Episoder
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Simon and Demi reflect on the second video-enabled episode of This Week in Quality, with plenty of live experimentation, technical glitches, and community challenges along the way.
The conversation ranges from new MoTaverse content on loop engineering, test data, career growth, and models, before digging into negative testing and why the âunhappy pathâ is often a core part of the systemâs expected behaviour.
Later, Rosie and Gary open up a rich discussion around platform engineering, developer experience, tester experience, and how changing the conversations we have can change the future of quality.
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This Week in Quality enters a new, cameras-on format - complete with connection glitches and live tool testing! The main theme is high value activities: how experienced quality folks identify the work that creates outsized impact (like exploratory testing, analysis review, and risk-based coaching) versus routine tasks that can be delegated. Gary and Preeti add a practical lens on human accountability - especially around PR/MR merges - while Demi lands the episode with a brilliant 'risk signal': the moment someone says âyou canât test that,â sheâs all in.
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Episode 137 of This Week in Quality opens with playful banter about heat, workshops vs meetings, and the reality of notification fatigue. The conversation quickly heats up with hot takes on âdone is better than perfectâ lightning learning, how tooling layers add complexity to testing, and why understanding the system matters before measuring it. The standout segment is Adyâs blunt argument that accessibility isnât âextraâ - choosing deadlines over inclusion is systemic discrimination - followed by practical discussion on making accessibility a business objective and creating safe forums for developers to learn. It closes with a thoughtful pivot into making space to grieve how AI is changing roles, plus a tongue-in-cheek Oasis/Blur sign-off.
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What does it really mean to write clean code? And does it even matter if nobody uses your product? This week, Demi and Simon explore the tensions between readability, legacy codebases, and shipping something that works. Rolf brings 30+ years of perspective on why clean code is a mindset, not a rulebook, and Nadja shares how the Berlin chapter is tackling the AI wave. From code smells and SonarQube to WET feet and Uncle Bob, the community delivers. Plus: the glossary hits 550 terms, Moments go live mid-episode, and someone nearly gets away with saying the A-word.
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In this episode of This Week in Quality, host Simon Tomes is joined by Shawn Vernier and Ady Stokes to explore how epistemology â the philosophy of knowledge â shapes everyday testing and quality decisions. Drawing on questions from the MoTaverse community, they dig into what testers can really âknowâ about a system, how beliefs, assumptions, and evidence interact, and why the reliability of our information sources matters when we make risk calls. Alongside highlights from the wider community and events, the conversation connects abstract philosophical ideas with practical testing practices, encouraging listeners to rethink how they measure quality, interpret metrics, and navigate uncertainty in their work.
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Ady kicks things off with a reminder that we donât celebrate ourselves enough, then invites everyone to share their weekly wins. Simon highlights two fresh Call for Insights launches (with Lauren Lassie and Gary Hawkes) and bigs up Rahulâs AI Guardrails masterclass.
Ady shares his own wins: progress on book models using NotebookLM as a thinking partner, upcoming talks, and - massively - three Leeds chapter events scheduled, plus a shout-out fundraiser for assistance dogs.
The community jumps in with their wins: Nadjaâs agentic AI hackathon, Melissaâs âsmall winsâ mindset, Louiseâs nightmare bug caught before it hit production (all users accidentally had admin permissions!), Garyâs coaching journey + influencing teams around AI usage, and Ibekweâs focused learning on OWASP API vulnerabilities.
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Co-hosts Simon and Oleksandr theme the episode around influencing without authority, inspired by Suzanne Abdurahmanâs work on influence in the Software Quality Engineering Certificate and recent community conversations. They unpack what influence looks like day-to-day, why âbeing presentâ matters, and how to adapt your message to different stakeholders.
The group also explores what happens when youâre right about a risk but nobody acts, why some stakeholders only âget itâ after impact lands, and how to make your work visible through contributions on the Multiverse. The episode closes with advice for junior QAs on getting noticed, plus a rapid-fire discussion on the hardest stakeholders to influence.
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Judy and Clare kick off âHot Take TWIQ Dayâ with wins (mobile automation in the cloud!) and community joys (finding your âmatchâ in the MoTaverse), before diving into spicy opinions: should old bugs be deleted or archived, why manual testing is still a creative superpower, and how AI changes the thinking required of quality professionals.
As the conversation heats up, the group tackles whether developer AI agents actually accelerate delivery, why skepticism is a paid skill, and the uncomfortable truth that QA can advocate - but leadership controls the resources that make quality possible.
