Beware The Pickle - Beren Van Daele & Ard Kramer

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Ard Kramer's profile
Ard Kramer

Beren Van Daele's profile
Beren Van Daele

Businessman

Beware The Pickle - Beren Van Daele & Ard Kramer image
Talk Description

Beware the Pickle (An experience report by Ard Kramer & Beren Van Daele)

Cucumbers get more pickled than brine gets cucumbered. - Prescott’s Pickle Principle

What happens when you travel across Europe in search of ‘The Ultimate Test Story? Well… We’ve done just that! 10 workshops across Poland, Romania, France, the UK, The Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal,... Can you imagine the kinds of experiences, learnings and tales we’ve encountered? We can’t either, yet we were there to hear it for ourselves.

To be fair, we’ve only just recuperated from a period of figuring out what exactly we were part of: A whole year of being baffled by testers that trump each other with unbelievable story after unbelievable story. What exactly can you learn from the guy that sent a few hundred packets of household items to his neighbours,... by mistake? What exactly is there to think about the woman who opened the prisoners’ doors of section D by accident…. every night at 10 pm? With this talk, you’ll find out.

Firstly, we’ve learned that TestSphere is an excellent tool to get people mingling and talking about testing and secondly that testers are a curious and diverse bunch, who are exceptionally hard to define. Yet that’s exactly their strength!

We’ve listened to your stories, recorded the best ones and tried to find patterns in what makes a tester; a tester. The lessons we drew from all this, we’d love to share with you: Grand stories, peculiar experiences and the great secret of what binds us testers together.

Every one of our talks will be different as we offer several videos of the top storytellers of our workshop, yet we only show a subset of these during any one talk. Which ones will be up to you. Our storytellers, from across Europe, will guide us to explain:

  • The impact a tester has on her environment;
  • How the environment impacts the (im)possibilities of a tester;
  • The value of being a tester;
  • How testers differ from each other;

 

We offer the attendees insight into the uniqueness of testers, how their biggest power stems from being different, thinking different and acting different. In a world where conformity, repetition and colouring between the lines is worshipped, testers provide the much needed alternative point of view. Dare to be different. Aim to be different and beware the subtle tools of assimilation. Beware The Pickle.

Take-aways:

  • Help you to identify what is unique to you and how to use that as your strength
  • Hear diverse top stories by real practitioners
  • Gain insight in the diversity that the test community embodies
What you’ll learn

By the end of this talk, you'll be able to:

  • TBA
Ard Kramer's profile'

Ard Kramer

I am a software tester from the Netherlands and I am working for Alten Nederland since 2008. I call myself a Qualisopher which stands for someone “who loves truth and wisdom and at the same time is decisive to improve man and his environment” . This means I am interested in the world around us, to see what I can learn and I can apply in software testing. That is one of the reason why I tell stories in books and at (test) conferences such as EuroSTAR, Expo:QA, Belgium Testing Days, CAST and Testnet conferences. My dream is to participate, as a good qualisopher, in all kind of projects such as sports, culture or software testing. Projects which add value to our community: I want to inspire other people by cooperation, fun and empathy and hopefully bring light in someone's life.

Beren Van Daele's profile'

Beren Van Daele

Businessman

I lead a company: Isle of IT

Together with like-minded people who value communication and transparency above all else, we wish to grow a company that enables people to be themselves. Experts to the outside, a fellowship on the inside.
Each member has the freedom to pursue their own merit, whatever that looks like, while also bearing a responsibility to the continuation and growth of the company. With full transparency, we aim to facilitate communication between members to find a balance that makes sense for themselves.

I am a Consultant:
I am a consultant who shapes software delivery teams to improve on their work and their understanding of quality. Once a Software Tester, sometimes a Product Owner, I travel around, meeting software crafters all across Europe to learn from and teach.

I create things:

  • TestSphere, a testing card game that inspires and supports knowledge sharing
  • RiskStorming, a workshop that focusses the team on quality and risks
  • RiskStormingOnline.com is RiskStorming for the remote world.

I do conferences:

  • BREWT is peer workshop for testers. (organiser)
  • ITMatters is a conference for Diversity and Inclusion in IT (support)
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Tags

  • continuous-learning
  • diversity