Dragons Out

Yesterday I had good fun speaking at EuroSTAR 2020 online conference. My session of Encouraging Children into Testing was a great success. You can see the slides here . The EuroSTAR conference is always an amazing speaking experience. This was my third time to give a presentation at EuroSTAR, but for me the best one, because the topic was so close to my heart. Also, it was interesting to work with the crew to make the presentation happen online. I gave the participants a task of writing down some details of an interesting bug they had encountered and then drawing a dragon in its likeness. This same exercise appears in my Dragons Out book. The participants emailed me some very interesting dragons. Some were easy to spot, some hard to spot. Some were treated as a feature of the software, some would appear at a worst possible moment in an unusual environment, some defects were in the hardware, some in the software. Really great imagination, people! I promised to have a draw of a book priz

Last two weeks to wait and the Finnish version of the Dragons Out book is in my hands. Hopefully yours, too! Go to  https://www.dragonsout.com/p/preorder-dragons-out-book.html   if you haven't yet : ). On the ramp-up, it is good to read my interview in the largest Finnish IT-magazine, Tivi. Among other things, I'm hinting at the hidden jewels of intriguing analogies in the book that only adults can spot! See if you can notice how real-life software testing is reflected in the fantasy world! Or compete with your kid about who notices most analogies. Tomorrow, I'll speak about the book project in the largest software testing conference in Europe - EuroSTAR. That'll be great! Feedback My seven-year-old son finally agreed to listen to the Dragons Out book. He is still a little young considering the target age of the book (10-12 years and up), but mature enough to listen to the story and the testing examples. I read a few first chapters to him. He wants to hear more, and mor

Kari Kakkonen Talk  Preview  at  EuroSTAR 2020     I am delighted to be part of EuroSTAR 2020 conference on Nov 17-19, 2020. I can’t wait to get involved, learn and connect with all the testers that are joining from across the globe.     Join me for my talk ‘Encouraging Children into Testing.   Attendees will learn 1.     We need to educate children about testing, too. Coding skills are not enough. 2.     Children, and people in general, learn in a number of ways – why not make it fun? 3.     There is power in analogies, by understanding something simple, you can start understanding something more complex. View my talk.  Behind the link, there is also the fun introduction video I made! About EuroSTAR 2020   The  EuroSTAR Conference  is where the global software testing community are coming together this November. It’s an opportunity to connect and widen your network within the testing world.   EuroSTAR is taking place on a super interactive platform called ‘Ho

 Where did the idea of dragons come? I had this question in the conversations adjacent to my invited speech at HUSTEF 2020 online conference today. I pondered that, of course, I had liked fantasy as literature and movies for as long as I can remember. Also, the fact that I've played role-playing games for 20 years with my friend Janne Korpi as the game master with their genius Phoenix role-playing system had a part to play. But whatever the initial spark to dragons, when I tried them in the story, I immediately noticed that it indeed fits the testing world nicely. The comparisons from bugs to dragons, or from testers and developers to knights seemed to me to jump straight to my face. They were there for grabs. So I adopted the dragon infested fantasy world to represent the world of software development and testing. The recording of my speech at HUSTEF is here  and the slides are here . I hope you enjoy them. In the HUSTEF conference, my talk included a task for everyone to imagine

In the recent interview that I gave to Tieturi, I pondered how well analogies work in explaining something difficult. It works for children and adults alike. I've used this approach for children in the book Dragons Out, comparing the fantasy story into software testing and IT concepts. Similarly, in my IT blogs of the past ten years, I've honed the practice of using some analogy to explain a particular testing concept. It is also good fun to create the analogies, and also to read them.  The interview was done in Finnish and can be read here . Enjoy. Let me give you another analogy via a Dragons Out book excerpt: As the discussion shifted to assembling a construction team, Tom and Ted emphasized the importance of experience. Ted wanted to call experienced knights to guide the construction. Tom wanted to invite his cousin Laura, who had encountered dragons more often than any other villager. The villagers accepted both proposals. They would assemble most of the construction team