I’m done reading the revised version of The Long Tail: Why the future of business is selling less of more by Chris Anderson. The long tail term was coined by Anderson in an article he wrote for Wired in 2004. In his book, he explains that we’ve been moving away from a hits market into a niche market. The increased popularity of the Internet has accelerated this transition. In the original article, Anderson shares 3 main observations:

The tail of available variety is far longer than we realize.
It’s now within reach …

GTAC 2009 is over. Hail to GTAC 2010 (I’m hearing Hyderabad, India … hint hint !). Let me tell you that GTAC 2009 was quite a ride for me (and for most participant I would say) and one of the best conference I’ve ever attended. Ok the best one. There, I’ve said it. The talk themselves were of high quality with excellent content and great presenters but everything else was on par, from the great discussions I’ve had with attendees, the lightning talks, the roundtable during lunch and the fantastic …

If you follow this blog, you know that I‘ve been scratching my head to find relevant metrics to assess the quality of our various products under development. I’m involved in a very large program which is highly visible. These metrics are not only important to our development organization but also to executives who are investing in the program. I wanted to come up with a simple model, relevant for all important characteristics of a software and requiring low effort to compute. Having a model following international standard was of course …

Along with blogs, Webinars/conferences, Twitter has become very quickly part of my technical-watch toolbox. It took me a bit of time at first to clearly understand how I could take advantage of Twitter (like most people I would say) but I’m glad I dig a bit more as I find it very useful today. Assuming you’ve got the right tool (I use Seesmic but switch regularly on Tweetdeck) and the right focus in the people you follow, it not only brings a large amount of good knowledge but also allow …

I’m a big fan of dzone which is more than a great digg-like for the developers community. It’s another great tool to be used as part of your technical-watch toolbox whether you’re a developer or a tester.
They also offer a number of very useful cheat sheets on various technical subjects. It’s well-written, filled with useful tips and source code examples and best of all it’s free ! I’ve tried to compile those which I think could be useful for a software testers operating in an agile environment.

As I was reading this excellent article from Matt Heusser, I couldn’t refrain from chuckling as I could relate a lot from what I was reading as an ex-software engineer, tester and now in a management position. As I’ve experienced most aspect of the spectrum, I can claim some objectivity and wanted to add my 2 cents to the article.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I encourage software testers and managers to attend software test conferences and webinars as part of their training toolbox. I myself try to attend as much as I can, trying to synch them with a business trip (I’ve attended SEETEST and SOFTEC this year. I Will attend GTAC 2009 in Zurich in October. It should be a good one !!)
I’ve tried to find a place where all these conferences and webinars are referenced and I’ve found a good list …

So much to learn, so little time … Between magazines, conferences, books and actual experience, there is plenty out there to learn about software testing and become a better professional. A lot in Software Testing can be self-taught if you have the right mind and the envy. It all goes back to the lifestyle of mind so close to James Marcus Bach and his concept of a Buccaneer-Scholar (Personal note to James: I finally ordered your latest book ! Expect a review soon !).
If you have a busy life, and …