2020 labelled as the remote year, where the spread of covid-19 virus was a huge problem that threatens the whole humanity, which influenced people’s plans, programs or even their jobs. As software testers living in an agile world we should know how to deal with complex problems and adapt to every new unexpected event that could occur.
I’ll tell you my experience, how most of my plans changed and how I tried to enjoy the year although the uncommon situation, the uncertainity and maintaining the same vibes independently from the pandemic effect.
New Definition of Conferences
I wanted to participate in more agile and testing conferences this year, for that I prepared plans to travel to Milano and NYC this year to speak at 2 international conferences but unfortunately, due to the world pandemic, one is cancelled and the other one TEST LEADERSHIP CONGRESS was done in remote mode. It was also a great new experience with lots of learning from the global testing community while staying at home.
I also got the chance to attend to more online conferences TESTBASHHOME, AGILE TESTING DAYS, PARIS TEST CONF…
In december 2020, I was invited into a hybrid conference version at ENISo in their Hackthon. It was a great experience coaching teams of students in their ideas and to speak about “What students need to know about software testing in their career?“
From Testing to Coaching
This year was different for me as I started new chapter in my career which is moving from testing software to coaching software testing and scrum related modules to my software tester colleagues.
Testing Community Meetups
I organized 3 Ministry of Testing Meetups that are different from last year meetups
- 1 on-site event: MoT Sfax Meetup #5: Optimizing QA practices through BDD larger in size and with speakers coming from abroad.
- 2 online events: #TestersVirtualCoffee, it was a very nice opportunity to meet the global community and discuss testing thoughts live.
Thank you everyone for supporting our community events this year although it wasn’t trivial to make both onsite and online events that unify the global and local testing community.
- I spoke at Women In Testing Meetup organized by Ministry of Testing Athens, Greece
Started Blogging
Yes ! It was 2020 target 🙂 and achieved with success more than expectations.
I decided to create my own domain and start blogging, I removed all barriers and started it at the beginning of the year.
- “Tester Story” is a new category in my blog, containing interviews that aims to inspire testers in their career. I got the chance to collaborate with many testers around the world and we shared together inspiring stories.
Honestly the pandemic and stay at home mode helped me a lot to make a considerable progress !
Read, Contribute and Initiate Books
It was an occasion to read new books, to share my story “Starting your journey as a tester” in Viv Richards book, “80 testers around the world” and “The joy of remote mode” in Stephan and Maik book gathering stories from testers around the world while working remotely “Software people work from home”
Even more, Ard Kramer and I started an initiative wondering how testers are using the 4C called “21st Century Skills”? and what is the future of those skills? It will be published soon 🙂
Learning the art of Sketchnoting
Last year, I discovered sketchnoting in which participants take beautiful notes while listening to conferences. I decided to discover in depth this skill in me and improve it. I defined a hashtag #emnanotes to see my progress.
Travelling via Food instead of Plane
Travelling is my passion N°1, since 2016 my first year working, I started exploring the world at least 2 countries per year. This is the frequency I’m used to. This year was different and my plans to Milano and NYC were cancelled, but we have to adapt to the situation, our health is more important.
For that, I got the idea to explore the world virtually via food ! where I created a food instagram @emnafoodies the idea is to travel with food and inspire future travellers what food they shouldn’t miss while traveling in the future to different countries.
Pictures are both of my previous trips and also new ones of chocolates I bring from many places around the world. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to know more about this virtual tour of food 🙂
Best Wishes for 2021
Wish you a very successful new year full of great achivements looking forward for what 2021 can bring
Emna Ayadi 