Hi, my name is Huib Schoots, I am Quality Coach, Agile Expert, Change Maker, Product Improver, Problem Solver, Tester and Scrum Master. I like to learn and to share knowledge so I became a speaker at conferences. Agile Testing Days is very special to me since I did my first conference talk there in 2011. I have spoken at many versions of Agile Testing Days in Germany, USA, Netherlands and Sweden. José and his team are amazing people. Always friendly and very helpful, they really make me feel welcome and at home. That and because of the awesome atmosphere and the great fun, I keep coming back!
Now I have to choose my favorite moment, which is pretty difficult as there are soo many. But if I have to pick one of my favorite moments, I would like to share the Kazoo orchestra in 2015. Also the story which lead up to that moment is worth telling too. So here we go...
...Once up a time there was a group of testers in a hotel bar drinking and having fun in the early hours. We were talking about the stuff we want to do in the future. A gorgeous girl is sitting on my lap and drinking (slightly too much) gin and tonic. We talk about wanting to do a keynote at a conference. Alex told me that night how she had been told that "keynotes are only given to important people with things to say". After a while I ask her: what if we work together? And so we decide to work together. We brainstorm about what we can do and we find out we both are big music fans and both play an instrument. What if we talk about agile, testing, learning and the parallels with music? We also discussed how much fun it would be to play music to let people experience and “illustrate” some agile and testing lessons. We get enthusiastic and decided to talk more the next day. At lunch, Alex and I were talking about our ideas when Jose walked past our table. I asked him if he had time to listen and I tell him our ideas. "We think it is keynote material" I finish our story. The look on Alex's face is priceless. Jose says he will think about it. Later that day he tells us that we can do the talk as a keynote at ATD Netherlands next year. If it is good enough, we can repeat it at ATD in Potsdam. This marks the beginning of close bond between Alex and I and many amazing adventures.
While preparing our talk for ATD Netherlands, we made jokes about buying 250 kazoos for everybody in the audience to have a Kazoo orchestra. During our keynote in the Netherlands, we made the audience dance and sing and obviously the ATD crew liked our talk! They give us a keynote at ATD 2015 in Potsdam! Preparing for the big keynote, Alex decides to take the plunge. She sends Jose an email and she asks if we can have 600 kazoos for everybody in the audience to play with us. The rest is history…
To relive the full keynote again, click the following link. Please note: you get redirected to YouTube and the video starts with the Kazoo orchestra sequence:
https://youtu.be/kZQGK48UjG8?t=2800
A great story to tell and wonderful moment to share! I have many great memories and I know there will come many more. Working with Trendig and the ATD crew is great: they are open to creative ideas, support crazy and innovative experiments and they have the guts to stand out and try new things. They do almost anything to help people learn and have fun. They never cease to surprise me!
I nominate Chris Baumann to write about his favorite ATD moment.
Photos/tweets to go with the story:
Tweet Jose:
https://twitter.com/jdiaz_berlin/status/578460519587319808
Tweet Olaf:
https://twitter.com/OlafLewitz/status/578542180081528832
Me tweeting about precious moment:
https://twitter.com/huibschoots/status/1060472202099867648
Tweet Richard with pic:
https://twitter.com/FriendlyTester/status/663998255370477568