Real Time Online Training With Kids
Just like everybody else, I am at home and trying to work. Why trying? Because I have my husband here and my three kids, and everyone of them has different reactions to physical distancing. We try to go for a walk each day, but… let’s be honest – we fail, just because we hate the idea of limitations. Some of us suffer a lot, because they can not do their favourite thing, like gliding, canoeing, graffiti, meeting with friends or going to school, and then they make me suffer by complaining and whining. I am doing my best, but I am only a human! Talking about school… – they send us tasks and homework every single hour!!! I am overacting, but this makes me so angry! I was looking forward to homeschooling my kids (in Germany it is forbidden), but this is not homeschooling – we cannot choose the topics, depth of it nor speed.
I am in the middle of all this – calming down others and myself, helping with school stuff, cooking and yes – working. Why am I telling you all of this?
Because of all this craziness I cannot work more then 4-5 h/day and any time anyone can interrupt me with something (signs don’t help, angry faces don’t help as well). So I thought – I am not alone in this! The whole world is physically distancing, so there could be people, who still want to use time and learn something, but have similar challenges to mine. So the idea was born – I am offering trainings in agile (Agile Testing for Whole Team), software testing (ISTQB FL) and requirements (IREB) for people, who take care of somebody, but still can arrange to study real time, in small groups in 1-1,5h sessions, totally 4-5h/day. If it was usually a 3-day training, which is around 20 h, then we will stretch it over 4-5 days. We will have small groups. something between 3-4-5 people, that we agree on sessions and breaks.
I am running this offer together with trendig, we call it Parents Special. Of course if you do not have kids, but would prefer to have shorter training sessions, you are welcomed to join. Only condition – be nice if another participant or the trainer gets interrupted and we have to make an unplanned break. We are doing our best, but this is not normal HomeOffice. This is CHO (short for CoronaHomeOffice)! Life happens while we are on video call and sometimes we cannot postpone it.
If you have any other questions, I am here to answer them all.
Comment Challenge
Week ago I observed twitter conversation about commenting on testing blogs. It started with Patrick’s tweet that he read 25 blog posts. Wow! Right? But than Danny asked him, how many comments Patrick wrote. Zero.
I met Patrick few weeks ago, he is really nice guy! But this is not about Patrick, it is about habit. Ask me, how many comment did I leave last weeks? Zero! Why? Mostly I like what I read, it makes me think, it gives me new ideas, new approach for my issues. So why not to prize it, why not to tell it to the author? First excuses what come up in my mind – it takes time and effort. Better to read another blog post, than to think what exactly moved me. Some kind of fast-food reading. Do I want to be fast-food reader?
And than Geir had that idea of 1 comment per week. No matter that commenting idea in testing community is not new, any how it does not stick. Several before tried to kick it off. I get much inspirations from Rosie, but her community challenge last summer I missed out. This year SheyMouse talked about it in his TestBash 99 seconds talk. It is so easy – just one comment in every seven days. So this is it – I challenge myself to comment at least once per week!
Since it was already a week ago, I can report my first results :)
Good that I took that tiny habit workshop few month ago. Few things what I learned there are:
Of course I link it with post reading. So now when I am reading, I weight it. If I would comment, what would I write? What exactly I like? What exactly I think I can use in my cases? Last week I commented on three blog posts. They were not the smartest comments, but I am learning and on my way to improve it. Join me! Together we are better.