Highlights from PeersCon & Choosing the Right Medium for Meaningful Discussions

Richard (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome to the second episode of the Vernon Richard show. Richard show. Oh, I'm going to get that right one day. Hello everyone, my name's Richard.

Vernon (00:12)
I'm Vernon.

Richard (00:14)
If you've not listened to the first episode, it was called the smoke test. So the fact you're listening to the second one, that smoke test may have passed. Or we're still recording and we've not put it live yet. Who knows? But yeah, we'll find out whenever you're listening to this. So Vernon, me and you got the chance to catch up face to face. Was it last week, week before at Peerscon?

Vernon (00:21)
Yeah.

Holy hell, when was it? I remember. Yeah.

Richard (00:42)
who knows it was it was recently um but yeah so PeersCons was the first it was the inaugural PeersCons a conference put on by the testing Peers and yeah it was how was it for you Vern?

Vernon (00:50)
Mm.

Yes.

I thought it was absolutely fantastic. It was really the fact that it was the first one, the fact that it was the, as you say, inaugural, I can't say inaugural test. The inaugural PeersCon 2024 conference, just ridiculous. Like it was their first, it was their first conference. There were 150 people there, two tracks. The standard of the talks was ridiculous.

Richard (01:11)
You said it better than me, to be honest. Yeah.

Vernon (01:29)
I didn't get to the other track because I had, because I was volunteering and I had to stay in the main room. You know, it was, it was crazy. The, you know, the fact that they could do it for that, for that price on the ticket, I think was also completely bonkers. So yeah, really well done. They should be really proud of themselves. Really proud of them.

Richard (01:49)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the indie punk roots as it was being spoken about, I think they smashed it. It was honest. It was no frills, but they said it was going to be that way, right? They were like, we just want to get the peers in the room.

Vernon (02:07)
Mm -hmm.

Richard (02:07)
and you know, just see what happens. And I thought they did a really stellar job and they said they're going to do it again. So we're going to chat about the talks and topics and conversations we had at Pearscom. So if you're enjoying that, make sure you will put links in the, we need to get used to this, don't we? We'll put links in the description somewhere there. And yeah, you can, you can check out them. They've got a great podcast, which they do, I think every couple of weeks.

Vernon (02:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Richard (02:32)
It was a really good episode recently with some very handsome chap called Richard talking about automation. So yeah, definitely check out the testing pairs if you've not already. But yeah, let's have a chat about the kind of the topics we learned about and just general how we enjoyed the day. So first one that I think, well, there's a few I didn't go to. I know you, because you were volunteering at the mall, right? But the opening keynote.

Vernon (02:37)
Hahaha!

Richard (03:02)
with Heather, Heather Reid, good friend of ours as well was wait, that's not tested. So, um, she spoke a lot, if I remember correctly now about, um, kind of the, the topic of not having to thoroughly test or design everything, like putting stuff out there that may not be a hundred percent what you want it to be, but enough to kind of get feedback and get useful information from it.

Um, and with a topic that I, that triggered me or that I remember the most from it. Well, I say that it's cause I wrote it down in this book. Um, but it was enough for me to write it down was, um, we'd hear a lot about the word MVP, don't we like minimum viable product, but she was talking about minimal, um, minimum shippable risk. And I thought it was like, it's like.

Vernon (03:46)
Yeah.

Yeah. It was like.

Richard (03:57)
Yeah, like we were just chatting before, before pressing record about, you know, needing more like clothes and stuff like, you know, get it on a t -shirt, right? Like, where's the sticker for that? But it made a lot of sense. So yeah, what, what, what did you think about this? The, the Heather's talk or Keynote?

Vernon (04:05)
Yeah.

I could listen to her talk all day. What I like about what she was saying is that it was very much about data and not guessing. And the minimum shippable risk was really cool. I don't know, some people might say, oh, that's just an unnecessary tweak of MVP. But I think, I think,

Richard (04:27)
Yes.

Semantics.

Vernon (04:42)
Well, I think because the because MVP has been around so long, it seems to what it seems to be the case that what what happens in software development development is a new term comes out and it hangs around for a long time and then it just morphs and changes into something really weird and completely away from the thing it was trying to describe in the first place. So I think minimum shippable risk like refocuses everything back to where it should be. It's like what is.

the smallest thing that we can ship that can test our hypothesis about what it is we want to make. And it is a hypothesis. And so her talk was really cool because it, you know, it, it compared and contrasted some of the, some of the things that her, her team and her company have built that took a long time and didn't have the results that they hoped. And some other stuff that they shipped that took

Richard (05:19)
Yeah.

Vernon (05:40)
like a fraction of the time that they thought and had outlandish results as a result. And she really described well how those things interplay with each other. So I thought, I thought it was awesome. And Heather's just generally awesome. And yeah.

