Showing posts with label podcasts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label podcasts. Show all posts

Monday, January 1, 2024

Year in Review : Reflecting on 2023

As we wrap up another year, I spent some time on reflecting on the highs and lows of 2023, a year that brought its fair share of challenges and achievements. This tradition of year-end reflection not only helps me appreciate the journey but also sets the stage for what lies ahead.

I've been doing this tradition of reflecting back on a year for the last four years, and it's been great to look back at each year-end review. It's like flipping through the pages of a personal growth journal, seeing the progress, the lessons learned, and the challenges overcome. Here's a snapshot of my 2023 story:

  • 2023 kicked off with me joining Ship30for30, a writing course that taught me the importance of consistency, generating ideas, and embracing constructive feedback. Check out my 30-day writing adventure here.
  • Throughout the year, I had the pleasure of being a guest on various podcasts, discussing topics like observability for testers, the importance of representation, and the concept of shifting testing left. You can catch some of these conversations πŸ‘‡
    • Shweta on QA Q & A - here
    • Interview with Nicola Lindgren - here
    • Marie Cruz and Nicole van der Hoeven on Adobo & Avocados - here
    • Conversation with Ruslan Akhmetzianov - here
  • My time at Thoughtworks was like a journey through a place where I learned and grew a lot. Working with great co-workers on different projects, making friends forever, and tackling challenges have all contributed to shaping a better version of myself.

"Growth always happens when you step out of your comfort zone."

  • One of the personal milestones of the year was delivering workshops at conferences. From a 99-minute session on continuous testing to an in-person workshop on inclusive cross-functional requirements, the feedback from attendees was incredibly rewarding. You can find more about these workshops here. If any conference is seeking workshops on these topics, feel free to reach out to me as I'm looking to do more of these in 2024. Apart from these workshops, I got an opportunity to be part of a panel discussion on 'Driving a culture of quality' at TestBash Autumn 2023. It was an honour to be part of this alongside Ben Dowen and Calab Grandall.
  • Said goodbye to Thoughtworks and jumped into a new role as the Quality Practice Lead at CFC. The first month has been a rollercoaster of learning, and I'm excited about what's coming next.
  • In response to health challenges stemming from remote work(not taking frequent breaks), I committed to a journey of healthy eating habits. Shedding 12 kgs wasn't just about adopting healthy habits but also about dedication, consistency, and bouncing back after setbacks. This achievement stands out as a personal highlight for me in 2023.
  • Being named a RisingSTAR Finalist was an honor. While my idea on cross-functional requirements didn't take the top spot, standing among brilliant finalists was a win in itself.

  • Additionally, I contributed as part of the program review team for TestΞΌ 2023 by Lambdatest, adding my voice to the testing community as a reviewer. I was also invited to be a Llambdatest Spartan which is a great community to be part of.




As I bid farewell to 2023, I acknowledge its ups and downs. Each challenge has contributed to my growth, and I'm proud of how I've navigated them. Despite falling short on consistent blogging, 2024 holds a simple goal—write at least 5 blogs. Putting it out here for public accountability! πŸ˜„

In closing, I'm grateful for the experiences and lessons of 2023. Here's to growth, resilience, and the untold stories awaiting in 2024! πŸŒŸπŸŽ‰

Stay tuned for more adventures! ✨
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Friday, December 31, 2021

A Year in Review - 2021

 Another year passed by and its the time of the year to look back and reflect. This year for me was more of trying to recover from year 2020 loss of my loved one and taking care of myself. 

Reflecting back to me is all about being grateful and learning from all those experiences and continue to grow. So I wanted to look back at my 2021 journey.

  •  Networking and making friends was one of the huge advantage of attending in person conferences, I had made some from 2019 conferences that I had attended in person. I had an opportunity to share a short story in colloboration with Niranjani Manohoran for an initiative called as RISE hosted by Synapse QA where we shared how we met at a conference and continued helping each other πŸ˜‡
  • I got an opportunity to pair and collaborate with Maaret PyhΓ€jΓ€rvi to test the application under test to create a course.
  •  I joined Thoughtworks in May as a Senior QA Consultant which was one of the most exciting news. I had followed and got inspired by many thoughtworkers, I was very excited to start a new chapter of my journey as a thoughtworker. It's been just 7 months since I joined and I already feel so confident about everything that I have done so far and how much I have learned. There's so much more that I'm looking forward to in 2022 that I have planned for . 
  • I continued sharing my learnings about Observability with the community, I still consider myself as a newbie in this topic and there's so much more to learn and explore. This topic is one of my favourite and I'm very passionate about it, I'm hoping to learn more about this in 2022 🎯. Was part of the panel along with Miss Amy, Shery Brauner, Tiani Jones and Thom Duran which was hosted by LeadDev - Getting your engineers on board with observability. And also contributed on LeadDev where myself including Liz Fong-Jones, Kristie Howard and Lesley Cordero have shared experiences around how the teams been using Observability. I loved sharing and reading about how others have been using it. Interested in reading? Here's the link - How Netflix, Teachers Pay, HoneyComb and more used Observability 
 
