I had fun for a few months programming Ruby at eLabs, but now I'm moving on*. What exactly I'll be doing next is not entirely clear. My plan, at least initially, is to work as an independent consultant specializing in automated testing and agile coaching. I'd also like to do some contract Ruby or Python programming. Hopefully I will find customers who are willing to hire me to do those things on a part-time basis, or with short term contracts, so I can do a mixture.
I have a long term dream to build some kind of product around PyUseCase and TextTest. I really believe in the approach Geoff has built for testing rich client python GUIs, and I'd like to see if it could be adapted for testing web applications. I have some ideas I'd like to try out, but I'll need to find real customers with real applications and problems to try them out on. I'm hoping that will be possible through the agile testing consulting that I'll be doing.
I'd also like to develop the idea of the coding dojo as a forum for teaching Test Driven Development and related agile engineering practices. I'm certain there is more that could be done to help people to get going with these skills. I'm looking into what courses are currently offered by local training providers, and hoping to both teach and develop those courses. I'm also working on my own formal training course based around the JDojo@Gbg meetings I led last year.
As you may have noticed from previous posts, I really enjoy going to conferences, and often speak at them. I don't expect that to change much :-) Geoff and I are both scheduled to speak at Agile Testing Days in Berlin in October, which I am really looking forward to. It'll be a chance for us to learn from some of the best in our industry, and share some of our ideas. Geoff's testing tools are developing all the time, and I'll be talking about what we've learnt from the many dojo meetings going on in Göteborg. I'll be speaking together with my friend and former colleague Fredrik Wendt, a stalwart member of GothPy and assistant leader of JDojo@Gbg.
So it's an exciting time for me, and I have several activities lined up to get me going with my new business. I'm also hoping to find a bit more time to spend writing articles for this blog. We'll see if I succeed!
* eLabs is a very young company with only about 8 employees, and after I agreed to join CJ and his team back in January the company strategy changed a little. After I started in March, my role didn't work out the way I'd anticipated. CJ and I had a good talk about it, and I think it's with no hard feelings on either side that I left the company at the end of June.
