Tactics for sharing community learnings at work
Consume
If you’re anything like me, you read a lot, blogs and books, listen to loads of podcasts, and watch a bunch of talks and maybe even attend the odd workshop. I’ll throw in a quick list of resources I consume from shortly.
Not everything I consume is useful, and some of it is more relevant to my work context then others. I strongly encourage you to feed broadly from the fire hose that is the world of software development, testing and quality. Let some of it filter out and be forgotten, and hold onto some key learnings and resources as you go.
As promised, here are a few great places I lot of consume from:
- https://testingpeers.com/ [Podcast]
- https://www.youtube.com/@QualityTalksPodcast [Podcast]
- https://www.ministryoftesting.com/podcasts/this-week-in-testing [Podcast]
- https://www.lisihocke.com/ [Blog]
- https://qahiccupps.blogspot.com/ [Blog]
- https://softwaretestingweekly.com/ [Newsletter of Community Blog posts]
Digest
Take time to digest and savour all that delicious knowledge you’ve consumed. Let the rotten apples fall to the floor, and the cream float to the top. I’m hungry, OK, I clearly need to go cook food after writing this… don’t get too distracted now!
Make collections around themes, so when you need the knowledge, especially if it isn’t right away, you have a bunch on the same topic to make use of.
Share
There are two main targets for me, to share with. Number one, is the community, typically via my social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Blue Sky. For this, the bar to share is pretty low, I mean it must be tasty, but I’m not worried I’ll flood people with shares, that is what the platforms are for, and I expect people to self-filter as they wish.
I also like to share liberally, to thank and celebrate the authors, and to this point, never forge to attribute the author! Especially if you’re quoting or paraphrasing, share the love.
The second main target for me, is my colleagues at work. Here I like to be more selective, I don’t want to distract them, and I want to be tactical how and when I share. I will quite for a related topic to come up or be especially useful, this is why collecting things into themes or collections is useful!
Sometimes, I will share links, in the hope some people might feel inspired to read, watch, learn more on their own. But I won’t expect this to have a high uptake. If I really want to get the point across, and take action from the learning, I book a knowledge sharing session. I find it especially powerful to do a watch party, where we watch a video presentation together, and take note as we go. At the end, we review the main points, discuss what parts we agree or disagree with, and how we might make use of the topic as a team, in our work context.