Richard (05:55)
Yeah, I found it really interesting. And like, I know she, they were talking about like their culture about like, um, you know, basically, um, I can't remember what the book she recommended was, but you're like, you're basically taking a bet. And what is that smallest bet you can do? And with the data that you have, that's going to give you more information to be able to progress, but not such a bad job that people are going to open it and go, what the hell is this? Um, and I found that kind of that. Like.

Vernon (06:02)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Hahaha, yeah.

Richard (06:24)
I've not had that culture. I'm a, I overthink everything, right? I'm a massive overthinker. So for me, like to train myself to go into that space, I think is going to be a challenge for me, but one that I'm actually going to be going on soon. Um, but I found the example she gave was like fascinating. It was about booking your favorite spot at the gym. And like their original requirement was to have something like the seat maps that you get on airplanes, right? Like.

Vernon (06:44)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard (06:51)
Nice graphics. You can see who's gone and what's not gone. And the design team wanted this fancy graphic, but then obviously every gym's different. It's got a different layout. It's quite a technical challenge. And then they ended up with literally just a list, seat one, seat two, or whatever it was like position one. It's two, three, four, five. And that was it. He just clicked it. And then I think the smart thing they added was they added a little feedback thing, didn't they? Into the top, right? I can't remember exactly what it said now.

Vernon (07:00)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Richard (07:21)
It was like, do you, if you care enough to give us feedback on this idea, uh, and then that helped them, you know, evolve it. And they never ended up doing this crazy seat mat Ryanair style thing that would have cost them, you know, hundreds of thousands of euros to implement. They implemented something, which I think she said was about 150 ,000 euros. And it did the job. Wasn't pretty, wasn't singing, wasn't bells and whistles, but solved the customer's problem. And I think if you can get that culture, right, that would be pretty cool.

Vernon (07:34)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the key.

Richard (07:52)
Um, yeah. But on that note though, I know that you're releasing something soon in the same vein, right? Of this, what's the minimum we can get out there? Can we, can we get a little insight into what you might be releasing soon or can we not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sent me a little screenshot a few days ago.

Vernon (07:52)
Yeah, that's key, isn't it? It's a great talk.

Me.

Wait, what? Me? What am I releasing?

Are you talking about

mistakes that people make when they're doing a joker? So I didn't know you were gonna do that. So I'm learning about writing as some of you may know. So with that in mind, I've created this.

Richard (08:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vernon (08:41)
It's like, it's an email course basically. It's what was what we call an educational email course. And so I have written a five day educational email course. So if you opt into it, you will see it, you'll, you'll, you can opt into this course and you'll get over the, over the course of five days, you'll get, you know, drip fed information about five mistakes that people make when they adopt or try to take on the role of a quality coach.

And I think what Rich is getting at is that that is a much wiser thing to do than to go and build the entire bloody, you know, all singing, all dancing, you know, online course, you go and sign up for Teachable or, do you know what mean, Kajabi and Spender, Gajillion, Quiddin. You get all your video and lighting and you get all your makeup done. You spend months and months and months creating the syllabus. You do all this stuff.

Richard (09:19)
Yes.

technology and lighting and posh cameras and microphones and...

Vernon (09:40)
Yeah, Elgato, if you want to sponsor this podcast, that would be absolutely amazing. Because your boy needs some equipment, god damn it. Yeah, getting all the Elgato stuff. But you don't even know if there's any interest. You don't even know if people, if there's a need, if there's a desire for it. And so this really, I mean, I didn't even need to make that. I could have even done something even smaller. I could have just said, hey, excuse me, hey everyone, I'm going to make.

a course about this. Here's the URL, go and check it out. And then on the URL, as soon as people hit yes, I would like to think you could tell them, oh, well, actually, well, actually beforehand, you could kind of describing position it as I am going to write this course, here's what's going to be in it. If you are interested, press this button, join the waiting list. And when it's ready, we will let you know. And that will give you a chance to gauge the interest on the thing. All you've written is one.

opt -in page or one landing page. You haven't written anything, you haven't bought anything. But that will enable you to gauge the interest before you've committed any large resources to it. So yeah.

Richard (10:47)
There you go. So you've, you've made it, you've reduced the risk. You've shipped the, well, not the mean, the same in the minimum you could have done, but like still small enough. Whereas we know for a fact that ain't me. Like I want to be where I want to be in that space. Like the space you're in now trying to move into an operating, whatever was talking about. I'm the, you know, I've got to perfect this thing. I've got to make it the best it can be. It takes two years, get it out there and then no one uses it. So.

Vernon (10:56)
Yeah.

