Some details here:

Thanks for taking the time to visit this page. The reason for the event is to raise money for the school that my son Tom goes to. As some of you may be aware, Tom has Cerebral palsy (CP) and he attends The Bridge school which is a school for children with severe / profound learning disabilities.

The Bridge School does some great work for kids with learning difficulties and from a personal perspective, I see the difference that it makes to Thomas. They are always looking for funding to help with the purchase of essential equipment, more information can be found at http://www.hadleylearningcommunity.org.uk/bridge.html

The challenge is the C2C bike ride that goes from Whitehaven to Sunderland via the Northern Lakes and then across the Pennines. A total of 140 miles will be covered in the weekend of the 26th/27th May. The team that has been assembled consists of the following:

Danny Crone (myself)
Ryan James
Steven Abrams
Paul Bottomley
Steve Price
Jarnail Chunge
Mark King
Steve Ellis
Jeff Grewal
Richard Florance
James Briers

Please, please, please sponsor us and help us raise money for a great cause. Will keep you all updated with Photos and Videos as the event gets underway.

If you want any more information about the event, then please visit http://cycle-challenge.co.uk/

Many Thanks,

Danny.

Why is it private? Because part of going on the course is to be challenged and if we gave away answers to things before someone attends then students won’t really get the value out of it.  If you would like to join, please tell us something that will prove that you have been on an RST course.  The answers so far have been quite fun, creative and interesting to read

If you qualify, join us!

We’re getting close now and spring is finally coming to Sweden. The biggest thing this spring, for me and the rest of the Let’s Test crew, is of course the very first Let’s Test conference. It’s a great experience putting this event together and the response we have received from the testing community had been truly amazing! The support we’ve been getting means a lot to us and it has really made a difference. Thank you all very much for your support!

It’s now more than a year ago the first idea for this came up as a result of someone asking the valid question: Why isn’t there a Context-driven themed conference in Europe? That was followed by a lot of agreement that boiled down to the fact that it’s a shame. Everyone was pretty much up for going to such an event and then someone said: Then why don’t we do it?

Eventually we did! Now it’s just around the corner!

We still have room for more delegates and we hope that if you’re not already registered you will soon. Two of the tutorials are full but we there are more to choose from and I’m sure you can find something to your liking. I was reading through the program the other day and I spontaneously said: I want to go to this! The presentations look great, the camp style event with everyone staying at the venue and speakers and delegates are all around. The Let’s TestLab and whole lot of other cool things, like Alan Richardson giving an extra evening talk on hypnosis,  happening after dinner. The facilitated discussions that are a vital part of each presentation. The testers! The people coming to Let’s Test are what I believe is the biggest asset, if you like, and the biggest part of why this will be a unique and absolutely amazing event. I would love to see you there! Come and be part of the very first Let’s Test conference and go back with a great experience. Not to mention the bragging rights for being one of the participants the very first one.

Ola Hyltén
Conference General – Let’s Test 2012

He’s Evil. And he wants your questions. If you come up with a successfully evil question, then it will get published with an evil response in the next issue of The Testing Planet!

We have a theme for the next issue, contributions are not restricted to this theme, so feel free to submit another topic if you feel it is of value.

The theme for the next issue is LEAN.

Perhaps you are a lean mean testing machine? Do you know something about lean testing? What is lean testing?  Does lean testing actually exist? What is this Lean Startup stuff and how does testing apply to it? How can testers become more lean? There are many questions to be answered…

Deadline for contributions is: 31st of May.

You can submit your articles here - http://www.thetestingplanet.com/submit-content/submit-an-article/

And if you have any questions or want to pass any topics or ideas by us, then do get in contact.

Thanks!

Open to

• the way we work
• the way we plan
• the things we offer
• change
• supporting the community
• making things work
• …you get the idea…

Mostly open to working towards what we believe are good things for the software testing community.

One of the things we are working alot on are training opportunities. This is through the Ministry of Testing. We hope to deliver some awesome face to face training opportunities. This is kind of bias towards the UK at the moment as it is still early days, but we do fully intend to cater for a wider audience – in one way or another.

Being bootstrapped we need to take baby steps and ensure we are doing the right thing.

One of the things we would love is for companies to come forward and sponsor places on our training courses. This could be done as a ‘marketing’ activity (e.g a competition) or done for other purposes such as wanting to give something back to the community – perhaps give a place to someone who is unemployed.

The options are there. And we are open to ideas. Please step forward – email rosie[at]softwaretestingclub.com

We’ve started a collection of photos of people reading The Testing Planet.  And we want your photos!

The best photo will get published in the next issue and the person in the photo will win a testing book of their choosing.

Enter by emailing me the photo (rosie [at] softwaretestingclub.com) or Tweeting it using @testingclub to bring it to our attention.

This is what we have so far…

I love what we are doing at the moment. Software Testing Club. The Testing Planet. The Ministry of Testing.  It’s pretty awesome to be able to do these things.  It is a full time job for me now, so it has to work in order for me to continue to grow the business and of course pay myself a meager wage to feed my 3 constantly hungry boys.

Last week was an important week. We had our first public course. The Rapid Software Testing one with James Bach.  And am pleased to say it was a success.  16 students, including myself, went through the challenges brought upon us.

I enjoyed the whole experience.  It was a challenging and thought provoking course, but also for me it was great to meet other testers.  It’s not just about delivering a course.  It’s about understanding who I am working with and figuring out what they actually want.  There’s nothing more that I want than to get a deep understanding of how we can help testers and the software testing industry advance.

I always have this constant fear that things won’t turn out. In this case, the fear of letting James down. The fear of not making the sales/numbers.  I don’t think this fear is a bad thing.  It is constantly pushing me forward to push my business creativity boundaries to ensure things work out well.

Overall, the feedback was positive.  A few points for improvement for future training courses, but all minor, and taken on board.

Stephen Janaway wrote a blog post about it.

The good news is that James will be back with us.  More news on that once we have final confirmation.

Next up is the TestBash.  Yes, I’m fearful about that one too, but only one week to go until it happens. Eek!

Things never go to plan, right?

We’ve just launched the latest issue of The Testing Planet, Issue Number 7.  w00t!

The actual production of it went pretty smoothly.  Lots of this was down to the smart decision of bringing on  board an extra editor.  The workload is pretty massive.  And the fact that we are hiring people to produce this lovely bit of work (of art) will hopefully show people that significant investment is required to get this off the ground.

I think we are off the ground, but are not flying yet.  More like hovering.  Hovering is good. Better than crashing

We’ve got some great ideas for the next issue

So we had wanted to create a fancy system where subscribers could log in, update their subscription profile, download digital versions, read online web versions, etc.  But in the end we have opted for a simple form submission process where subscribers get emailed or posted digital copies upon subscribing and paying.

It’s a bit of a relief as I had spent several weeks pulling my hair out over merchant accounts. Recurring revenue payments. PayPal. Oh, and VAT. The lovely VAT complications of when to charge. When not to charge.  It really feels more complicated than it should be.  But as a business we have to work within these rules.

It is frustrating, but at the same time it is a fun and educating business challenge to overcome.

We are currently working towards a better system.  I have no promises of when this will be delivered, but it is a priority for us, so hopefully some time this year we will have something more sophisticated set up.  Which will also mean we can get something up and running for Ministry of Testing too.

I don’t need to explain any of this, but I’ve had requests from people for more updates on how things are going.  I’m also consciously working towards being more open about how we operate.

Thanks all…and do subscribe to The Testing Planet!