Test Leadership Congress - Mind blowing experience

Test Leadership Congress 2019 - New York

I recently spent a week in USA attending The Test Leadership Congress conference. It was the first time, I conducted a tutorial in a conference in USA. So, let us look back at the whole experience from where it started.

Preparation - Background dots

Anna Royzman - the conference founder is a good friend of mine. We met at Agile Testing Days or at CAST - I am not sure but what matters is that she is the founder of two conferences - conTEST NYC and Test Leadership Congress and is a true leader. We have had multiple interactions over Skype and she helped me learn a lot about test leadership. So, I kept hearing about the conferences and there were multiple good reviews about the conference. Meanwhile, I had also attended Problem Solving Leadership workshop facilitated by Jerry Weinberg and Esther Derby in 2016. In the recent roles at multiple companies, I was handling key leadership roles. All of this dots connected well and I wanted to present the Problem Solving for Leaders and Managers at Test Leadership Congress. The proposal was accepted and I was all set to travel to New York for the first time. 

Acceptance and Marketing

Once the proposal was accepted, I was super excited and wanted to give it my best shot. I conducted multiple workshops in India on the same topic and was happy with how the audience liked the overall experience. With any conference, there is a lot of marketing just close to the conference dates and you get very less time to know the speakers. In this case, everything was well planned, in advance. There was a separate Slack channel created for the speakers. There was no push to get the slides in by a certain date. The information was passed to all the speakers in one email and it was slowly turning to be a huge gathering of close friends. What surprised me was the list of events before the actual events that the speakers could volunteer to be part of and get their brand visible. The hotel information was also provided well in advance. 

LinkedIn posts about each speaker were posted regularly and not bombarded. Individual attention was given to each speaker. You really wanted to know more about the speaker after reading the posts. Even before the conference started, you could sense that this conference was going to be a totally different experience.

Hotel and Speakers Attention

The hotel was 2 mins away from the conference venue and there was speakers dinner, reception and after party arranged for the three nights. There was individual attention on the speakers and any request was met with a standard - "Of course - it can be done" attitude. There were just three tracks. I am happy that there were just three - I will tell you soon, why!

There was not much of a crowd. You could sense that it was on purpose - every attendee got to meet/greet every other attendee at least once everyday. It helped break the barrier and know more about each other and share knowledge. Most of them were either test lead, director, team lead, qa manager helped as everyone was literally on the same boat. Guess what - the badge did not carry anything about company or designation. Just the name and an indication of whether you were a speaker or an attendee. It was just BRILLIANT. Talk about inclusion.

happy attendees

About Program

The topics were diverse. No one topic was repeated. The entire schedule was designed as if an artist had separated the silk strands and arranged it based on thickness and color. Such precision and judgement of which session should follow which other session and excellent diversity in terms of experience, context, first timer vs seasoned, country, gender, age, roles, designations and presentation styles. I had so much difficulty in choosing the track to attend not just once or twice but for the entire 2nd day - yes, the entire second day! Luckily, one of the tracks was recorded. There was no "You sponsored, get a slot and sell your product" kind of talk. Every talk was selection worthy. 

Reflect

People keep getting the questions in many conferences about which track has which talk and which room. In this case, everything was on Sched and the room number was clearly mentioned. Here is where attention to detail was highlighted. On the second day, when you clicked on Schedule to check, you would expect to see the first day schedule too and then scroll to the second day! In this case, it was updated to the closest hour. What an excellent user experience. Loved it.

About Conference

The entire conference started and ended on time. The wifi was excellent and there were lots of power slots available and end result - I could tweet without worrying about battery or internet. Many would agree to my points as they also tweeted happily. Check out the tweets here with #leadtest: Link My tweets are available at ajay184f 

Workshop collage

The simple stuff was brilliantly handled:
- Stick to schedule

- No sales pitches

- Excellent wifi and food
- Photographer to capture key memories

- No nonsense of speaker felicitation and wasting time

Last Day

The whole three tracks was now just one track for the last day. Looking back, there was talks, keynote, games, breaks, hallway discussions, group discussions, tutorials, performances. There were first timers, seasoned speakers, experts and plenty of networking opportunities. You could sense that whatever happened was the right thing to happen.

Happy

 If I have to summarise in one line - Jerry Weinberg would have been proud of this test leadership conference

Gratitude

Thank you to Anna for inviting me to the conference. Thank you to the program committee (I got to know who you are ;) ) for selecting my proposal. Thank you to the speakers who gave your best and made it a wonderful learning experience. Thank you to the attendees who trusted in all of us and made the whole experience beautiful for everyone. Thank you to all my well wishers!

Leia Mais…

Experience Report: Problem Solving: A Hands-On Workshop

Participants of the first Problem Solving: A Hands-On Workshop
LtoR: Sivabalan, Dinesh, Vinod, Sandeep, Aneesh, Ajay, Jyothi, Parmesh, Sagar.
Deepti had left early.

I don't remember when I asked Jyothi if she would be interested in doing a workshop together, but I am happy that I asked. It was in the second week of July and we decided that we will have the workshop on Aug 15th. There were multiple Skype calls, lots of comments exchanged on Trello, multiple files shared on Google Drive and we met on the day of workshop - thanks to internet!

So, we were the trainers and we had partnered with ManuMantra.com

Few things I learned/relearned from this workshop:

Never Give Up
Our first call did not happen as scheduled. The Trello board was inactive for a week. There was just one registered participant till a week before the workshop date. We had not yet finalised the slides and exercises for the workshop. Few days before the workshop, we got to know about Jerry's demise. I was in my last week of my notice period. There were multiple things going on at the same time. Some drastic measures were taken and the workshop was successfully conducted! This entire workshop experience will be one of the reminders for me that if we persist hard enough, impossible will become possible.