Richard (11:14)
I know that's a mistake and a, a, you know, that, and a trait that I have that I'm trying to shift. I remember Heather called me a perfectionist like a couple of weeks ago and like, it's, it's a, it's a useful trait in some spaces, but like, if you're trying to get stuff out there quickly, see what sticks in the cheapest low effort way. Yeah, I need to get some new practices. So thank you, Vernon. Thank you, Heather.

Vernon (11:23)
Man.

Progress, progress beats perfection, man. You've got to get it out there, get some data and then figure out what's going on. Swag is coming. Don't worry about that. The Vernon Richards show swag is

Richard (11:43)
Get it on a t -shirt then.

like it. Right, what was next for you, Vern? What was next on your

list?

Vernon (11:58)
What was next on my, on my, I think, I think I'm going to skip straight to, well, on Twitter, in fact, on all social media, I call myself the tester from Leicester. Well, it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, there are more. I'm not just the tester from Leicester. In fact, I am a tester from Leicester because there was another tester from Leicester at the Pierscon 2024 and he goes by the name of Jit, Jit, Kosai and listen, if you've not,

ran into Jit online or in person at a meetup or at a conference, something like that. You are missing out. You need to get involved. Like you need to go and check out his newsletter, which I didn't have prepared. That's terrible. But definitely jump on LinkedIn, follow Jit, connect with Jit. He writes an amazing newsletter. Every time he talks about anything to do with software development, software quality, software testing, leadership, it's...

done in a really thoughtful, easy to digest manner. He puts a lot of effort into it. His slides, good grief. The way he presents it, prezzy fiend, prezzy fiend. But the thing I've got from his talk is that psychological safety is not about creating environments where there is zero challenge for people. That is not what it's about. What it is is about,

Richard (13:03)
Yeah, he's a prezzy person though, isn't he? He loves a bit of prezzy. Yeah.

Vernon (13:26)
having a place where people can learn and grow and be challenged, but it isn't in a way that is threatening. I'm probably not explaining this as well as Jit would explain it, but that was the key thing for me. And I was really glad that he explained that and called it out. Cause sometimes people could say, oh, you just want to save space. That means you don't want to debate anything. It's like, no, it's about establishing.

some ground rules and some trust so that you know when you are challenged, it isn't about you. It isn't ad hominem. It's like people establish some ground rules and create some space where challenge is welcome, growth is welcome. We can bring our whole selves. It doesn't feel risky to talk about some aspects of yourself. And I thought it was fantastic talk.

Richard (14:18)
Yeah, I think that's like firstly Jits also maybe he's from Leicester, but he's moved to Manchester. So, you know, he's clearly a smart guy as well. So, but yeah, his, I feel, I feel psychologically safe on this podcast. But yeah, his quality engineering newsletter is quality engsubstapp .com. But again, we'll do the whole in the link.

Vernon (14:28)
So that's pretty outrageous that, Rich. That's outrageous. Look on.

Welcome.

Richard (14:48)
that we'll learn how to do. But yeah, that was a really good talk and I've got a lot of time as you said, Fijit, and I think the takeaway for me was that it's not just about saying you can do it. It's that this is a safe place. You can kick back or put your opinions or whatever it is. Is it actually happening? So are you fostering a place that allows that to happen, but then in a safe way? And also, I think you gave an example, I'm trying to remember exactly, but.

It was an example of like someone's not said anything and then someone goes, Oh, then you're not said anything. Is that safe? I actually got nothing to say. And now I'm on the spot going, ah, what do I say? And it's like, well, you can say whatever you want. It's a safe space. It's like, I don't want to say anything. There's nothing I want to add. Um, but yeah, he really broke that talk down well. So I think if you're interested in that topic, um, give him a follow, I'm sure he's share slides or you might have other written materials on it. Um, but yeah.

Vernon (15:25)
Oh, yeah.

Richard (15:46)
Definitely, definitely a chat worth following incredibly knowledgeable talks very concisely. Um, and also we learned on the way to the social after the conference, didn't we, that he's a, he was the first one that he's, he usually memorizes his talk, he said. Um, but because he was making such subtle concise points, he went with, um, key cards, um, well, you know, and, uh, whatever they're called their cards. And again, I love that he did that because.

Vernon (15:52)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Richard (16:14)
It's like, you know, some people be like, Oh, he's reading from his phone, like, oh, worst presenter ever. And it's like, well, there's a context for everything, right? There's a reason people are doing that. And he did it because he was talking about something very important that impacts us all. Even if your company doesn't talk about it, it's still may or may not be happening. And I really, I really, yeah, I gave him top, top, top rep, top props and credit for doing that.

Vernon (16:38)
Yeah, shout out to you. We're fans over here, you know that.

