Three Ways to Ensure Your Testing Conference Learnings Don't Go to Waste

Attending a testing conference sparks ideas and takeaways, many of which you’d like to share with your team. Yet, where do you start? How do you articulate what you learned in a way that will resonate and benefit those who didn’t attend? Read on to discover three ways to ensure your testing conference learnings don’t go to waste.

1. Socialise your learnings in small chunks

It’s easy to get overly excited about all the new stuff you’ve learned and equally easy to want to share it all at once so you can get it out of your brain. Slow down, take a breath and step back from all your notes. Break them down into smaller pockets of helpful and actionable information. Group them into chunks of one key learning. Set up a campaign to share each key learning over a timeframe. For example, you could post one key learning a day for 30 days. Call it “30 days of <Testing Conference Name>”. There’s a desire to write it up all in one go, yet it doesn’t have to be that way. You could spread it out when sharing online on social platforms, posting new topic threads on a testing forum — like The Club — or on a knowledge share and chat tool at work.

2. Ask attendees questions about what they learned

You’ve watched a talk or attended a workshop and you’ve interpreted what you’ve learned in the way that you typically interpret things. Yet what if you knew what others learned during the same talk or workshop? It’s likely they took something away that you hadn’t considered or interpreted in a different way. And if it’s a similar learning then it’ll reinforce your knowledge. This extra “on top” learning will give you the confidence to start sharing with others, particularly with your team. Not only can you share that you appreciate this new thing you’ve learned, and that it’ll help your team, but you also have evidence from others that they think it’s helpful. Put out questions about specific talks and workshops on social platforms and forums. Or message people directly if you know they attended. Find out what they got from it all. Learn from their learning.?

3. Find a learning and sharing partner

You might feel alone when you get back to work if you were the only person from your company who attended the testing conference. Great if you went as part of a team. Regardless, it’s worth finding a learning and sharing partner. Did you meet someone at the conference that sparked interesting conversations? Were you both interested in similar topics? Message them and make an offer to officially share notes and run 1-2-1 sessions to discuss what you learned. Encourage each other to take action and share how you’re both applying those learnings.

Need more ways to make the most of your post-testing-conference experience? Read this article by Dan Barrow: Keeping The Conference Momentum Going

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