Tester of the Year Kari Kakkonen and softcover campaign

I'm most pleased about finally winning Finland's Tester of the Year Award. Thank you to all who voted! This award especially looks back to the previous year, so it took a specific look into what happened in 2021. It also observes the careers of the candidates. And I did a lot: the Dragons Out book was rolled out in Finnish (Dragons Out! - lohikäärmeistä, ritareista ja ohjelmistotestauksesta), published and rolled out in English (Dragons Out! - a book about dragons, knights and software testing), and the donation campaign to schools was brought to a conclusion and handed to the Minister of Education in Finland. Obviously, my long career in software testing paid its part. But I do think that finally, the Dragons Out book project gave enough reasons for people to vote for me! Thanks again.

Dragons Out initiative to teach software testing to children with such a unique approach has definitely been proven sound. EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award last year and now the Tester of the Year Award. It is a great book! What next? 

For those who don't yet have the Finnish edition of Dragons Out book, I'm happy to inform you that you can now get a softcover version of the Finnish edition of Dragons Out book for 17€, including VAT and shipping to Finland, by using code SMAUG in the preorder pages of my publisher Avain, here. The softcover will be published on Aug 1st, 2022. So, get your copy or why not get a copy to everyone in your company or in your school : ). The book also works as a coursebook in schools for classes 5-9  - see my webinar about how it can best be used, in Finnish here.

Also, it is worthwhile to take a look at the increasing number of translations of the Creative Commons licensed free Dragon Lesson in Software Testing PowerPoint. It's now available in Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, English, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Spanish LATAM, Turkish, and Vietnamese. More translations are in progress.

The book itself is currently being translated in various stages into Chinese, French, German, Hungarian, and Polish. I'm really looking forward to those!

Winning Tester of the Year Award brings lots of good news. Check out some of them here:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Article in Dimensio-magazine

I recently had a chance to write in the magazine of math teachers. Mathematics is one of the natural stepping stones towards software development and software testing. The association of math teachers (MAOL) has been interested in cooperation with me. They considered software testing to be an interesting angle for anyone interested in mathematics. I wrote about my book writing project and how software testing can be taught to children via a fantasy book. The article is in Finnish here: https://www.dimensiolehti.fi/opetetaan-lapsille-ohjelmistotestausta-fantasiakirjan-avulla/
Read more

Amazing feedback and school visits

Image
 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
Read more

How it all started

I got my first idea for a book that would combine fantasy and software testing years ago. I wanted to find a way to make software testing interesting to kids. People in the software testing industry understand very well that there is always a shortage of software testing. It usually stems from not knowing enough about the importance of testing. Testing is easily considered a necessary evil. However, it is enormous fun and a profession of its own. Why not tell about the fun of software testing already to children in an engaging way? Dragons and knights found their way into my book. Finally, my sabbatical year gave me a chance to put some words together to make the story. I wrote the first draft of the first chapter in Finnish in late 2018 and sped up with the other chapters during the rest of my sabbatical in 2019.  There are many more steps to take, including deciding about the extent of illustration, negotiating with book publishers, and editing the book. But we'll get there soo
Read more