Richard (16:40)
We're fans. Well, for me after that, well, it was actually before that was a guy called Al Goodall, who I have spent quite a bit of time with helping him with his talks with his public, not just speaking, just, you know, general sharing and to see him do his first talk.

was kind of cool. I just enjoyed like, just like, just watching it. Um, and it was not that, you know, not that I wouldn't have like posted about any other talks, but like I posted about his on LinkedIn just because like I connected with it from the topic, but also him as a person. And I was like, ah, so yeah, for people that weren't there, I was talking about his journey into leadership and how he stepped into this leadership role, but he was really open about it. He was very open about.

the challenges that he faced, how it, for him, it became all about the people. And he took, he took his eye off himself. Like he wasn't looking after his own growth, his own health, his mental health as well. He was very open about that. It was, he suddenly became all about the other people because I'm a leader now. Like it's all about my people. You know, I've got to look after them. And he was like, no, that's definitely not the case. Like, yes, you do look after them, but you can't look after them if you ain't looking after yourself.

Um, and I think that was like kind of one of the strongest things I took away from his talk.

Vernon (18:11)
Yeah, I had a similar, I had a similar feeling of like, I don't know, I was just happy to see him on stage presenting at all. And it was, it was a really, it was a really kind of inspiring talk in a way, because he, he didn't, as you say, he didn't try and sugar coat the fact that he, you know, he made a few mistakes and you know, he made peace with that. And he's like, look, the mistakes are going to happen. That's completely normal.

Richard (18:18)
Yeah.

Vernon (18:41)
So I enjoyed his talk a lot. I didn't get a chance to talk to him afterwards. I wanted to talk to him about some of the specific points he was making just to really understand properly what he meant by some of the things. But it was a great talk. I'm gutted that they weren't recorded. That's not a pop of you peers at all.

Richard (19:05)
Right, so ticket.

Vernon (19:10)
It just would have been able to.

Richard (19:10)
You know what? It's not, it's a valid thing to bring up though. Like, cause you know, hopefully some of them listening, like, you know, if the ticket, like what was the ticket? Was it 20 quid this year? 20 quid. So maybe if it was 30 quid next year and we get recordings, I'd happily justify that. That for me justifies that extra tenner. So, you know, I know they were going to talk about how they're open with their prices and stuff. Like for me, I'd happily pay, you know, that extra money to get the recordings. Not because I'm going to watch them, but because I know I could. Um, if.

Vernon (19:18)
20 quid, man.

Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Richard (19:39)
you know, if I need to do that. Um, but yeah, I'll fantastic talk may really great to see you up there. I hope you continue to do some more. And I think the final thing I took from Al's, um, the talk was that he spoke about a lot about like learn, like trying to learn. He was watching courses, reading articles, he was reading books and he was like, yes, they can help you and prepare, but until you actually do it and you start doing the job.

Like it's, it was very different and he was like, you know, I learned a lot more just trying to do it. Then I ever did trying to read these, you know, books and everything in advance and take these courses. So I found that like, again, just a really open and honest, you know, insight into his approach. Um, and yeah, he's yeah, you actually smashed it Al. I'm really proud. I'd love to see you on another stage soon. Fingers crossed.

Vernon (20:23)
Mm -hmm.

I talk about another talk? Do we have to stop talking about PeersCon? Or can I talk about? Oh, good. Okay. Because the other talk that I liked, got a lot of them, was Beth Clark's talk about being the glue on the team. And it was basically a talk about DevOps and why...

Richard (20:38)
We're gonna do a whole PeersCon episode, why not? Because they were all great talks, why not?

Vernon (20:57)
So Beth is a DevOps, is she DevOps engineer? Is that what she calls herself? The DevOps engineer and her storytelling ability. Bro, listen. And she did this, oh, she's a devil. Cause she, it's like she started, it's like she did Star Wars episode four first. So she's like, oh, here's what we're doing at the company that I'm at. So.

Richard (21:00)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Vernon (21:27)
She works for an oil and gas company, right? So very, very serious stuff. But she started at, well, this is what we do now. And she just described the context and described all the cool practices that DevOps gives you and how they've helped her organization and some of the things that she's done to instill that. But what she didn't talk about was how she got from

where they were when they arrived to now. So I was like, please, could you do that talk next? Because I would like to know how you did that. But the talk that she did at PeersCon was absolutely brilliant. And why I liked it is because it talks about glue work, which is a topic I'm fond of. But also it really distilled how I felt when I first heard about DevOps, which I was like, oh, this is awesome. This is all about testing.

Richard (22:15)
Yeah.

Vernon (22:26)
This is there's there's no stress or drama or, you know, fear here whatsoever. And I know over the years, you know, there have been constant, you know, different accusations or moments where it's like, oh, testers, you're all in the shit now. And I think. They are.

Richard (22:41)
Engineers are in there right now. Like all the memes I've seen recently about, um, like there's what's the one where you go, is this your first time? Uh, like all these memes now, like developers are like, Oh, Devlin's coming from our jobs. Like, Oh, yeah.

