The eleventh TEAM meetup was held on 26th May and we returned to a regular venue for us, Aconex‘s great space on Flinders Street in the Melbourne CBD. Thanks again to Aconex for their support in providing the venue, pizzas and drinks.
Our membership had increased to around 470 and we expected a big response when we announced this meetup as Michael Bolton was our headline act! Michael had been in town to run his Rapid Software Testing class (through TEAM) and also to give the opening keynote presentation at the Australian Testing Days 2016 conference.
On a cold and rainy evening, we were pleased to see around 35 of our members make the effort to attend and we kicked off proceedings at about 6pm (with early birds taking the lions share of the pizzas).
Michael kicked off by talking about a game he’s been playing recently, called Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes and some observations about playing this game in relation to software testing. He also gave us a 15-minute “lightning talk” on automation in testing and this was a fascinating example of how to talk about testing using clear language and make a compelling case for the use of automation to enhance the superpowers of humans as testers (rather than trying to replace them).
The group was then formed into a number of teams, most playing the Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes game plus a few playing the famous Dice Game. An hour passed quickly and then the bomb game players shared some observations about their game playing and Michael shared more of his observations from his more considerable experience of playing it. Maybe check the game out for yourself and see what lessons you learn that you can apply to software testing along the way.
The meetup wrapped up just after 8pm and it was – as always – great to see a bunch of such passionate and engaged testers in the one room. Thanks to Michael for taking the time to attend the meetup and provide such an entertaining evening for us all.
For further meetup announcements, remember to follow our meetup.com page at:
http://www.meetup.com/Test-Engineering-Alliance-Melbourne/
Also keep an eye on our website, http://www.testengineeringalliance.com, and you can also follow TEAM on social media, at:
- TEAM LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=6968269
- TEAM Twitter handle: @AussieTesters
Rockin' and Testing All Over The World 
Wow, to have Michael Bolton at your meetup! Amazing!
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