Serendipity

It was early December 2017 when we found out that an ex-colleague at Quest in Melbourne had passed away. Bruce was a very popular guy during his few years with us as a tester – his flat-top haircut, dapper clothing and brightly coloured socks made him stand out amongst on office full of the usual IT crowd attire! He stood out to me, though, for just being a good bloke – he (along with his wife, Denise, who also worked at Quest) were incredibly generous to me when I first moved to Australia and started working at Quest, fielding those naive questions from a new arrival with patience and being good friends who just happened to live in the same area in which I’d chosen to settle.

It was testament to Bruce’s reputation as a good bloke that his funeral was a large affair, drawing representations from the various communities he was involved with around cars, dancing, and surf life saving. A few of us current Quest folks attended and we were pleased to find that a bunch of ex-Questers had also made the effort to remember him there too.

It was good to see some of the old Quest faces again and catch up with our various work and life changes since we’d all last seen each other (in many cases meaning ten-plus years). It was during one of these conversations that I happened to talk about the volunteer work I’d been doing to teach software testing to young adults on the autism spectrum (along with my good mate Paul Seaman). Dennis mentioned that his son, Dom, had a spectrum diagnosis and might be interested in the training, so I sent Dennis some details on the application process shortly after the funeral.

We had completed the first run of the EPIC TestAbility Academy in June 2017 and were actively looking for participants for the second run, so it was a timely opportunity for Dom. I was delighted when EPIC Assist informed us that Dom had applied – and we were very happy to accept him onto the second course starting in March 2018.

We had ten students on this second course, with nine making it to the end. It was a great group and I was disappointed to only be present for four of the twelve sessions due to work travel commitments. But I saw Dom as an engaged student, always contributing to discussions, and always tackling the homework between sessions. (I’ve already blogged about this second run in more detail here.)

I returned to Australia after the course ended in June and I knew that Paul had been working hard (along with Kym Vassiliou from EPIC Assist) to get some kind of placement going at this workplace, Travelport Locomote. The usual ping-pong between departments and HR burned a lot of time, but eventually it has come to pass that Dom is taking up a placement at Travelport Locomote as part of their just launched “LocoStart” programme, working alongside Paul two days per week.

Out of something so sad, something so wonderful has come about. Dom should be very proud of himself for taking the plunge to be part of the training course and for being such a diligent and engaged student throughout. His dedication and potential have been recognized by Travelport Locomote and I hope this opportunity to engage in a real-world software testing job in a modern IT company is a very positive one, both for him and Travelport Locomote. I know Paul is going to enjoy having Dom as part of his team and is committed to his success.

Finally, another shout out to Bruce, without whom this opportunity would have never happened for Dom, that good bloke karma just keeps on giving!