  •  I got invited to be one of the reviewers for Super Reads 2021:Synape QA Global Write-A-Thon. It was great to be part of the awesome panel of reviewers.I loved reading so many stories and articles throught the review process. 
  • I did speak at few conferences this year including TestFlix 2021, Appium Conference 2021, API Summit 2021, Conf42:Site Reliability Engineering 2021 and Dev Day 2021. I had a privilege to be a host at Agile India 2021 Conference to host Manoj Kumar where he delivered a talk on Tips from the Trenches : Accessibility Testing.
  • It was an honour to be on TestGuild Podcast hosted by Joe Colantonio, it was such an awesome experience and enjoyed the conversation sharing all about quality.
  • This is my first and last blogpost of this year 2021. I did not or shall I say I could not write any blogpost in this year. I did get very anxious about not writing any blog. But slowly I learnt to accept that it's ok, it's ok to not write, it's ok to take a break from something to take care of yourself. Gradually I started feeling less guilty about not being able to write which was a huge relief for my ownself. And I'm looking forward to 2022 to take small steps towards getting back into writing and sharing more πŸ’ͺπŸ’«πŸ’₯.

 What a journey and a ride it was, Year 2021. With so many great things, had miserable moments too. Even though I could not do as much as I had thought of, I'm happy and grateful of what I was able to do. All the learnings, experiences, struggles and challenges have given me a lot of strength and confidence. I'm grateful to all those people who were kind, empathetic and encouraging. 

While I'm planing and building my goals for next year, this is the tweet that is going to be a reminder and going to be stuck in my mind 😊

 

Looking forward for the year 2022 πŸ™ŒπŸ’« 

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Monday, January 4, 2021

Reflecting on Year 2020

⚠️ Content warning: This blog contains mention of death 

 The year 2020 - A year filled with a lot of uncertainties, learned whole new definition of being adaptable to the changes, surprises which were both good and bad, a year of learning about all new fears. Year 2020 to me has meant all about empathy and humanity. It's been a mixed year which has entirely changed the way I look at life and the impact has been real.

This year had been a real toll in terms of mental health and adapting to the new way of living with a lot of unexpected situations to face. I almost decided not to write anything about reflecting on this year. But I decided to do it. This is my first blog post in the last 6 months. 

The year started with a lot of excitement and goals that I wanted to achieve. A lot of planning and passion went in for what I wanted to achieve and learn while I was on my Testing Tour. Setting out on Testing Tour was not just about learning topics and sharing but it was more of getting out of my comfort zone. I am so glad I took the courage to do it and it proved to be worth it. I met known and new people from across the world which was an amazing experience. 

I got introduced to the whole new topic of Observability or O11y where Abby Bangser and Shelby Spees has helped me in a way that got me hands-on with so much better understanding and clarity about this topic. Shared my learnings from Testing Tour and Observability at multiple conferences. 

 I lived in fear since I came to know about Covid-19, fear for my family who live with me and who lived back home in India. I have seen Covid effect really closely. Three of my loved ones caught it one after the other. First my Mom, then my Dad and then my brother. In this battle, I lost my Dad who was my inspiration and role model. This hit me so hard that I'm still trying to recover to come out of that loss and pain 😒 which is never going to heal. These were one of the toughest days I have ever faced.

I still wanted to look back and reflect on the good things that happened to me. 

  • Went on Testing Tour and had 15 different sessions on 15 different topics and blogged about each of those sessions. 
  • I learned about a lot more new topics and tried my hands-on with new tools. I learned about Observability, Performance testing using Jmeter, Microsoft Azure and lot more. 
  • I got an opportunity to be part of Observability for testers series organized by Anne-Marie Charrett along with Lisa Crispin and  Abby Bangser which was a great opportunity to learn and explore more about observability.

  • I gained 1076 followers crossing 1000k followers on  Twitter which for me is a huge number. 
  • I learned to listen to my mental health and say no to few of the opportunities. I had to prioritise myself over other things which I struggled initially but gradually learned that it's absolutely ok to stop and take a break to take care of yourself. 
  • When the entire world went remote, initially I was happy that I will get to work from home but gradually it became challenging to work from home with two kids around as they had their virtual school sessions. Throughout this process, I learnt not to feel guilty for not being able to give full attention to both my kids while they are on their virtual school sessions. Learnt to be patient and adapt to each day as it comes. 
  • Our testing community is not just to learn and share about all things testing but it proved to be supportive during my difficult times which I'm so thankful for. 

Reflecting on all these gave me so much happiness, confidence and pleasure πŸ’«πŸ˜‡. It's always good to look back and see what you have been doing or learning on the way. Looking forward for year 2021 with an attitude of being grateful for what I have. Thanks for your time for stopping by and reading my post πŸ™‚

 

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