Vernon (22:48)
Yeah that one is so good.

We need to get that in the show notes. I thought it was a really good talk because it really explained why, you know, testers DevOps is our friend. It's all about testing. We should embrace it. Here's how it makes our lives easier. So yeah, I thought it was a great tool and I'm hoping for the prequel talk.

Richard (23:13)
Yeah, I was, I was going to say like, it was an absolute fantastic delivery. Um, very, it was humorous. It was just, yeah, it was very chill. And, but yeah, that topic of like glue work and yeah, it's like, you always might, I know that topic was specifically about DevOps, but it always also makes me think about the shift from tester to QE and like, you're just doing a little bit more of that glue

Vernon (23:18)
Come on.

Here's the thing. So my understanding of glue work, my favourite thing about glue work as a concept, and I learnt this by watching and re -watching and re -watching and re -watching again, Tanya Riley's talk about glue work is that it's at its core, it is technical leadership. And so what Beth was talking about was going into a situation where...

Richard (23:59)
Okay.

Vernon (24:06)
She was a single DevOps engineer, which I know is a little bit of an oxymoron. I get that. Let's put that to one side. You know what I mean? She's gone into this team. She's the youngest person on that team. So all the engineers have worked at that company for a long time. And the domain is something that they've been in for a long time. I don't think Beth had been in that domain before. And yet she was able to lead the transformation from

we do not collaborate, we do not use tools, we do not know what the hell we're building from one minute to the next to now they're collaborating, they're using tools, they're using data. So I think it's technical leadership. The way I describe glue work is the kind of work that nobody officially owns, but if it doesn't, if those things don't happen, whatever you're working on is gonna fail. It's going to fail. Like it's not, it's...

There's no ifs, ands, or what's about it. It's not going to work. And so if you think about it...

You know, it could be, what are the examples that I saw in the, okay. So one of them is someone in the organisation is having a really difficult conversation with a bunch of other people from the organisation, which means that they can't, they don't know what to build. So if you can go in there, if you spot that and go in there, facilitate that, awesome. The problem is if you're, if you've been positioned as the tester,

quite often people's first reaction is, what are you doing here, Tester? Get over there and interact with the product, leave this stuff to us or, you know, people. But if you just change the job title from Tester to engineering manager, no one's asking those questions. Absolutely no one. And so if you get positioned as a technical leader, which Beth clearly is, no one's asking you any questions. She got positioned like beautifully, well,

Richard (25:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Vernon (26:11)
All I can imagine is listening to the talk. She got positioned absolutely beautifully and then she just went to work and smashed it. So yeah, if you get a chance to hear that talk from Beth, highly recommend. And Beth, if this podcast crosses your path, please create the prequel talk, because I would like to know how you even went from step zero to step PeersCon. That would be awesome.

Richard (26:34)
There you go. There's the request. All right. So I think the other talk, the other keynote was for Leigh Rathbone. And Leigh Rathbone. So that guy brought some energy on. And I learned a few things about Leigh. He was talking about the, let me find the right title just so I get this right. Where are we Mr. Rathbone here? The history of testing and why it's important.

Vernon (26:44)
The Draft Boon.

Richard (27:04)
shaping the future. And number one, I've learned that I should never give Leigh Rathbone anything of any value in any... We learned that Leigh likes to steal things from his employers, especially mobile phones. But yeah, we have no evidence for this. This is pure hearsay, right?

Vernon (27:15)
in the outrageous.

That's probably the one I was going to say it's probably a good job that that talk was not recorded, my God.

Richard (27:32)
but there was one thing that came up for me, which made me, I was nodding my head for most of it. I was like, yep, yep, yep. Definitely agree with that. But then he was talking about, like debates on LinkedIn that he reckons damaged some of the testing graph. We didn't name names, but we all, maybe I'm not saying everyone does know listening to this, right? There's a couple of thought leaders.

to think of a good title who have very strong opinions on terminology, semantics, what testing is, blah, blah, blah, right? And they're very, yeah, let's say direct and unpleasant on social sometimes. And he was saying how those debates basically were being seen by non -testing people. They were being viewed by engineers and engineering managers and leaders. And he believes that that had a negative impact.

Vernon (28:13)
I don't want to say it.

Yeah.

Richard (28:27)
on the view of testing and QE and QA. Um, so yeah, I'm not, I, I, I haven't seen it. I think that's why I was listening to it. I was going, yes, I saw the arguments. Yes, I saw the debates, probably involved in some of them. I can't remember anymore, but yeah, probably. But then it was like, I never, I never for a moment thought, I wonder what anyone else outside of this is thinking. Cause I was in it thinking I'm going to learn some at here or I'm going to.

Vernon (28:43)
Definitely.

