TestBash Circus - A New Experimental Format

One of the many joys of working for Ministry of Testing is the freedom and encouragement to try new things. Rosie gives me this creative freedom on the basis that I keep any experiments slim, make sure I gather feedback from the community and progress accordingly.

One of those is the Ask Me Anything Experiment tonight, it's free to attend, and you can ask me anything on the theme of Automation, I encourage you to check it out and share your thoughts.

However, the one I want to talk and expand on more is the TestBash Circus. The TestBash Circus is making its debut at TestBash Philadelphia in November.

Why

The idea stemmed from some feedback about TestBash, requesting some hands on activities. Now TestBash is a single track conference, and our only current offerings for more hands on activities are our workshop days and open space events. So I started having a ponder if we could add another option to this, that could become part of the conference day itself.

What and How

The Circus is going to be conference wide, for the duration of 3-hours and will consist of 10 individual 30-minute activities that are run in parallel. The speakers at the conference, plus some volunteers, have agreed (awesome bunch!!!) to create these activities based on the theme of their conference talks. Allowing attendees to hear about the speaker's ideas and thoughts on the topic, as well as applying some of those ideas at The Circus.

All the activities and speakers will have a dedicated station in the venue that is identifiable by a large visible number. Attendees will then be provided with a numbered list of all the stations along with their themes. Then throughout the duration of The Circus, attendees will rotate around to the stations that interest them the most. Within the allocated 3-hours, attendees will have the opportunity to visit 5 of the planned 10 stations. All rotations will begin at the same time. Stations will be capped at 20 attendees per rotation, which we feel is a good number for one-two instructors to handle.

Each station will have an A5 card for attendees to take, with clear instructions on the front and then takeaways and resources on the back. Some of the activities are individual, and some require all the attendees on that rotation to be involved. Some have props, some don't. These cards allow attendees to get information on all 10 activities, as well as take the activities back to the office, and do further research on the theme after the conference.

This idea is inspired by the Carousel teaching technique which the awesome EducationBoss as Ministry of Testing introduced me to after having this idea.

Where

We are experimenting with this format for the first time at TestBash Philadelphia, November 9-10th. I'm very excited about this, I suspect it's going to be loud and chaotic, but at the same time full of fun, smiles and learning. Check out the event, Early Bird prices end September 15th, and be the first to try this format, the first of what I hope will be many more circuses at TestBash and hopefully other conferences!

If you have any thoughts on this, please share them with me.

Happy Testing