2016: My year in numbers

This post was published on December 28, 2016

Now that the year is almost over, I thought it might be nice to jump on the end-of-year bandwagon and look back on 2016 a bit, and at the same time look ahead to what 2017 hopefully has in store for me. And since I deal with facts, let’s have a look at some numbers:

Number of conferences attended: 5
Conferences are a wonderful opportunity for learning, sharing, catching up with people and getting to know your peers and other people in the field. That’s why I actively try and attend or contribute to as many useful conferences as possible. This year, I’ve attended TestWorksConf, the Test Automation Day, the TestNet conference (twice) and I had my first international conference experience at TestCon in Vilnius, Lithuania. I’ve heard many useful things and met many great people, so I’ll definitely try and attend at least as many conferences next year. Three of them are already in my agenda (TestWorksConf, Test Automation Day and Romania Testing Conference), so there’s two more to go. One more, if you count Automation Guild (more on that later). Hopefully 2017 will include another adventure abroad, but I’m already quite thrilled to be in Romania next May!

Number of presentations given (not counting in house as part of consulting work): 4
Last year, I gave two presentations at different conferences: one at TestWorksConf, one at TestCon. Apart from that, I hosted (on invitation) two evening sessions for service providers in the testing field in the Netherlands. As it’s a personal goal of mine to become a better public speaker, I’m actively looking to increase this number in the next year. Even though I like hosting workshops even better than delivering talks (more on those below), public speaking is something I like to do and I’m looking forward to doing more of it. One talk has already been scheduled: my Automation Guild session on January 13th. I’ve also submitted a couple of conference proposals for 2017, so let’s hope they’ll be selected.

Number of workshops hosted: 3
I’ve hosted three technical workshops last year, twice on REST Assured and one on WireMock. All of these have been hosted at conferences. For next year, I am actively looking for more opportunities to host workshops and other training sessions, both at conferences as well as in house. I’m starting a partnership with my former employer, in which I’ll be responsible for delivering training on several topics related to test automation, so that’s a very good start! Some other announcements with regards to training offers might be made very soon as well..

Number of articles written: 7 (including an ebook)
Another thing I like doing is writing articles about things related to test automation and service virtualization that interest me. Last year, I’ve published six articles through various media (LinkedIn, O’Reilly, and a couple of magazines). Also, my very first (short) ebook saw the light, something I’m still pretty proud of. The first article for 2017 is already on its way, and we’re discussing a follow-up, so in this area too, 2017 is looking to be another great year. Of course, I’m keeping my eyes open for even more opportunities.

Number of clients served: 6
For IT consultancy, this is a pretty high number. This is partly because I had a couple of projects that ended prematurely (for several different reasons), but the shift I’ve been starting to make this year, moving away from 40-hour weeks at a single client, has had an effect on this number as well. Currently, I’m working for two different clients simultaneously, and I’m loving the flexibility and freedom this gives me in terms of time and attention. It’s also a shift away from being IN a development team (as a tester / an automation engineer) to a consultant supporting and serving development teams. 2017 might not see such a high number of clients, but one thing’s for sure: I won’t be working for a single client full-time if it can be helped. If only because there are so many other interesting things to do..

So, that’s 2016 almost done. To wrap things up, here are a couple of numbers related to this blog:

Number of posts published (including this one): 48
Somewhere in the first half of this year I committed myself to publishing a post every week, on the same day and the same time. No excuses. That publishing day and time is Wednesday at 08:00 GMT, for those who hadn’t noticed (which is probably most of you). Sticking to this schedule hasn’t always been easy, but it’s helped me enormously to keep thinking about things to write about and about the test automation and service virtualization fields in general. Therefore, for next year, the target will be 52. Again, one post, every Wednesday, 8 AM GMT, no excuses.

Number of comments received and sent (up to now): 802
I think WordPress counts all pingbacks as comments as well, and of course, my own comments don’t count, but that would still leave at least 300-400 solid responses and questions to the posts I’ve written. Wow. All I can say is keep them coming! I love feedback, both positive and negative, on the stuff I ramble about here.

Number of page views (up to now): 238.156
Again: wow. That’s a lot! Hopefully you’ll keep visiting this blog next year!

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