Richard (28:56)
I'm going to shape the way this is, or I'm going to, you know, voice my opinions or whatever. I wasn't thinking anyone looking in and it gave me a really, made me pause for a moment and think. Whenever I post or start topics on socials or whatever, it's always like, I think I'm just talking to other QEs and testers, but I know my audience is not just QEs and testers and it's, it's now starting to realize that, Oh, actually, you know what? Maybe there is another angles we should be considering

Vernon (29:24)
I'm just, while you were talking, you reminded me of a post that I saw this morning on LinkedIn.

Bam. Yeah, so it was another topic. So I think the topic, if I remember rightly, if I'm wrong, which, but the topic that Leigh was referring to was testing and checking. Yeah, so, and I know that is really.

Richard (29:51)
Yes, it was. Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

Vernon (29:57)
polarizing for some people. And I know that folks in the context driven testing community like to talk about this topic. I consider myself to be part of that community and I find there is utility in that distinction, but some people find it hideously irritating and annoying and without value. And there was another post that Caleb made. It looks like it was made a few days ago.

and it's about mindset and it's about this builder mindset and the testing mindset. And I thought that was another polarizing conversation, but in the, I must remember to put that in the show notes as well, Rich, but I really liked the conversation that happened in the comments beneath that post. It's not to say that it wasn't spicy, you know, going back to Jit's earlier point, I think it just, it wasn't the...

you couldn't disagree firmly. It was good. People came and brought their different opinions.

And I wish that all debates could be like that. I wish all disagreements could be like that. But sadly, that is not the case. I will say, I think Leigh had a point. I think in some parts of the software development community, the broader one, I think those conversations did, if you pardon my French, fuck things up for testers, I think, because of the way it was.

Richard (31:05)
Nah.

I think so.

Yeah.

Vernon (31:23)
It was much more the nature of the debate, it felt like, more than the actual topic itself. I mean, the topic itself was problematic for people. But on top of that, it was the way that people debated it that seemed to be a problem as well. I spoke to, I won't name names, but I spoke to somebody who is not a tester, but loves testers and testing and writes and talks about it all the time. And...

He, you know, reading between the lines of what he said, he was like, yeah, really, that was not great. So, you know, how you feel about that is how you feel about that, you know.

Richard (32:05)
And I think there's a fascinating space in it that is, you know, it's not the right medium for some of those things to happen. And I think, I don't even like the word debate, but I know what you mean though, like those conversations were viewed by other people and it just made us look like a bunch of idiots. I think that's what Leigh said, you know what mean? Like we're just bickering and arguing.

and not actually progressing the craft, right? You know, there is subtle pieces of information in some of those conversations, but they just look unpleasant, like the way those wings are. And like, you know, the people in those conversations, yeah, I don't engage on their posts anymore, like, because I just know what they turn into. But yeah, it is, it's, okay.

Vernon (32:57)
You just avoid completely.

Richard (33:02)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if I see, if I see a, I'll name names. If I see a Fred with James back in it, I don't engage. I don't engage because number one, I value his insights into the testing, but it's not someone I want to have a conversation with.

Vernon (33:08)
Mm -hmm.

Richard (33:20)
It's just more from an energy point of view, to be honest with you. Like I'm not, if I'm in a space where I want to do that, I'd rather talk to James directly or perhaps go to a peer workshop or something like that. I don't feel like LinkedIn is going to be a beneficial place for me to start having debates. There is opportunity, there is cases like recently where I spoke about the automation and testing course and that, you I'll speak up if I think, if I'm very strongly about it, I'll speak up. But if it's just another case of me, you know,

picking on one of the four fine details that's been brought up and going, oh, you know, I disagree with that one. Like, you know, I don't see the value in that now. Like I'd actually feel that I probably get more value by perhaps making my own thread about that or starting a blog post about that, or maybe chatting to you on here about that. Um, but I don't feel that that those LinkedIn comments is the best place to be. I'll go to a forum, right? Go to, go to a better medium basically to have.

Vernon (34:09)
Yeah.

Richard (34:20)
those kinds of in -depth conversations.

Vernon (34:22)
That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense actually. And I love how you put that. It's like, I've got to save my energy for, there's better uses of my energy right now than rowing on LinkedIn with people. I think that's an undefeatable argument. To be honest, if you're just like, look, I'm just not interested in that. Sorry. What are you going to do? What I would say is it's kind of related to what we were saying about JIT and psychological safety, I think.

or maybe a different way to put it is.

what psychologically say for me is not psychologically safe for the next person. And I think the problem with these debates on the internet or one of the problems is the rules of engagement are not necessarily discussed ahead of time. Right? So it's like, oh, some people think because you put the post in a public forum, I can say anything I like about that thing. And some people don't want to hear anything. They just want to

Richard (34:59)
Yeah.

