I’ve been reflecting on my talk that I gave at HUSTEF around 10 days ago on Wellbeing - Dealing with Stress at work. The feedback was so positive, with comments like ‘we need more of this’ and it has got me thinking whether conferences offer enough space to cover mental health talks, and if they did, what sort of topics should we cover.
So, I thought I’d reach out and ask what you would like to see covered.
I understand this can be a difficult topic to be open about and you may not want to reply for everyone to read, and that’s cool - please reply to me privately if that’s a better option for you.
I’m trying to gather as much feedback as I can to a) help me plan what talks to do next that will be most helpful, and b) use this info to persuade conference organisers that there is a need out there.
I recently did a talk on Failing Forward at Mabl Experience and actually pride myself on covering more well being topics than technical. Its great to learn how someone integrated blah with blue blah but how did they handle stress of it? How did the handle the failures in getting there? How did they handle tough conversations about it?
I get soooooo much positive feedback on well being topics than I ever do on my tech talks. So I think this is a great idea and think more items around dealing with team dynamics and stress of the past 4 years for the tech sector would be beneficial. Or even how automation or AI anxiety in taking jobs.
It’s a topic that has always gone down well over the years. I find stories around management, stress, mental health always relate and they become more meaningful when we can share how we have specifically experienced it in our testing work/expereinces.
Here’s a collection of talks we’ve done on the topic over the years at MoT:
Thanks everyone for your replies, I will do some more research in other spaces as well to see what the appetite is for this.
Its great that there are resources on here to help people