A chance to talk, a chance to grow…..

Laptop with stickers on it from Ministry of Testing, Practitest, EuroSTAR, Provar, Ash Winter, FrOGSConf, Slack, 9 out of 10 testers, Testing Peers, Postman and Sauce Labs. With an additional post-it saying that Christovskia.blog is back

…..I’ll take the risk, let my feelings flow. I’ve found the words I need to say

Friends, it has been a terrifically long time since I last published a post here, and I have missed it.

I recently had a chat with Ministry of Testing‘s Community Boss, Simon Tomes, and he asked why I had blogged.

I have mentioned before that it was a vehicle for sharing thoughts with my colleagues, and that anything else beyond that was a bonus.
Also, I’ve mentioned about being participant in the testing community and wanting to give back.

Now, those things are still true, but I believe for me they are useful snapshots of my thoughts that I can refer back to in future conversations.

From silly ideas like drawing comparisons between software testing and Eurovision to pleading with folks to not seek a 100% automation solution, to looking at skills and attributes to look for in testers, and the importance of self reflection.

I posed this question on Twitter and looking at the responses as they come in, I can resonate.

I used to be very concerned with reach and numbers, but my friends I can tell you that if you care about that, then you should not be using song lyrics in your post titles, it does not help!

Chatting with my hero (and yours), Vernon Richards, about our blogs, he mentioned how he surprised himself with his wisdom in some of those posts. What a wonderful surprise to have!
Having a voice and to have presented things in an articulate manner that, even in hindsight, isn’t cringy.

The pandemic has hammered my mental health and bandwidth, but I have been pushing out of my comfort zone, and I need to remind myself of that sometimes.

  • I create education content at the University of Provar, for testers
  • I am trying to tweet more usefully and positively to engage with the community – follow me here
  • The Testing Peers Podcast has somehow published over 60 episodes, hitting over 20k downloads, which blows my little mind
  • YouTubing with the 9 out of 10 Testers has been a rant-filled joy each month
  • I spoke at conferences, in person and remotely, covering topics dear to my heart, Context and Communication

So what is the point of this blog?

I want to get back into the groove of publishing my thoughts here, to provide some sort of value as time goes by.

But I also want this post to serve as me asking you, dear reader, to please hold me accountable to do it more often and with some sort of regular frequency.


Blog post title lyrics from: Suddenly– by Angry Anderson

Find all the songs from my blog posts at this Spotify playlist.



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