Vernon (35:26)
speak and not be challenged. And then there's all the spectrum in between that. But no one has really explicitly said, here are my rules for engagement. When I post on LinkedIn, here's what I want you to do. Imagine if you had that preamble on every single post. Before we go any further, this is the rules of engagement. It'd just be hideous. So.

Richard (35:49)
But I, it would be hideous, but I also think that it's about picking the right medium. Like, not saying it's a free throw when you do that on LinkedIn, and it probably shouldn't be, like people should be a bit more respectful sometimes, but you are opening yourself up for that because you put it on LinkedIn. Like if you did it on maybe on a, on a community forum that has a code of conduct or some kind of rules in place, like you said, like the rules aren't defined for LinkedIn. There is no rules, right? It's like.

Vernon (36:14)
Mm.

Richard (36:18)
The same for like, you know, Twitter or whatever, or you post it and you turn the comments off. You know, like people do that on their YouTube videos. I've seen people turn comments off, or perhaps you post it on your blog instead and turn, turn the comments off. So I think sometimes it's a case of, if you just want to make a point. There's you can do that. If you want to engage, that's why I, when I mentioned about the texts that you put in it, you can frame your texts to invite that conversation in the manner that you want it.

Or you can write your post in a way that, and I obviously said this when people do public speaking for the first time, right? If you, if you want to have a great, a nice, not nice, but like an easier time with your first talk, talk about your experiences. Cause no one can tell you that you're wrong. So if you want to frame a conversation around, like you believe that checking is this right. You can talk about it from your experiences and then no one can really criticize you. Whereas if you write a post that says.

All automated testing is checking. It's got nothing to do with testing whatsoever. Full stop. Yeah, that's it, right? You've offered no argument. You've offered no justification. You've not done anything. I think that's what tends to happen sometimes. We don't see enough of the, the reasons for posting and the shaping it in a way that's either going to invite conversation and then you get to define the rules or you should, in my opinion, at least hinder, hint at some of what you're looking for. Um, or.

Vernon (37:21)
The end.

Mm.

Richard (37:47)
you write it in a way that's just, you know, you're basically saying, come at me. And sometimes that's what you want. I've done that. I've written stuff and gone, come on, just come at me. Come on, let's do it. Like.

Vernon (37:57)
Come on then mate!

Richard (37:59)
Yeah. And sometimes though, that's a great topic of finding out information. Like I've done that in the past when I want to learn about a topic. You know, if I don't know a lot about a topic, you can use social media to be like, you know, all testing is checking. Um, that's what I, that, you know, that's it. And then someone will post saying, actually, I disagree. I think it's this and you go, Ooh, thank you for that blog post or whatever. Right. You, you can, you can shape it and you can manipulate social media to help you with whatever you're trying to do. But for me, I would rather.

I could frame that differently and to avoid this nasty debate, I could be like, I don't know a lot about topic A. I'm keen to learn about topic A. My current thoughts on topic A are this, help me. Right? Now no one wants to go at me. No one's going to like come at me now. If they do come at me, they're going to do it in a, in a friendly, engaging manner, as opposed to, there'll still be people of course. Yeah.

Vernon (38:40)
Mm -hmm.

There'll still be.

There'll be still potential for rowing in the comments because person A will come and say, hey, Rich, here's what you need to learn about this topic. And a person B will say, that is absolutely incorrect. No, you're setting them up for failure. This is what you need. So, but I like the way you phrase that was very nice. What I always go back to as ever, because it's me, is coaching. And what I find frustrating on both sides or all sides or however many people involved is there's quite often a lack of curiosity. I'd find that.

Richard (39:11)
Yeah.

Vernon (39:21)
Incredible. And I was listening to an episode. I'm going to be talking about this for years. So Adam Grant was on the diversity a couple of weeks. That episode was mega for me, man. So he talked. There were a couple of concepts on there that he talked about that I'm trying to dig into a bit more. One of them was. People talk either like, oh, I'm going to get it wrong, a politician.

Richard (39:29)
Again!

Vernon (39:51)
A priest.

What's the other one?

A preacher, a prosecutor, or a politician. So if you're in preacher mode, so these are the three modes that people spend too much time talking and thinking like.

Richard (40:07)
Oh, I think there's four, mate, there's four. I just had a quick Google.

Vernon (40:10)
Well, there's preacher, which is when you're proselytizing your own ideas, just like preaching and just sharing, this is the only way. And then there's a prosecutor where you're like, you are wrong and your idea is trash. And then the other one is a politician, which is, well, I'm not going to answer the question straightly and I'm only going to speak to you if you agree with me.

Richard (40:17)
Yep.

Uhhh...

Vernon (40:33)
And so, and so the way, what, what.

Richard (40:36)
And there's one more, there's the scientist.

