2017 Recap & Looking Forward to 2018

2017 was eventful, to say the least.

I submitted 8 talks to 6 conferences. I was accepted to 5 of those conferences, gave an extra talk at one of them I wasn’t planning on, and was invited to speak at another with a brand new talk. I spoke on life lessons at KalamazooX, making your QA your BFF at CodeStock and Desert Code Camp, and testing RESTful Web Services at CodeStock, Targeting Quality, StarWest, Desert Code Camp, and StarCanada. All of my talks can be found on my Talks page, by the way. I’m open to doing most of them, just ping me 😀

It was a very busy year for speaking, and I haven’t submitted talks to any conferences yet for 2018. I have some goals around talks for this year, including creating a workshop on REST testing and creating a talk worthy of a TestBash.

Late in the year, I changed teams – I went from being a QA Architect across 5 teams, to working directly with a single team as a sort of Software Engineer in Test. Going from architect to hands on is an interesting transition. Putting all of that theory into practice, and taking your own advice – this is another talk I’m thinking of giving soon. Lots of lessons learned, there.

I want to revamp this site, and blog more. I have a goal of blogging at least once per month. May not seem like much, but it’s more than I’m doing now! I mean, I did the HTTP Status Coop series but that wasn’t much blogging as much as creating images lol

I also took kind of a risk late last year when I contributed to the C# Advent Calendar. I had a lot of impostor syndrome about it – being QA and all. But I did it, and feel pretty ok about it! I got zero direct feedback, though lol lots of traffic to the post and the rest of my site, but no comments. I guess that’s better than negative comments!

I got involved in the community more, as well. I was nominated to Co-Chair of the Computer Programming Pathway Advisory Board of Detroit Central High School. In this position I’m working with the teachers in the school, helping them to build a curriculum that will get these students jobs out of high school, or ready for college.

I’m also trying to do more non-work stuff. Enjoying video games again (can’t get enough Goat Simulator and Minecraft right now!), having screen-free time, tinkering with some things. I’m actually participating in my company’s 24-hour hackathon this year, and I’m super excited to build something new and cool with 3D printed components and IoT!

So my goals for 2018:

• Create & submit a REST testing workshop to conferences
• Submit a talk to TestBash
• Do a talk on going from engineer -> architect -> engineer
• Make this site look less shitty
• Blog once a month at minimum
• Take more risks!
• Make a difference in the community
• Take time to recharge (on- and off-line)
• Build something fun