Had a great time at GR-Testers last night, here is a recap for the unfortunate tester who missed out on the fun.
We encountered the first game early in the evening, the door would not budge. Two of us tried, then moved on to other doors to find the same thing. Moving back to the main door we decided to give them a call and found it to be a mechanical malfunction. I was worried for a few minutes we would need to relocate.
After we found our table we started with some catchup and discussion. We congratulated Mel and the Booker App team on the recent media exposure see http://www.bookerapp.com/ and http://www.fox17online.com/
We welcomed a special guest, Phil, who came all the way from England just for GR-Testers (or something like that. Phil liked our meeting so much he is thinking about staying.) Rob, Steve, Mel, Greg, Todd and David were there too.
We also shared in Rob's excitement for his weekend plans to attend a conference in Chicago. This required and inspired some pop-culture education for some of us which was informative and entertaining.
We played the first game "Art Show." Mel Taught us this easy to learn but difficult master game. Every one caught on quickly however we were unable to solve the algorithm set forth by Mel. We played again with Rob's algorithm and failed again. But we had a lot of fun so did we really fail? At this time the food arrived and much pleasant and intriguing conversation ensued.
After the food was gone we wrapped up with a game called "Set" suggested by Matt Heusser. The was also a game that is easy to learn. The game requires finding a set of three cards that have either completely matching or completely different attribute. There are four attributes color, shape, number and shading/opacity. The concept is easy but the competition is fierce.
I know I had a great time and am sure the others did as well. It is always good to see the cooperation and collaboration towards a good time in the GR-Testers group.
We left with an unclear plan for next month, I am making a proposal here. I think we could do "Checking is not Testing." The idea is before the meeting, collect instances where checking (automated or not) has failed and discuss why this has failed and how good _context driven_ testing can improve on checking and highlight the value of good testing.
I also propose that we maintain the same location and time, it seems to work well for many, this would work out to be Tuesday September 13, 6:30pm at Salvatore's in Grand Rapids.
If you are looking for something fun, educational and entertaining to do on August 19 or 20 check out http://barcampgr.org/
Have a great day,
David Hoppe
