Dragons Out

The big Christmas campaign of Finnish Dragons Out books for Christmas, and topping up the school donation numbers, was a great success. I continued the campaign also in January just a bit with the remains of my preorder stock. Now all of that is exhausted, and I have just some copies for later use left. Thanks to all the 21 donating companies and associations. Thanks all who purchased from me so that I could also donate personally to schools (one donated book per three sold books). Thanks to the 59 schools who were enthusiastic to receive donations! For further purchases of the Finnish Dragons Out book, I would invite you to use my publisher's webshop here .  If you still want to donate, you can always buy a few books and take them to a local school. I'd appreciate learning the names of the schools from you so that I can add them to the list of donation recipients that I'm gathering for the Ministry of Education. The Minister is a very busy person but his personal secretary

It's great to get reviews and articles in different newspapers and websites. The latest ones to tell about the world about the Dragons Out book - bringing software testing to children - are Dimensio-magazine and Kakkonen Family association. Dimensio-magazine is the MAOL's official magazine, bringing out topics important for all math teachers. They ran an interview with me already a year ago, and now they did a book review of the Dragons Out book. Tuomo Riekkinen from MAOL ry read the book and wrote many kind words in his book review here:  Dragons Out - lohikäärmesatuja nuorille . Kakkonen Family association is the family research association of Kakkonen Family, so it was great to get my story there, to tell everyone what yet another Kakkonen has accomplished. The article is here . And only a week before I was on the front-page of Keski-Häme newspaper - or rather one of the dragons from book illustration by Adri Szell was there. It was a great piece about book donations to scho

The New Year has started well for Dragons Out books. The book donation of 30 books to Tuulos Elementary School made front-page news in Keski-Häme newspaper. I drove to the school personally to hand out the books and discuss the book and learning software testing with Principal Antti Lamminpää of the School. I was pleasantly surprised to find the Keski-Häme journalist present to interview both of us. It would have been nice to see how kids react in getting the books, which was what I and the Principal planned originally, but the increase in Covid-19 cases spoiled that plan. Well, this was nice, too! Well done Mikko Kaloinen Foundation, who donated these books to Tuulos school! My humble thanks. You can read the scan of the article at the end of this blog post, in Finnish. Link to Keski-Häme article is here . Other news - my preorder stock of Finnish Dragons Out books is almost sold out. There are some copies left, and if you (or your company) buy them from me, you still get to participa

I am inviting more ICT-companies (and individuals, of course) to participate in the Finnish donation campaign. Now is the last stage of the campaign as I am in discussion with the Finnish Ministry of Education about finding a time slot to hand out a Diploma of Donated Books to the Minister of Education. It would be grand to have a really impressive list of companies in that diploma. You can help! I have some books left in the preorder stock of Finnish books, so just order books at  https://www.dragonsout.com/p/preorder-dragons-out-book.html  and you'll participate in the donation! Thanks to my employer Knowit for issuing the donation challenge earlier - now, let's finalize it! Consequently, I'm also inviting more schools to make use of the donations. So far it has been mostly grades 4-9 in various schools and some coding clubs which have taken the book and the supporting teaching material into use. The form for expressing interest to receive donations is at  https://www.dra

I got the kind permission from Antti Niittyviita to publish this interview for his #AamuQaQa podcast even before he's released it. Isn't that awesome : ). You'll get a nice tuned-up version there, of course, but here in YouTube is the raw truth of Antti interviewing me, Kari Kakkonen, the fresh newly-published author of the Dragons Out! book's Finnish edition. We discuss how the book will transform the thinking of children and adults about software testing, through fantasy stories, and the creative process of authoring a book. We discuss time management, lists and calendars. We ponder what drives the creativity, is it lists of ideas, free time or what! We discuss the best fantasy books of all times. The interview was lots of fun, which you can feel, I'm sure. Enjoy! For those bug hunters out there note how Zoom apparently plays a bug on us... no, it's a feature, of course, LOL #softwaretesting #childeducation #books #childrensbooks www.dragonsout.com

 Another milestone achieved! The Finnish publishing event was held today as an online event. If you wanted glamour and champagne... well, it was there. I think Adri's great illustration on the slides gave plenty of glamour, and also the achievement of getting the book out and getting plenty of great feedback has glamour of their own sort. As for the champagne, well, I opened my bottle of Prosecco and others did the same remotely. Still, raising a glass to the camera only doesn't feel the same as celebrating together and making toasts. Well, I have a good reason to organize another publishing party once this Covid-19 is over.  I'm very thankful for the publisher Avain  for believing in me and facilitating the birth of the book as well as for Adri for the great illustration - check out some more of her work here . Special thanks go of course also to all the IT companies donating the books to schools, and also to all the schools jumping into the opportunity to teach some softw