I’ve worked on several different skill sets which do not necessary have to be connected (DevOps, JavaScript, AWS, soft skills…). Drop me a message what skills are you interested in, and I’ll see what courses I can recommend for that.
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Congratulations on your impending baby and all your wonderful accomplishments this year! And thanks for all your help!
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Many of this year’s highlights for me have been MoT events and getting so much help and support from you MoT folks to get the most out of each one!
Personally, one silver lining of 2020 was getting to stay home from March onward. I missed seeing friends & family in person. And it was wonderful to be home with my husband and our animals. The cats in particular seem to have changed personalities for the better and I think it’s because we’re always here.
Professionally, another silver lining has been getting to attend remote meetups from all over the world and meet so many new people! I took a job way out of my comfort zone and it has been a struggle, but the inspiration from other people has made a big difference for me. Thanks, everyone!
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Thanks Lisa! And thank you too for all your amazing support to MoT and the Community! 
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Professional:
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One MoT Dojo course completed, and soon to be released!
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Submitted a paper for a test conference coming up in 2021.
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Honing my thoughts on human aspects in Software Quality, and
looking forward to share my thoughts & ideas in test conferences in 2021.
Personal:
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Better control and direction in stocks investment! (the 2020 roller-coasters really HELPED me!)
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Better orientation towards health & spiritual goals and daily traction.
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Started being a Poet in May 2020, and my first book likely to be released soon.
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Restarted learning western classical Piano (music keyboard) and totally enjoying it!
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Made better connections & communications with near & dear, and found new friends.
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Started enabling 5 organisations around the world through mentoring, which are planting thousands of trees where they are important!
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Hey everyone …chipping in to just show support for this great thread. It’s been a tough year for humanity in general but there is a lot to celebrate and feel grateful for. Here goes for me
Personal - got a house!
Professional - started MoT Kuala Lumpur this year. Great start to a year which was topped off by joining a new company in a role which involves the larger software dev stuff instead of just testing. This role is also put people management on my to-do stuff directly. Something to work on for 2021.
Have a great holidays and to a new, much improved year ahead!
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Hey peeps, Happy Christmas Eve Eve,
It has been a year (or possibly 15) and I’m terrible at remembering the good things that happen but this year:
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Professionally: Got a new job with better money and a senior title and that isn’t working for an evil American corp that bought my old company a year go. Very much a new challenge and it is going to be hard but I’m so less stressed.
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Professionally: I felt like I actually learned how to code a bit this year. I spent sometime learning JS after failing horribly at C# and I think I’ve also learnt enough to use Cypress effectively.
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Personally/Professionally: My job is now as remote as I want to to be which means I can still work with my husband even though we now both work at different orgs. I also realised I hate offices and remote working is much better for me.
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Personally: Finally got 3 rooms finished decorating wise and now have a games room and a library. Next year gonna tackle the kitchen!
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Personally: I got my reading back up to a decent amount after not reading as much as I used to. I got through 70 plus books some of which were even non-fiction!
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Great topic, and something I’ve been thinking about a lot as the year is coming to a close.
Personal:
- We JUST finished gut / renovation on my new home office and it is gorgeous!
- I never thought in all my years as a working parent I’d ever be able to meet my daughter when she gets off the bus but yet here we are…
- Like everyone else, I’m sure, I feel I better understand how to take each day as it comes, be easy on myself, and focus on the little wins
- Our dog is getting up there in years (13+) and it’s been great being able to pay more attention to her needs since I’m around
- Somehow survived (though not well at times, it was really hard
) the school shutdown of April / May / June and “solo parenting” with a very FT job while my husband worked at the hospital rehab facility. It wasn’t pretty but the fact we survived wows me at times 
Professional:
- Somehow, in the midst of juggling being a sole tester for a chunk of the year and the needs of our daughter when the schools shut down completely April / May / June, I was promoted to Software Quality Manager in July and have been building out a team! It’s all entirely new for me and a bit overwhelming / scary at times but I’m learning a ton.
- After riding the pandemic WFH wave for 9 months now, I feel I’ve finally hit a groove on the WFH front.
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My wins for the year that was 2020
Career / Professional:
- Having been made redundant on the 31st of December 2019, my first big career win of 2020 was landing my current job as Software QA Test Engineer at PA Media. I started February 2020, not long before COVID-19 was emerging and the first UK lock-down in March.
- My role at PA Media was my first that was focused on Automation. In the last 11 months I have extended existing and creating many new automated integration and regression suites.
- Pairing with Developers and building test automation has allowed me to grow my programming skills significantly this year. My skills in modern JavaScript and TypeScript have grown massively.
- At PA I have learned more and done more API and Micro-services testing then ever before.
- Although I had used Docker before, the amount I’ve gained confidence and skill in Docker in 2020 is unreal. I’m not using it daily at work.
- I’ve also continued my “Full Stack” Engineering learning, developing skills writing and updating AWS Task definitions and Terraform ‘Infrastructure as code’.
Personal / Professional (side projects)
- Undoubtedly my biggest “Personal/Professional” win of 2020 was creating of Tester of The Day. The daily award and celebration of the Software Testing Community. If you don’t already know about Tester of The Day, check out the Hall of Fame: https://testeroftheday.fullsnacktester.com
- As well as the excellent community promotion side of Tester of The Day, it has helped me further develop my code skills. In creating the Hall of Fame, I choose to use a number of technologies and platforms I hadn’t used before. Namely VueJs and Netlify. The Hall of Fame now builds and deploys automatically via some CI/CD magic on git commits.
- Another side-project I created in 2020 is GIF Weather, a small API + VueJs Web application I created as a demo for an as yet unwritten blog series on API Testing.
- As part of building GIF Weather I also learned how to build and deploy to Heroku for the first time.
- My latest win, from the 30th of December 2020, was to deploy my first Twitter Bot, for Tester of The Day (using Heroku). Yes I borrowed heavily from an existing tutorial, but I still had to modify it and fill in some blanks. I’m calling that a win!
- And finally, but probably most important. I have massively increased my tester community involvement and made some great new friends!
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Personal
Got through the year as a family. Including kids starting a new school, some homeschooling, lockdowns, generally not seeing people or doing things we normally do. In some ways a crap year. But we’ve spent loads of time together and thats been really special.
Really thankful we’ve come through it happy and healthy.
More active here on MoT, and not just in my organisations community.
Started blogging. Thank you bloggers club for the nudge and just enough structure to get me going.
Professional
Now working from home, and its going well overall. Being a bit loud I’ve appeared on some of my partners work calls. Oops
Supported people through some difficult times.
Started mentoring someone from another government department.
The test community of practice (in my org) is self sustaining. More people are involved and taking over things, rather than just a few people doing everything.
Got a new training path in place which has been an interesting challenge to get things from my head and shared with others. Already learned lots in doing it, and positive feedback so far.
Overall trying to share more and learn. Which is my goal / theme for 2021
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Professional
Changed roles after writing software features for 23 years, now writing automated tests as part of a large team producing a great product.
Professional/Personal
Remodeled front room into a home office. Complete with door, white board, sit/stand station and 3 windows!
Personal
Started intermittent fasting and working out during the day, lost 15 lb.
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