I’ve taken up using Instagram alot.

Jamie Oliver kept cropping up as a recommended user. I like what he does, so I followed him. Then I noticed that each of his photos gets a stupid amount of ‘likes’ each time.  I wondered how many followers he had, but it appears Instagram is a bit confused.

I got an email marketing message the other day.  It was from a kids ‘educational’ games website that my boys are signed up to.  We’ve been signed up for a few months and I think this is probably the first marketing email we’ve had from them.

It started out saying:

“Dear xxxxxxx”

Where ‘xxxxxxx’ was my password for the website.

I couldn’t quite believe it.

What makes it worse, is that the email reminded me of my username and password.  Another big fail.

And all of this through an email marketing service provider (MailChimp) who also probably has access to the full list of usernames and passwords too.

Totally not cool.  That’s enough for me not to renew the annual fee.

An interesting added feature came live for me and The Software Testing Club Facebook page today.

It’s a simple added stat that shows the number of *interactions* that have happened on the page.  Interactions include things like *likes*, comments, photos posted, etc.

The metric is worth keeping an eye on and it gives myself and visitors and overall idea about how popular the page is.

For me it gives me an incentive to figure out ways to interact and engage more with our Facebook ‘followers’.  It’s also quite handy as it is easy to check out other pages and see how well they are doing.

Most people probably don’t realise, but these interactions that people make are really important for me/STC because it helps us understand better what people like or don’t like.

So if you do ever visit our Facebook page (there are lots of interesting links there, ya know) be sure to like what we post or leave a comment with some kind of feedback or interesting thing to say

The 5th Edition of The Testing Planet is out.  Currently available to print, ebook, Kindle paid subscribers.  Free version coming out at the end of the month.  Go get it before the rest of em!

The past few months have been very interesting on The Software Testing Club front.  There’s a great community behind it and this is what makes it so much fun to run.  All jobs should be this much fun.  Am super proud at what the community has created.

I blame Rob for where it has headed now.  At least partly  It is very very very hard to find someone to work with on any venture.  Apart from finding someone at the right time, there is always a compatibility thing that needs to be considered from many angles. I say this from experience too.  Rob has really shown the passion and creativity to help us both push each other to the next level.  To constantly improve and create at every possible opportunity. I believe it is a good sign that we both communicate and nag each other on a constant basis.  Now 1 year on (I think?!) we are both eager to push it even more PLUS we have the confidence and trust that we can both commit to what we will do.

The past year has seen us focus on a few thing:

The Crowd

This was previously called Flash Mob Testing.  Currently a service where we pull together testers for an online testing project for a fee.  We are charging £30 per hour and pay our testers on an hourly basis.  We have had a few small scale projects which have had positive feedback.  And financially it seems to work for us and the testers. Currently we are looking into striking a balance of us managing projects and us putting testers and companies in contact directly.  We believe we have a good solution for this, which will be announced fairly soon.  The Software Testing Job Board we launched recently is also compatible to our desire to connect testers to companies.

The Testing Planet

This has been fun!  Though a lot of hard work!  The first issue was a magazine. Then we turned it into a newspaper because we could get them printed with The Newspaper Club and because we thought it was cool  We have a designer who was our intern, but is now freelancing with us.  He has done a fab job keeping the fun and funkyness of our brand.  And we thought that it would only make sense to put all the content on to a website to make it even more accessible, so we created The Testing Planet website.  All the content has come from contributions from our community, of course.

Social Marketing Services

As the popularity of our community and content grows we are increasingly getting lovely feedback and becoming the seriously fun place to go for community and conversations within the software testing industry.  The Software Testing Club is always growing community, members and traffic wise. We have been working with a few companies to help them make the connections they need to.  So far this has been product, event and recruitment related.

There is still a way to go for STC to become a sustainable enterprise, but we do believe we are getting there.

In the rush to get The Software Testing Club magazine live, I realised I neglected to blog about it.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

It’s been a great experience working closely with Rob Lambert, Phil Kirkham and Joel Montvelisky.  Plus of course all the people that contributed content meant that we had a grand 47 pages to put together.

For me the great part was putting the STC stamp on it.  Being in charge of it (as a team) we had full control over the content and the design.  It also meant banging my head whilst getting to grips with Adobe Indesign.  The result was that we felt that we could add a bit of much needed fun to it.

Hope you enjoy it.

“13 of the World’s Top Women Testers Share Unique Insights Into the Profession” is the main feature of the STP magazine.

I’ve been listed as one of them and wrote an article called “Use the Social Web to Build Your Career Brand”.

You can download it for free (but you do have to register).

Rob Lambert, wee Rosie and The Software Testing Club put together a free ebook called Tester Types.  It is a fun and light read looking at different tester characteristics.

Download it. Share it.  Show it to your boss

Mostly just for my own references, there is an interview of me and the Software Testing Club.  Thanks to Mike Kelly

So, a penny for your thoughts.

What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when I say ‘Software Testing’?

I’m interested in hearing from Testers as well as non-testers….