✨ AMA: MoT Professional Membership

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Hey everyone!

It’s been a whirlwind since I came back about 18 months ago. Where has the time gone?

We’ve been working super hard behind the scenes, changing things up and doing our best to stay relevant in fast changing times. :sweat_smile:

With social platforms really not serving us well, I’ve never been so excited for what we are building at MoT. We’re not letting the social platforms have all the fun, no way!

We’ve been building lots of things into the MoTaverse. It will always be a work in progress, our backlog of wants is excitedly massive! We’ve got certifications, MoT profiles, badges, The Testing Planet, Testing Trends, OnDemand courses, links/bookmarks (coming soon), glossary…and so much more.

Traditionally, our membership has been very content/talk/course heavy. We are balancing this out as we move forward with more social like features: profiles, links/bookmarks, photos, memes, glossary and more to come soon.

I’ve tried to summarise MoT Professional Membership here:

There are options for individuals and teams. There’s also an Unlimited (Access all the things) Membership too.

Most of the features (Collections, adding glossary definitions, adding links/bookmarks, etc) will be available for Professional Members only. This is partly to maintain a high quality bar of content and also to prevent spam.

Our dream, our goal, our belief, is that every software testing and quality engineering professional should have an MoT Professional Membership. As a small and independent team, we need your help to get there!

Some thoughts to take action and move forward:

  • If you’re not already a MoT Professional Member, today is a good day to consider upgrading
  • Every contribution really matters and helps expand the MoTaverse, we’re here to support you every step of the way
  • Show the above post to whoever signs off your learning budget, we have many team accounts who go through the process of getting the necessary sign off
  • We believe we can be at the centre of the testing universe, whilst I feel a bit arrogant saying that, I do believe that it is what our industry needs
  • Give us feedback, tell us the objections your company may have in signing off any budget
  • If the idea of a subscription is difficult for your company to sign up to, fear not, we can accommodate POs, annual deals, invoices, etc.
  • Help us set an example of creating the best community of practice on planet earth

We’re being somewhat audacious with our beliefs and goals, there is still so much work to do, but we also believe it is all within reach, with your continued help and support.

AMA (or just send some positive vibes because it’s been tough getting here) :backhand_index_pointing_down:

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I for one would not be where I am or be the tester, advocate, public speaker and teacher without MoT. Going Pro initially out of my own pocket and later through persuading companies has paid off big time for me.
I leaned so much and added that learning to my toolkit. When I started on accessibility it was the first place I looked. Same with many subjects. Getting access to all the TestBash talks is gold. Then add the courses and other content and you have 100,000of training knowledge waiting for you.
I’ve always tried to give back because I’ve had so much out. Can’t recommend Pro highly enough.

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Thanks for this thread, very exciting. :grin:

So I know I will become a professional member soon. So why not yet? Well with my company I’ve approached the subject a few times and I’ve got enough influence to sell the benefits. However, problem number 1, is not a benefit to everyone - just the software delivery teams. Problem number 2, they are managing the costs very tightly. So I’m still working on influencing them to see it actually would be a serious perk to my team and save them money on skills development :crossed_fingers:

However, I will make a call soon to see if the company will or won’t fund it. If its the latter, I’ll no doubt pay for the professional membership myself. Not what I want, as I want to bring everyone with me but c’est la vie. Testbash’s and the like may be tricky but its a goal of mine to come along.

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Thanks for the feedback. It’s appreciated!

My instant reaction to “is not a benefit to everyone” is:

  • why does it have to be a benefit for everyone? We don’t all have to learn and study the same thing.
  • when it’s a benefit for everyone, it lacks the depth, which is what MoT is focusing on, sure there are plenty of learning places (LinkedIn learning is a popular one), but it doesn’t have the the depth that we believe is essential, it’s all very high level.

The MoT Professional Membership post I wrote was actually a result of a specific question of “what does the membership offer that is nowhere else?” and as I thought about it, we came to the conclusion that pretty much all of it is not available anywhere else (and we double down on ‘only in the MoTaverse’ type language :rofl:). Sure, some talks are sometimes in other places, but apart from that, we’re really trying to create something unique and valuable.

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100% with you, but thats what I’m dealing with. Its not the membership for everyone, its the investment. So if they invest in the engineering teams £x in MOT membership, what do they do with the other teams and do they have the budget?..not my words obvs. Anyway, I’m on it :flexed_biceps: :grin:

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Yeah, I get it, and I’m trying to get better at figuring out responses to statements like that. :sweat_smile:

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There’s so many great things happening in the MoTaverse, and the fact that I can access it all with my unlimited membership is total raised hands emoji :raising_hands:

With a Pro membership, I can learn from a variety of content formats, contribute to the content and share my perspectives for others to learn from, and better communicate with other enthusiastic testers via the MoT Slack, which I sorely missed during the short time when I wasn’t Pro.

Apart from that, the work that MoT do is just incredible, and even the free offering brings a lot of value. The fact that going Pro also helps support MoT is the cherry on top!

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I can definitely echo what’s been shared already. I think personally it’s been my “go to” for an external perspective of the testing craft than that of my immediate team. Here’s how I’ve used MOT Pro as one of the parameters for shaping my own learning and growth path.

For context, as an employee we get 1 day a month for Personal Development and majority of the time I’m choosing to use that day to catch up with MoT Talks I’ve not watched or have saved that I’d like to dive into that I just don’t get the time to do with projects happening. In my context my company didn’t pay for my Pro license as I felt it was an investment into my learning yet they would pay for me to attend a TestBash. In fact because of my personal learning it was the selling point to the higher-ups that I should attend it because I’ve been expanding my knowledge from the PD time and so I think it’s valuable to attend any related meet-up or TestBash where possible. So if you ask me whether I’d get a Prof license again “oh yeah fo show”!

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I always believed investing money in education is always win game. MoT professional membership is has proven my approach that continuous learning is vital. I would never be when I am today without it. I have access to all sort of content - from TestBash talks to MasterClass recordings and short talks I can easily watch anywhere. There is content for all sorts of topics - it’s either you are being interviewed for a new role or wanting to build a framework.

I know MoT Pro membership got my back when I need help. Also love a quick access and chat with anyone on Slack.

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