Dragons Out

Dragons Out book in English has received plenty of good feedback from different people and countries. The people who had preordered the English edition, have now been sending their first impressions. People congratulate on the good quality, the illustration, the great idea, an interesting read. Their children like it too, both the story and the illustration. I've received plenty of praise also based on me winning the EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award. Many articles and news have been published. It is flattering to read about all the praise, but of course, I believe in what I do, too. I think reaching out to children to teach them testing is definitely a worthwhile topic for all the praise.  Here are some links to related articles and news EuroSTAR blog " Feelings from the EuroSTAR winner Kari Kakkonen " Dragons Out! made it to the top of the list Best New Software Testing Books to read  (BookAuthority) EuroSTAR European Testing Excellence Award Kari Kakkoselle  (Tieturi) ...

Last week was a blur spent on running an online version of ISTQB General Assembly. Many things to do in a short amount of time. However, I also had the pleasure of presenting my Dragons Out book project at JSTQB conference in Tokyo, Japan. I delivered my talk online as the case has been for all corona-time presentations. This time the suitable balance of reliable presentation and audience interaction was achieved by a recorded presentation and a live Q&A through Zoom. Particularly interesting was that I got questions both verbally from the host Kenji Tonishi translating them from Japanese participants and from the Zoom chat where Hidetoshi Suhara translated Japanese text to English. As they translated my answers back to Japanese, I had time to switch between the two forms of answering questions. Another great experience! The questions themselves were interesting, too. I'll pick one: "Have you ever come up with a dragon that you have then discarded?". My answer: "...

 Vote for me to be Tester of the Year 2020 in Finland! Publishing the Dragons Out children's book about testing really contributes to the software testing world! : ) I'm honoured! Vote using this form https://link.webropol.com/s/vuodentestaaja2020aanestys  - just click my name and "lähetä" in the end!  I truly want to contribute not only to the software testing domain but to a better world. I think software testing is the natural route towards that. Better testing, better quality, better software, better business and society, a better world. Or the other way around, fewer defects in the software, less damage to business, lives and environment. The whole idea of the Dragons Out book is to raise awareness with children (and adults, too!) that looking for good quality is an outstanding objective in anyone's life, be it a user of a software or part of the software development team. Testing is then part of that search for good quality, trying to influence in removing d...

As part of the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, a perk called Dragons Out poster was available. I've shipped the posters in October and used Redbubble service for the poster print & delivery. As a side effect of that choice, anyone else can now easily order a poster from there! It is a really nice poster -  a combination of two pictures from the Dragons Out book. The poster page is here  for anyone who is interested. And of course, you can still preorder more of my book at https://www.dragonsout.com/p/preorder-dragons-out-book.html  The book extract of the week is below. Enjoy! They were about to leave for breakfast in the castle mess hall when a young messenger appeared at their door. She conveyed the invitation of Lord Walther to come to the main hall for breakfast. Sage Cho, the knights Yellowbeard and Swanlake, and ten other knights were in the hall talking to the lord. The night's damage was greater than before. One knight died as a result of injuries from the dr...

 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 a...

 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 t...

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 bo...

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 illustra...

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...

Today's excerpt from Dragons Out book is about spring - it has been quite pleasant here spring in Finland, if you don't count the Covid-19 challenges. The excerpt also reminds all of us about the importance of life-long learning. Even if you learn something at an early age (like the kids in the book learn dragon hunting / software testing), you are never ready. There's always more to learn. The sage Cho has understood this. Pre-orders of both English and Finnish book are still available - just contact me via the contact form. I much appreciate those who have preordered the book in the past few months to make my book project easier. Thank you. And the excerpt: One day, as the golden spring sun gently tickled the guards' noses on the walls of Iron Lake, they saw a horse galloping towards the village gates. The cousins Tom and Laura just got off guard duty and rushed to the gate to meet the rider. A young woman in hunter's clothing jumped down from the back of the snor...

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...