In the global category: It looks like my vision of experiential virtual training will become a reality: I’ve taken the next step and signed up for a WebEx subscription. (No, they aren’t paying me to say that. I don’t do blogvertising - except for promoting my own services, of course. WebEx just did the best job of meeting all my requirements.)

Many, many thanks to everyone who took the time to comment. Your encouragement, along with some private emails, made all the difference in my decision process.

By the way, I really do mean “experiential” and not “experimental” when I talk about my virtual training. Experiential training involves distilling lessons learned through experiences rather than being told what to learn by an instructor. The experiential nature of my classes is what makes it such a challenge to translate them to an online venue. But experiential training is generally more powerful and engaging than lecture-based instruction. So it’s worth the effort.

I’m really excited about this. If I can make it work, it means that I can make my style of training available on a global scale, all from my local office.

Anyway…next steps: I’ll be working toward a formal announcement in the coming weeks. Look for news about an online version of my Exploratory Testing class after the New Year.

In the local category: All my recent travel has been fun. I’ve met fantastic people all over the world. But a message from a colleague asking about local exploratory testers made me realize that I’ve lost touch with my local testing community. It’s been months since I hung out with testers here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’d like to rectify that.

Now I realize that in the SF Bay Area, there are at least two groups that meet once a month: SSQA and BAQA (can’t seem to find a website for them…). I’ve participated in both groups. Great people, good times. If you’re in the SF Bay Area and you don’t know about these groups, consider dropping by to say “howdy.” (And if anyone has a pointer for BAQA, that would be great…)

So. I could reconnect by going to those meetings when I’m in town. But each of those groups is more about Quality than Testing, and there is a difference.

What I’d really like is to connect with those who are more interested in testing topics than capital-Q-Quality. Yes, the two are related. But when I say “testing topics,” I mean: Agile Testing, the evolving role of the tester-developer/developer-tester, Exploratory Testing, and test automation with open source tools.

So…if there’s already an active group meeting regularly in the SF Bay Area where folks focus on such topics, and not on capital-Q-Quality or process stuff, please let me know.

Otherwise, if you’re interesting in talking testing, you’re in the SF Bay Area, and you’d be interested in connecting with other people who are as Test Obsessed as you are in the local area, drop me a note in the comments or send me an email. If there’s enough interest, I’ll work on pulling together a local meeting of some kind, probably in early January shortly after the holidays and before I begin my next insane round of traveling.