Differences can be resolved if we have the right attitude
Jyothi and I seem to have contrasting styles in how we prepare for a workshop and how we present. I am someone who mostly flows with the flow and waits for the last minute till I get that one brilliant idea. Jyothi seems to be someone who is more organised than me, likes to rehearse every detail and be prepared. Every word on her slide was powerful and my slides had more images than words. If someone had looked at our slides, they would have thought that we were preparing for two different workshops. We did not have many arguments - our goal was to create a good experience for the audience. We did not hesitate to let go of our work and vote for each other's work.

Partnership based on trust is beautiful
Each one of us (Jyothi, myself and ManuMantra) trusted each other and result was just brilliant. All the pieces just fit the overall workshop puzzle so well that I myself was surprised on some occasions. Certificates not yet ready - no problem - ready on time. Handout not ready - let us use the lunch break and finalise - Projector showing a blue tint, use cello tape and fix it.

What audience learned
To be honest, I did not anticipate what would the audience learn. Whenever I talk about problem solving, I go into a peaceful mode. Maybe, I start thinking about Jerry Weinberg and the whole class where we talked, argued, learned, observed problems and their solutions. So, towards the end of the workshop - when we asked the audience to share what they learned, we were surprised to know that some of them got solutions to their problems and some got confidence to solve their problems. Nothing gives the workshop instructors more happiness than seeing participants leave the workshop, satisfied and energetic to apply the lessons.

And it was a good start. Time for more workshops.

The next one is bit.ly/mobtestworkshop - Mobile Testing Workshop at Bangalore

followed by http://gtr.agiletestingalliance.org/workshop.html#workshop3 - Problem Solving Techniques for the New Leaders/Managers at Pune

Leia Mais…

Problem Solving Leadership - Part 1 of N (N could be 1 too)

As you can see, it is an email I sent to Esther in 2010 asking for details about the Problem Solving Leadership. I kept trying year after year to check if the cost came down. The good thing is that they have not increased the cost more than 2800 USD. It looks like it has always been 2800 USD since 2010 and maybe before that too.

2800 USD + Flight cost to USA from India + Accommodation + Food + Local transportation = Huge $$$. I could not afford it. I had multiple opportunities where I had to give them 14 hours and I would be paid a lot of money. I kept rejecting them. I stuck to those jobs that let me go home after 8 hours and also let me practice my skills. The jobs that let me participate in workshops, buy me books, send me on week long leaves to conferences and be myself.

While some of my colleagues started earning more money but were unknown to the world, I got some good mentors and friends all over the world. I kept going to conferences, spending my money on workshops, courses, books, licenses, mobile devices. I was working on my reputation as a good tester. Slowly, I was invited to present at conferences, called to conduct workshops, advise testers and it was all going good.

I had taken workshops/courses from Rahul Verma, Pradeep Soundararajan, Matt Heusser, Peter Walen, Fiona Charles, James Bach, Jon Bach, Michael Bolton, Cem Kaner since I started my testing journey ten years ago. Many recommended Jerry Weinberg's books. I also liked them when i read them. In fact, I liked them to the extent that I used to quote his words in personal life too.

I wanted to meet him. I also asked him if he conducted PSL workshop online and his reply was a No. I changed jobs and thereby got an opportunity to attend the PSL workshop this June. Even though everything was in place, I had my own fears - will I be sent back from airport for some issue with the documents? will I have to travel back due to any emergency? Will my flight be hijacked and I take a bullet to save someone and many more such crazy stuff as I could not believe that I would be able to attend PSL without any issues.

Finally, I arrived and I went to the hotel and was very excited about attending the workshop the next day. I was ready by 7 am and the workshop would start only by 9 am. I kept waiting outside the wrong room for an hour before I confirmed the exact room and went there.
There were already few people waiting. I smiled at them and got myself a seat. Esther soon came to the room and my eyes were still on the entrance waiting for Jerry.

And once Jerry came and the time was 9 am, the workshop officially started.

There were five full days of intense workshop followed by half day of introspection and some of us went to a nearby peak and had an awesome time on the Sky Tram.

 

What did we do during the five full days?
We had many explicit exercises which tried to emphasize

• Observation
• Team work
• Personality types
• Leadership models
• Running a startup
• Problem solving
• Consulting 
• Fish bowl
• Lot of sharing what we learned as individuals and as a team. 

Sharing the exact workshop contents would not do justice to both - the trainers and the readers. One has to experience the workshop to feel the lessons. It is also interesting to know that each individual comes to the workshop with different set of expectations. Some want to know more about themselves, some want to hone particular skills, some want to know where they can improve (and not necessarily improve in the same week), some want to just absorb everything and some come just to have a break from their routine.
I was someone who went to learn more about myself and I realized that I learned a lot about others and how my actions affect others!!! Some interactions were eye-openers in their own terms and I also had the opportunity to see others full of passion / raw emotion and bringing their true self in the open.
There were opportunities to dive deep and get what you want. There were opportunities that made you feel stupid temporarily and it seemed to follow the golden rule (according to me for any workshops): You get as much as you put in. You put in a lot of effort, you get a lot of learning. You just skim through the workshop experience and you can get just that - the top layer - you might like it or hate it.

So, the next few months to start with, should be interesting. The participants of the workshop have promised to support each other. Sometimes, the workshop enthusiasm dies down after few weeks but I have a strange feeling about this one. This kind of teaches skills for life as it focuses more on problems which never go away and then on people who seem to be the ultimate creators of any problem :)

Till next time, "We will deal with it!!!"

Leia Mais…