst at Huge.
You can contact her on LinkedIn.
