Dragons Out

On my visit to the ISTQB General Assembly in Wroclaw, Poland, a chance to talk to Polish students came up. The organizing party SJSI (Polish Testing Board) was kind enough to organize a few classes from local Wroclaw schools to attend my Dragon Lesson in Software Testing. I presented my Polish slides in English while my ISTQB colleague Lucjan Stapp translated my talk into Polish. Students were very motivated and enthusiastically answered questions, even in English. The group consisted of two school classes, 7th and 8th grade, brought to PTB office by two lovely teachers. So, the students were 14-15 year-olds, which fits nicely with the ideal reader profile of the book, as has been proven many times earlier. I was glad to get a confirmation once again. Children (or rather teenagers) of this age are quite familiar and fluent with different software, of course mostly games on their mobile phones. In the testing exercise, most of them tested their favourite game, but I also saw picture edi

First of all, dear readers, I'm happy to announce that the Dragons Out book in French (Ouste, les dragons ! Un livre sur les dragons, les chevaliers et les tests de logiciels) is now available as an e-book! And there's a campaign price of 4,99€ until April 17, 2023. Now, dear French-speaking fans of Dragons Out, there's no other alternative than to get the book! You can buy the e-book or printed book here at the publisher's website or just google for your favourite book store. There's some planned exposure to the book planned for 2023. It will be presented in a surprising way at the main French software testing conference JFTL 13-14.6.2023 . Go there and embrace the surprise! There are other French-speaking events in numerous countries, of course. Let me know if you'd like to see me or the book feature at your event - let's see what we can make happen.  I'm also thinking of recording the Dragon Lesson in Software Testing in French, too, to support French

We've been working on the French edition of the Dragons Out book. My good friend and colleague Olivier Denoo translated the book into French some time ago. Now the time was right to publish it through BoD. My amazing illustrator Adrienn Széll adapted the Finnish layout to French. As always with layouts, there are several rounds of checks and fixes to get the flow of text and pictures right. Actually, the process resembles software testing a lot! We are happy to announce that Dragons Out book can be ordered in French from the French publisher www.bod.fr . It is priced similarly to other language editions of Dragons Out books to a low price level to be affordable to schools, parents and testers alike. It is a softback version of the book, with colour pics by Adrienn Széll in the chapters and black and white pictures in the exercises. In a few weeks, there will also be an e-book, which will be fully translated to be scalable to different e-book readers. The e-book has a limited-time

 I recently got some  amazing feedback  from a 9-year-old reader through his dad. The Dragons Out book was an exciting Christmas present that the boy started reading on his own. He did the exercises at the end of the chapters and was really thrilled about them ("I did all of those great exercises!"). Upon asking why the book was so thrilling, he answered, "It was a great book because it had true things and fantasy side by side, and the exercises were fun!". It feels so good to hear such feedback - keep it coming! The unique approach of fantasy coupled with testing works. Remember my school visits, earlier? It is  again time to have school visits in Finland , too. It is especially nice now that face-to-face meetings are possible, and I don't need to access the school class virtually over a Teams meeting. That works too, yes, with a teacher facilitating in the class, but it is so much nicer and more concrete to meet and teach children face-to-face. I asked for som

Did you notice that Dragons Out! has now reached new frontiers? Not the final frontier, where no one has gone before, but an important one, where many others have gone before. : ) Audiobook! Yes, Austin Macauley has now published Dragons Out! as an audiobook. It is available at many audio services, including the most extensive audiobook service in the world, Audible - you can get the book from here . I was very happy listening to some narrator examples months ago. The audiobook project was progressing! The narrator candidates all read a 2-minute section of some toddler book, so I had to imagine what they would sound like when they read something more adventurous. The fantasy story in Dragons Out is really an adventure story -  the children look for dragons and get into difficult situations where sometimes it is them and not the adults who get them out of trouble! Anyway, I thought the tone of one of the narrators would fit my book perfectly. So I chose him! Many months later I was happ

In this post, I discuss some recent and near-future events and places where Dragons Out is featured, and also I present the 2nd edition of the Finnish book! I'm extremely happy to have cooperated with my illustrator Adrienn Széll again - this time we made a few tweaks to the Finnish Dragons Out book and published the second edition at the same time as a softback and ebook. The publisher for these books is BoD. The second edition includes the same attractive cover as the English version. There are some layout changes and a few typo-fixes, too. Publishing books is like testing; no matter how many reviews or tests you do, there's always some bug slipping through : ). Nothing major, though. The second edition, as a paperback, is affordable for schools to be used as a textbook to accompany math or coding books. Please see the introduction on how the free presentation and the book can work as course material  here , recording in Finnish and in English . The eBook has a discounted 4,