Possible Discounts for Conference Adjacent Engagements!

I am booked to speak at several international conferences during the remainder of this year where I have availability immediately before and/or after to conduct consulting/training for companies or groups local to the conference. Any cost savings I realize by extending my trips (as opposed to making completely separate trips) will be passed on to paying clients. I'm looking forward to working with the folks who take advantage of this rare opportunity.

Specifically, I am available to the "first signed" clients for the following dates in the following locations:

• September 9-13 and/or September 18-20; in/around Prague,Czech Republic (before/after Agile Prague)  
• October 7-11; in/around Sydney, Australia (before iqnite)
• October 22-25; in/around Waterloo, Canada (after Targeting Quality)
• October 28-November 1 and/or November 11-15; in/around Malmö, Sweden (before/after Øredev)

If you are even mildly interested in engaging me during one of these blocks, please email me immediately. I expect them to fill quickly.

If you are not sure of what services I offer, you can check out the PerfTestPlus website, or take a look at my most commonly requested and (reportedly) valuable offerings below. There are, of course, other services I'd be happy to provide. If you don't see what you are looking for, please contact me and ask.

Lessons from NEXT2012 in Romania

I often see folks blogging about what they learned, were inspired by, or impressed them about attending an event. it is far less often when I see a headliner, or promoted presenter blog about the lessons they learned or what inspired or impressed them after the event. I've often wondered why that is.

For me, it has a lot to do with needing to quickly shift gears upon completing an event to catch-up on all the things that I put off to prepare for the event, figure out what immediate stuff landed in my inbox while I was ignoring it, and to follow-up on leads, lessons, inspirations and curiosities from the event itself.

Well, I'm going to make a concerted effort to do better about posting my lessons from events, starting with NEXT2012, hosted by SoftVision, held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Oct. 26-27
So, what were my take-aways from NEXT2012?

• I'm *really* excited about how I'm now organizing and packaging my performance-related materials (more on that in a separate post).
• SoftVision did a fantastic job organizing and handling logistics.
• I am seriously impressed with the people I interacted with on both a professional and technical level.
• Those same people are social, collaborative, friendly and are able to enjoy their work and create enjoyable work environments while being professionally and technically impressive.
• Romania (as well as several surrounding areas not widely considered "software/technical powerhouses") is an emerging market worth watching.

Training Performance Testers in Romania

Later this month, I'm headed to Cluj, Romania to deliver 2 days of performance testing related training, day 1 is conference style, day 2 is workshop style. I'm kind of excited about this, not *just* because I've never been to Romania, but because of the interaction I've had up to this point with the group organizing the event. The English version of the event webpage is http://conferinta.softvision.ro/en/

Context-Driven School (of thought): "I'm not dead yet... I feel happy!"

This is Part III in a series of entries related to the following quote from the "about page" of context-driven-testing.com hosted by Cem Kaner:

"...However, over the past 11 years, the founders have gone our separate ways. We have developed distinctly different visions. If there ever was one context-driven school, there is not one now..."

If you haven't done so already, I recommend starting with:

• Part I: Is Testing Dead? Dunno, but the Context-Driven School Is 
• Part II: With the Context-Driven School "closed" what's next?

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Ok, so maybe not "happy" but I couldn't resist the Monty Python reference.

James Bach stated on his latest blog update (Context-Driven Testing at a Crossroads):

"I’m the last of the founders of the Context-Driven School, as such, who remain true to the original vision. I will bear its torch along with any fellow travelers who wish to pursue a similar program."

10 Take Aways from STP Summit on Metrics

I had the pleasure of hosting the third Online Summit, delivered by Software Test Professionals: Deliver Value with Testing Metrics: Move Beyond the Myth.  The online summit format consists of 3 sessions each for 3 consecutive days.  The sessions for this summit were:

• My Testing Metrics Allergy – Dawn Haynes
• The Math Behind the Lies – Doug Hoffman
• Change the Questions for More Valuable Answers  – Scott Barber
• Controversies in Quality Metrics – Yvette Francino
• Telling The Testing Story – Fiona Charles
• More "T" and Less "BS" – Jon Bach
• A New World: Metrics That Really Count – Harry Robinson
• Risk Metrics & Reporting – Julie Gardiner
• Top Take Aways  – Scott Barber  
• Speaker Panel – Scott Barber, Fiona Charles, Jon Bach, Doug Hoffman, Harry Robinson, Yvette Francino

One of my duties as host was to try to summarize the most valuable nuggets of information from across all of the presentations into a "top take aways" list.  This is what I came up with:

Scott's Top 10 Take Aways from: