It’s been a while since my last blog post, as I’ve been in the UK for a few weeks. This latest overseas trip was, for once, not around a testing conference but instead was a holiday planned around attendance at the first international Status Quo fan club convention!
My Twitter and blog handle relates to two big passions of mine, rocking (to the tunes of Status Quo) and testing (as you already know). This post is inspired by the former rather than the latter, but there are a few testing references throughout and the closing remarks are all around testing if you just want to skip to the end.
The convention was a great success, held over a weekend at the same place that frontmen Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt first met 50 years ago, the Butlin’s holiday camp in Minehead, Somerset. There were an array of Quo tribute bands, Q&A sessions, meet & greets, a quiz and an impressive exhibition of Quo memorabilia to keep us busy for the weekend.
Bringing together around 500 diehard fans in one place showed me once again what strength lies in a community of like-minded people. Whether it’s a testing conference or a Quo convention, meeting up with old friends and making new ones through a keenly shared interest is a truly amazing thing – I’m proud to be part of at least two passionate communities, the Quo fans and the worldwide software testing community. (For those of you interested in all things Status Quo, I run one of the largest Quo-related websites.)
While I was away, the TEAM group held their fourth meetup in Melbourne and it sounds like it all went very well again. The fifth meetup has just been announced, so take a look at the TEAM meetup page for more details.
There are lots of exciting side projects in planning from the TEAM group as well, so watch this space for further developments, all aimed at achieving our mission of Connecting Quo Fans, sorry I mean Connecting Testers!
Rockin' and Testing All Over The World 