Carnival of Testers #14

September, apples falling off of trees, picking apples, apple pie, lots of new apple sorts in the local shops, sometimes you make an interesting, tasty discovery. Autumn's here (for me), leaves on trees changing colour - lots of different shades and nuances - just like some of the blog posts this month....

Old Regulars

• The case for slack was an interesting topic from Markus Gärtner.
• Games, strategy and kids all rolled into one in Anne-Marie Charrett's post.
• A interesting perspective on estimations was provided by Lisa Crispin.

Taste Sensation

• If you've missed Elisabeth Hendrikson's piece on Agile wakeup call (backlash vs wakeup call), then go read it now.
• Zeger Van Hese made my day, no, week,with his cautionary message about delivering the message. It wasn't Zeger but the content that was delivered AT FULL VOLUME.
• And talking about things being broken (the delivery style in the previous case), Michele Smith highlighted this talk about things being broken - yes, I could see plenty of relations to my daily work. Can you?
• Marlena Compton came out of the testing closet this month. Have you?

Different Tastes?

• Test Framing was a new "term" to appear this month, with this post from Michael Bolton. BTW, Michael wrote a piece urging people to hire Ben Simo - but it doesn't need any plugs now :)
• A dip into the sub-concious and concious distinction was observed in Blink Comparator Testing by Simon Morley.
• Joe Strazzere made some good points about willingness to learn in testers, here.
• A fish baking story was the way Shrini Kulkarni asked a good question.

Colour Explosion

• A colourful post from a colourful tester. Was Dave Whalen testing with gumbo or gusto, or both?
• Gerald Weinberg pondered questions around SW projects hitting the wall.
• uTest posted an interview with James Bach which in itself made interesting reading, but if you haven't seen it then I'd encourage you to go and read the comments too!

Seasonal Favourites
Yes, there seems to be several conferences or meet-ups happening right now.

• Alan Page and his views on the different types of presentations. Cows? Didn't think he'd seen any of my work.
• Adam Goucher on the track vs keynote distinction. I can recognise elements of what they're both saying.
• A good round-up of SIGiST was provided by Stephen Hill.

New Discoveries
Nice to see some new apples (faces) this month.

• Darren McMillan used Jing to record an issue with Jing. I wasn't familiar with Jing but I am now, thanks.
• Off to a blogging bang with a very readable self-analytical piece from Lena Houser.

Did you notice I avoided bad, rotton and half-eaten apple metaphors? Oh, the temptation...

Until next time.