Dragons Out

On autumn 2020, I'm running a campaign where for each sold three copies of the Finnish version of the Dragons Out book I will donate one book to Finnish schools. For the English version of the book, I don't have a possibility of extra donation, but you can donate some of the books you buy to your local school.You could buy books for yourself, your child, friends, colleagues, stakeholder groups, anyone! Of course, you could also buy books directly for your local school. Deadline for the Finnish donation campaign is Oct 20, 2020, although you can, of course, preorder books also after that. Preorders by Dec 9, 2020, will be in time before Christmas. Why not make this year's Christmas present a nice Dragons Out testing & fantasy book? The publishing date of the Finnish book is Dec 1, 2020, so I'll be able to get the books to you in time for Christmas deliveries.For the English donation campaign, you can also preorder, but my publisher in the UK has not yet confirmed th…

A month ago I promised to give away one free ticket to EuroSTAR, where I will speak about Encouraging Children into Testing. I have now drawn the winner out of those who shared that post. The lucky winner is Outi Meriläinen. Congratulations! Time to celebrate a bit!I have chosen the Dragons Out book extract for this blog article respecting the congratulations. Here goes!Amid the trees, Laura and Tom congratulated each other and Cho. The plan seemed to work. This dragon seemed to be tolerant of humans, and it seemed kind. They discussed how to get the dragon to follow them to the village. If the dragon received one deer at a time, but at gradually longer intervals, it would probably be able to follow the path thus formed. Will and Jack would be able to hunt enough deer if they needed five per day. They decided it was worth a try!A few hours later, the dragon had eaten the deer. It saw Will on horseback, carrying one of the deer. Will waited for the dragon to notice him and then rode t…

I will speak at Romanian Testing Conference RTC Online https://romaniatesting.ro/ on September 30th, 2020. I'm thrilled to be sharing my views on how software testing can be a great learning experience for children. I also get to talk about the journey of creating the Dragons Out book.You can join, too. Just register at the conference web site!The conference is themed around superheroes, so my Dragons and Knights theme fits in nicely - the children in the book become sort of superheroes of the fantasy world. They turn out to be among the best dragon experts. Or in testing terms, regular users get into testing so much that they turn into experts themselves!As always, I remind you that you can preorder the book using the contact form of this blog. Also, please share the news about the upcoming book with others, or let me know some child or testing education related contacts and I'd be happy to contact them myself.As for the book extract of the day, and keeping with the hero the…

EuroSTAR offers me one giveaway ticket to EuroSTAR online testing conference on November 17-19, 2020. I will give it away to one of you, who will share this blog post in their social media networks. You'll remember that I will speak about How Children Learn Testing Through Stories at EuroSTAR on Wednesday, Nov 18. You can find the description of my talk here.
I'll make a random draw amongst the people who shared this post in their LinkedIn or Twitter accounts. You'll need to include my LinkedIn or Twitter name so I'll learn about this : ). I'll do the draw on August 14 and inform about the winner through another blog post.
The Dragons Out book about software testing for children is currently in tech edit. The English version is at publisher Austin Macauley and the Finnish version is at publisher Avain. The Finnish version has a planned release date of December 1, and the English version is hopefully around the same time, but to be confirmed.
You can preorder the book …

On the beautiful summer day, we decided that now is the time to celebrate the fact that Dragons Out book has both English and Finnish publishers. The English publisher Austin Macauley was chosen in March and the Finnish publisher Avain in June. Both have all the necessary texts and illustrations for taking the work towards the published book. Now we just wait and take a moment to enjoy the progress so far.
Well, there will be more to do, of course. Reviews of proofreading and design. Plenty of marketing to do on many forums. There's the blog to write. There's another school donation campaign to arrange (remember last autumn many companies funded the book by preorders that they will donate to schools for students to read). I'll continue the campaign come this autumn. Stay tuned.
And as a reminder, share the book project with your network! And preorder either the English or Finnish version by contacting me via the contact form : ).
Below the author Kari Kakkonen and illustrator…

I am glad to announce that I have signed the publishing contract for the Finnish version of Dragons Out book! The considerations took place on their own pace over winter, but finally, I was able to choose out of three publishing options and chose Avain. They have a great variety of children's books, professional books and educational books - and are thus a great fit for my book.
The Finnish Dragons Out will be published as a hardcover book only. Those few who chose an electronic book will get a hardcover book instead or can choose the English electronic book.
The publishing date of the Finnish book is before Christmas, currently set to Dec 1st, 2020, so the book makes an excellent Christmas present for any thoughtful parent or company. You can already preorder from me using the contact form on this site. I really appreciate anyone making up their minds early on as it will diminish some of the uncertainty that exists now in Covid-19 times.
The publishing date of the English book is no…