Vernon (40:38)
Well, this is, mate, spoilers, bro. What are you doing? Like, we did. did. No, you don't have to. But no, so the way to avoid that is to think like a scientist. And what that really means is that you don't let your ideas become your identity. And so there are two ways where you can avoid that. So one.

Richard (40:41)
Ah edit that out

Vernon (41:05)
at least according to Adam that is. So what Adam talks about is you can either...

think that beliefs are important or values are important. Or you can either like base your identity in beliefs or values and beliefs are things that you think are true and values are things that you think are important. And why is that important? See what I did there. That's important because, that's important because if I base my identity in things that I think are true, if someone tells me that I'm wrong,

That's a problem. That's a major problem. Like you are directly attacking my identity. Whereas if my identity is based in things that I think are important, if you tell me that I'm wrong, I'm like, oh, I need to know that because, you know, my goal is not to be right. My goal is to live up to my values. And so if I can do that in a better way, I need to know when I'm wrong. And so you're not threatened by being wrong. And so,

When I look at some of the conversations that happen online and in person, it's too many people are trying to be right instead of trying to get right. That's the way I have a saying or I have a belief, which is I prefer getting right instead of being right. Like I want to get right. I know I can get right is by finding people I can trust ideally to tell me when I'm wrong, who have different perspectives to me. But when you look online,

there's like an absence of curiosity. Like to your point, people will post something and either will not want to hear any feedback. They're not curious about any of the views or people are just like, you are wrong, Rich. What you said was incorrect. And there's no curiosity about how did you arrive at that conclusion? So yeah, that's what I think.

Richard (42:52)
Yeah.

And you think you've made me think two ways there as well. So like the, that angle of you're wrong. There's two ways to respond to that, isn't there? The one is no, I'm not. You're wrong. Or the second one is tell me why you think I'm wrong. Like, you know, elaborate on it a little bit. Give me some, some of those insights, maybe the scientific, like maybe you're prompting that scientific kind of response as opposed to.

Vernon (43:17)
Yeah.

Richard (43:34)
Do you just believe this and you don't really know why, or is it one of your core beliefs that's just ingrained and you can't verbalize it very well anymore? Um, cause I had that same problem with teaching, right? You make seismic shifts in your thinking. It's quite hard to unravel it to teach somebody else. But if you engage in that, I mean, if you engage in a way that prompts, and I think that's the difference with the way people use, as you said, social media, it's either, like you said, those four like types.

Vernon (43:47)
Yeah.

Richard (44:00)
But also I think some people are just want to stick it out there. And like you said, they're not engaging in the responses, but it's like, well, why put it on LinkedIn? Just put it in a diary. Like, you know, if like, what, or, you know, if it's, if it's an inspirational thing that you want to share or whatever, put it somewhere that might have more longevity. You know, stick it on a blog, you know, stick it, I don't know, write, write an ebook. I don't know, but something that's going to live a lot longer than a day, right? Cause that's, that's the lifespan of LinkedIn.

Like, you know, you can go find stuff. Of course you can, but most people don't. It's timeline, timeline, timeline, timeline gone. All right. And like, I think there's, there's, I think people need to, I'd love to encourage people basically to start thinking of the mediums a bit more. It's like blogging, right? I'd love, I want to, I keep telling myself blog again, like blogging died. It's not died. People still blog. Right. But I feel like in the testing space, there's less of it than they used to be. Um, and it's like, again, cause there's now obviously.

Vernon (44:29)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

It's time. Yeah.

Mm.

Richard (44:58)
you know, generation things like, there's probably a bunch of amazing testing content on TikTok, right? I don't use TikTok, but I'm sure there is younger testers. I'm not saying you don't have to be younger, but there's probably all sorts going on on there, but anyway, enough.

Vernon (45:13)
You heard it here folks, Rich is gonna be on TikTok as of next week, dancing, dancing his ideas out about software testing. I'm here for it. That would make me get a TikTok account actually.

Richard (45:16)
You

you

So basically, whenever there's a debate on LinkedIn, we'll turn it into a dance and then we'll make that dance go viral. So we'll have the checking and testing dance.

Vernon (45:37)
Here's the thing, we would definitely go viral with that for sure. I need to get Stu because Stu's my number one dance partner if you don't mind me saying. Stuart Day, the legend.

Richard (45:42)
Hahaha

Well, you can keep Stu as your dancing partner. That's fine by me. Anyway. All right. It's time to wrap this one up. So the things that we always people say you need to do on these things, subscribe and follow, share, like, comment, do all the things. Definitely comment friendly, conversational debate, debate, maybe one of the debates. But anyway, share your thoughts in the comments. It's a safe space to do so.

Vernon (45:53)
Ha ha ha.

Richard (46:17)
to do so and we'd love to hear your thoughts as well and everything else and yeah we'll hear you in the next episode so yeah goodbye from me.

Vernon (46:25)
Goodbye from me. See you folks.