Writing - Chris Kenst

Writing

A collection of 25 posts

2022 In Review

Over the past decade I’ve written quite a few year end notes. They start with a brief summary and then focus on individual article performance. For reference see: 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 This year I want to try something different. Those previous notes are missing non-work

Goodbye and Hello

Goodbye and Hello

Today I sent my last personal newsletter and then deleted my account. I called it Hello and Goodbye: Hello Friends, It's easily been 2 years since I've sent a newsletter to anyone on this mailing list. So long in fact you may not even remember having signed up! Don't worry

Reflections and fun stats from 2021

Community of Practice

Reflections and fun stats from 2021

I started my previous post by saying “2021 was an improvement over the previous year”. This was due, in large part, to the growth and new challenges at work. Here are some more reflections and a few fun stats from 2021 on those new challenges: Growth Growth at Promenade came

2021 in Review

2021 was an improvement over the previous year in a number of ways: more mental energy, more growth at work and a safe return to in-person conferences at the AST. Growth and the challenges at work have become inspiration for sharing in short form on LinkedIn and Twitter. They’ve

Not good enough

Not good enough

A month ago someone on LinkedIn thanked a website and the person running it for helping them learn. They recommended others use the site. When people in my network commented on how the site wasn’t any good, I took notice. It reminded me of what Seth Godin said in

2020 in Review

2020 was a year of starts and stops. Of more time but less mental energy. It was a year of developing patience and adapting to hard changes. Patience In early March my wife, an ICU nurse here in Los Angeles, saw the first signs of COVID coming in from travelers

Building an Awesome Home Office Space

Building an Awesome Home Office Space

My current awesome home space In the United States it seems like most of us will be working from home at least until Q1of 2021. I was thinking about this the other day: when will we see infection levels low enough that masks will no longer be required AND such

I like working from home... 🏠

I like working from home… but it feels different now. Clarification: I like working from home, when it’s my choice. My ideal work/life choice would involve: splitting the week into 2 or 3 days of in-office and from-home work. The extrovert in me would get to talk to

2019 in Review

My yearly tradition has been to summarize the most popular and important (to me) articles I’ve written over the past year along with some reflections and other forward-looking (and likely wrong) statements mixed in. You can find previous years in review here: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 What happened in

late-April Updates

April has come and is nearly gone without any prose being published. I couldn’t have that. You see I’ve been writing but I haven’t condensed that prose into a nice enough package to share. In the meantime lots of things are happening that are worthy of sharing:

2018 In Review

As it has become a yearly tradition I will attempt to summarize the most popular and important articles I’ve written over the year along with some other forward-looking (and likely wrong) statements mixed in with past reflections. You can find previous years here: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 What happened in

late-May Updates

Some random thoughts and updates towards the end of May: * On August 8th, Dwayne Green and I are teaching a workshop at the Conference for the Association for Software Testing on Domain Testing (aka Boundary Analysis + Equivalence Class Partioning). Will you be there? If so come to our quick workshop

2017 In Review

As it has become a yearly tradition I will summarize the most popular and important articles I’ve written over the year along with some other forward-looking (and likely wrong) statements mixed in with past reflections. You can find previous years here: 2016 | 2015 The Five Most-Viewed Articles: * 18 Github

Accessibility improvements or the end of Audiobooks?

Accessibility improvements or the end of Audiobooks?

In January I started working for Laurel & Wolf and went from being a distributed employee working from home to driving daily into an office. The commute is roughly an hour each way so I began looking for ways to consume items from my reading backlog (books, articles, papers, etc.) so

Reading & Writing, the I/O

I grew up with a lot of books in our home but I rarely recall someone reading them. My mother was perhaps the most avid reader with her interest in romance novels while my dad read the daily newspaper and his magazines. Their library was (and still is) a homage

2016 In Review

It’s a new year which means it’s time to look back at the previous year. Although this isn’t a lessons-learned or a progress report, these reviews are like a snapshot in time, forever preserved in writing. Unlike the past years I had no specific writing goals for

Context-Driven Testing

As the World Turns

“As the world turns” seems like the best way to describe the busy-ness I’ve experienced recently. Feels like I’m forgetting a lot of things and to help I’ve written them down. I’m also feeling goofy so this post might contain a few GIFSs. Work has been

2015 in Review

The beginning of the year seems an appropriate time for looking back at the good and the bad of the previous year. Looking at the data to determine what things I want to continue doing or to develop and what I might want to change. I had a lofty goal

The Anti-Library

The Anti-Library

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have!

Blogging for your Career

Blogging for your Career

It may not seem obvious to the casual observer but one of the major ways the testing community disseminates information is through blogs. When practitioners want to find help or stay informed of the latest on goings, reflect on events, the medium-of-choice are blogs. We are able to disseminate and

Guilt about not buying music

Guilt about not buying music

Ever feel guilty about not buying music? I don’t mean stealing, torrenting or other ways of not paying for music. I mean the guilt of not directly paying for an artists work (song, album, video, whatever) in this day of streaming everything. Maybe guilt is the wrong word. Do

Deliberate practice of writing

Writing is hard. I’m always coming up with concepts of things to write about but hardly ever do I find the time (and/or desire) to sit down and flesh out those ideas. Some ideas are really strong, or well timed and they eventually make it but most linger

Life as a Remote Worker

Life as a Remote Worker

My “life as a remote worker” has just begun. A few weeks ago, the company I work for decided it was time for my small team to let go of its office and work remotely on a full-time basis. To prepare for this change and gain a better understanding of

What I've been up to lately

Things have been busy in the last month or so and I felt like sharing what I’ve been up to lately. Most of it revolves around software testing: April saw the start of Dan Ariely’s A Beginners Guide to Irrational Behavior class on Coursera. I knew I had

Creating value by writing

Creating value by writing

Different perspectives help us model problems and ideas in new and sometimes exciting ways. They can lead us to new evidence or help to re-engage our thinking about things we’ve taken for granted. Things like testing software or writing. Writing isn’t easy but I find it helps clarify