It's been my pleasure to have been a contributing editor for Software Test&Performance Magazine for the past two years. During that time, I paired up with Chris McMahon, and we wrote a column called "ST&Pedia", a sort of thematic encyclopedia. If the magazine theme was on white box testing, we'd define terms in white box testing. If it was on testing Microsoft Applications, we'd right about the Microsoft tool stack. If it was about open source tools ... you get the drift.
But magazine themes tend to cycle, and you can only write so many definitional articles about Unit Testing.
More than that, it was
our column. The extent to which the community was involved was an occasional email to me, Chris, or the magazine's editor. (Hopefully you wrote nice things, right?)
This winter, the folks at STP started talking about how to turn that concept on it's head. Instead of writing 'content' (ohh, I dislike that word) for the 'readership', what if we got the community involved in creating and sharing ideas? How could we do that?
For that matter, could we make some sort of on-line property where these ideas are shared and voted on, and the people voted the most are invited to write for the magazine? (Or at least, people who want to write for the magazine, that have a high 'reputation' on-line get special consideration.)
Eventually, this website was born. I can't take any credit for it; it was all Rich, Janette, and the programmers at STP. But I have been involved with the changes to the column.
We started out talking about a sort of "Ask the Tester" column. People would write in questions, perhaps on theme, and Chris and I would answer them. This sort of presented us as 'experts' in /every/ aspect of software testing, which, well, we aren't. Chris had even less excitement for this idea than I did.
Which led me to wonder - what if we took the community aspect one step further, inviting people we thought of as experts to be interviewed each issue.
That is, the community asks the questions, and a guest from the community answers them.
That's the thing about expertise - at least in my book. It's a value judgement. I want to present my ideas and my arguments, and let the other person decided if I'm an expert or not.
This is similar to the old story teller's trick, in that you don't tell the audience the hero is strong -- you have him pull the sword from the stone when no one else can. You don't see say that he is brave; no, instead, you have him face the dragon when everyone else runs away
Oh, and a side benefit is that if the audience decided you are not an expert, well, at least you're not a liar to boot, claiming to have expertise the audience has decided that you don't.
Several years ago, my friend John Bach explored this idea of expertise in much more depth in an article he wrote called "
playing the expert game"; it's a great read and I highly recommend it.
Which is sort of the other way to claim expertise -- to nominate someone else. Ironically, that's what I'm doing in the June issue, nominating Jon Bach as an expert and letting him answer your questions.
For the August Issue, we've invited Michael Bolton, the consulting Software Tester, to answer our questions. But to do that, we need some questions!
So what do you say -- can you contribute some questions for Michael? We just need a brief question, you name, City, and Provide/State or Country. You'll see your name in print, you may earn a little bit of reputation, but more importantly, you'll
get an answer. Not just any answer, this one is going in print to fifty thousand readers, so I' sure the guest contributors will think long and hard about what they are going to say.
You can leave your thoughts here, join the
Ask The Tester Crew, or email me: matt.heusser@gmail.com.
I earnestly desire your comments.