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I've completely missed October's monthly review, so I'm combining my October and November monthly reviews into one post, so this will be a lengthy one. 😅
Grafana work
Starting with some amazing news, I have been recently promoted to Senior Developer Advocate! I joined Grafana last August of 2022 for a career change, and I am pleased that the company has recognised my contributions. It’s been great working with amazing people! I look forward to new challenges ahead. 🥳
The Grafana Office Hours is in full swing! After the 100th episode of k6 Office Hours, it makes sense to continue the amazing stuff the Developer Advocates have started on the Grafana YouTube channel.
I joined my friend Nicole van der Hoeven, and we spoke to Lukasz Gut about distributed tracing with Grafana Cloud k6. We discussed what distributed tracing is, what traces and spans are, and how distributed tracing works in Grafana Cloud k6.
After that, Nicole and I also spoke with Kostas Pelelis and Marco Schaefer, both software engineers at Grafana, to talk about what Grafana Faro is all about, what real-user monitoring is, how it's different from synthetic monitoring, and how to use the Grafana Faro Web SDK and Grafana Frontend Observability product.
Nicole and I, along with Paul Balogh, also spoke to John Hill, one of our k6 champions, to talk about how to combine frontend and backend performance with Grafana k6. John did a really cool demo, showing us how to leverage the Playwright recorder and use it as a baseline to write your k6 browser scripts.
We've also released the latest k-SIX news covering all the latest changes as part of k6 version 0.47.0. There are a lot of updates from k6 core, k6 browser, Grafana cloud k6, extensions, and champions program! Check out the latest episode here:
Nicole and I also recorded some video content in Tagalog! Gusto namin ipaliwanag ang relasyon ng testing sa observabilidad at kung bakit kailangan natin gamitin silang parehas.
Finally, as part of creating more beginner content, I've created an introductory video about Grafana k6 for beginners, with the post-production help of Leandro! Check out the video here:
From a writing perspective, I wrote an article about the benefits of web performance testing with Grafana k6 browser and Grafana Faro. The article explores why both lab and field data are needed when it comes to web performance, the differences between the two, and how tools such as the Grafana k6 browser and Grafana Faro can complement each other.
Finally, Paul Maxwell-Walters joined as our latest k6 champion! I first connected with Paul at the Ministry of Testing community and met him in person during TestBash UK this year. I'm looking forward to how Paul can help the k6 community!
Community work/Side projects
Nicole and I have been consistent with Adobo and Avocados for the past two months. We've spoken with amazing guests about a variety of topics and we also reached more than 100 subscribers, which is a great first milestone! 💜
Our guests for October and November include:
Nicola Martin - The role of AI in gender equality (A&A #15)
Nicola Lindgren - Investing in yourself
Kulas Angeles - Having a coaching mindset
Jonah Anderson - Inspiring others and fuelling your passion
Erin Crise - Being an accessibility advocate
Jenna Charlton - Learning about experience design
Lina Zubyte - Minimalism in software testing
Finally, we spoke with Renata Andrade about navigating through unemployment calmly. A really great episode to anyone who's been impacted by job redundancies.
Lewis and I have also made great progress with our book-writing project. Chapters 1-4 are now in pretty great shape and are now being reviewed externally! We still have a few more chapters to complete, but we are getting there slowly. Writing a book is definitely not an easy task!
Agile Testing Days 2023
I attended and spoke at Agile Testing Days (ATD) this November. I talked about the psychology of waiting and did a joint talk with Nicole about intersectionality in tech. 💜
It's always a joy attending ATD because of how different and diverse this conference is. Even though I could only attend for 2 days, I still enjoyed my time thoroughly and had fun networking and hearing some talks. I'm also grateful that Nicole and I have been given the amazing opportunity to discuss intersectionality in tech.
Some of the photo credits go to Nicole and also to Cristiano Cunha.
AutomationSTAR 2023
I also had the opportunity to do the closing keynote for AutomationSTAR! My talk was also about intersectionality in tech, and I am really grateful that I received positive feedback. It was also great attending Andrew Knight's workshop about Playwright and meeting people for the first time that I've known in the community.
Some of the photo credits go to Beth Marshall, Ashutosh Mishra, and Geosley Andrades.
Personal development
I struggled with personal development these past two months. I skipped listening to my favourite podcasts and took a break from learning Spanish. My day-to-day routine was disrupted by the travelling and also feeling sick, but I'll get back on track next month.
🏋🏻♀️ I still managed to hit my average monthly step goal, but it's definitely on the lower side.
📚 I finished reading Brave, Not Perfect by Reshma Saujani. This book explores why women are hardwired to be perfectionists from an early age. Reshma provides useful tips on how women can be brave instead of being perfect. I highly recommend this book!
October and November favourites
During my visit to Berlin, I had the chance to meet up with Lina Zubyte in person! I'll forever be thinking about the delicious Georgian food that we all had. I also celebrated my birthday this November with loved ones. Getting old and feeling old! 😂
