personal improvement

Are you a new Better Software speaker or aspiring to be one in the future? Join us at this workshop on making effective conference presentations. Learn the secrets of developing content, identifying the Big Message, preparing slides with just the right words and images, presenting your message, handling questions from the audience, and being ready when things go wrong. Lee Copeland, a professional speaker since birth, shares ideas that will help you become a better speaker, no matter what the occasion.

In this bonus session from the Better Software Conference & EXPO, Lee Copeland speaks about the process of choosing session speakers for Software Quality Engineering conferences and offers some tips to help you down the path toward becoming a better speaker.

As software testers, how do we keep our skills fresh and up-to-date? In our line of work, there is always another build to test, more testing than we have time for, and small training budgets. Selena Delesie explains why skills improvement is critical for both individuals and organizations to succeed, and explores ongoing opportunities for you and your team to learn and practice new test skills. While improving skills requires time and effort, the benefits far outweigh the costs as you expand your career, improve the quality of your work, reduce time-to-delivery, and improve your reputation and your team’s value to the business. Learn some off-the-beaten-path ways you can enhance your skills, and discover the fun and benefits of hands-on learning. Selena demonstrates how crowdsourced and open source projects are excellent learning environments for testers.

Many of us have our personal identities wrapped up in our jobs, which can make change hard, particularly in agile environments. Recognizing the power of storytelling, Michele Sliger started collecting first-person stories about how adopting agile affected individuals and what their "light bulb moment" was like. Find out how agile adoptions have changed individuals—their perceptions of agile, their leadership styles, and even their personal lives.

Who drives your career as a tester or test leader? Hopefully, not the company for which you work. It's you-you must be the driver. Because the craft of testing is still relatively free and open, there is no authority structure that defines or controls our industry. There are no generally accepted and standardized credentials that will admit you to the upper tier of income and respect as a tester. There are no universities that offer degrees in testing-although certificates and certifications abound. What we do have is a pastiche of communities, proprietary methodologies, schools of thought-together with ambitious individuals who write articles, teach, argue with each other, and speak at conferences.