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Diana drops out of the MoTaverse (and returns via incognito mode) just in time for a deep dive into MoTaCon: what it is, why the name matters, and how the lineup reflects the MoTaverse's shift from âtesting-onlyâ to a broader tech conference with quality at the core. Along the way, the hosts celebrate fresh SQEC-qualified members, explain how MoT profiles and year-round community participation shape who gets invited to contribute, and share ways to make the most of Pro membership - from attending MoTaCon (and related socials) to capturing learnings with Moments and meeting more people through challenges like the stamp sheet.
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Itâs a busy, energizing TWIQ: Natalia returns with fresh experiences from her new job, including tackling mobile testing, planning an accessibility audit, and levelling up her AI learning through the new AI chapter. Simon spotlights recent Call for Insights conversations, then announces the big milestone: the Software Quality Engineering Certificate is now fully live with all modules and the exam available. The chat and guests bring the community vibe, from job news and chapter celebrations to practical âhow we workâ topics like flaky tests, learning by pairing with developers, and using the glossary to align on what terms actually mean in different teams.
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In this episode of This Week in Quality (Friday 27 March 2026), Simon Tomes is joined by Judy Mosley for a joy-fuelled tour through whatâs been lighting up the MoTaverse. They kick off with a relatable tester classic: time zones and daylight-saving bugs, including a behind-the-scenes nod to MoTâs own chapter scheduling whack-a-mole.
Judy highlights an Observatory gem from Patrick Peirlâs on why context matters, especially when using AI, and Simon calls out Judyâs âA Day in the MoTaverseâ video as a great example of showing others how to participate. They also celebrate Jessica Mosleyâs arrival in the community, and Simon invites listeners to weigh in on a big SQEC conversation starter: how do you actually calculate the cost of a bug?
The pair share more community sparks, from Heleneâs painfully accurate âIs it in Dev yet?â meme, to reflections on AI-generated vs human-written test cases, to the growing Ask MoTaverse Anything trend and how imposter syndrome shows up (and can be worked through) when you put yourself out there. They then pivot into the weekâs biggest theme: the MoTaverse isnât doom-scrolling, itâs joy scrollingâa place designed to leave you more hopeful, more curious, and more connected than when you arrived.
Later, Neil Younger joins to announce and champion the brand-new Engineering Leadership & Engineering Management chapter, sharing why it feels like âcoming homeâ and why quality folks absolutely can become engineering managers. They wrap with shout-outs to Software Testing Live, playful âThursday Night Liveâ banter, and a reminder that being âMoTawhelmedâ by great community content is a genuinely good problem to have.
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In episode 128 of This Week in Quality (Friday 20 March 2026), Ben Dowen and Simon Tomes catch up on conference learnings, community experiments, and a fresh way to share knowledge across the MoTaverse. Ben opens with reflections from Testing Peers Conference, including a practical workshop takeaway on Playwright agents, and Simon nudges him toward turning those learnings into a MoTaverse Moment.
The conversation then pivots to the new Ask MoTaverse Anything initiative, an AMA format powered by Moments. The hosts spotlight Cassandra Lungâs AMA prompt, âQuality beyond correctness,â and use it as a springboard to discuss what correctness even means, why âit dependsâ is often the most honest answer, and how questions themselves are a valuable form of contribution. They highlight the benefits of separating each answer into its own Moment, creating reusable âlearning blocksâ that build credibility, show up on profiles, and are easier to find later.
A key thread emerges around communicating impact. They call out Emily OâConnorâs question on persuading engineers and product owners to prioritize work beyond acceptance criteria, and Cassandraâs answer that focuses on real-world consequences, empathy, and user impact stories, including using impact framing both to advocate for fixes and to justify not doing low-value work.
Community voices join in too. Preeti Gupta shares a real-life example of quality beyond correctness, showing how the same bug can be âcorrectlyâ described in technical terms yet still fail to land with non-technical stakeholders, and why clearer impact-focused communication changes prioritization and understanding. Gary Hawkes follows with a burst of âMoTawhelmedâ energy, describing how recent conversations and conference notes have sparked a backlog of baby-step improvements, plus his motivation for starting an AMA on leadership and what heâs learned by finding his own leadership style over time.
The episode wraps with a quick plug for Software Testing Live returning next week, and a final nudge to contribute to the Observatory, MoTâs bookmarking feature, now expanded with broader tech categories to help the MoTaverse evolve into a wider quality-led tech community.
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In this episode of This Week in Quality (Friday 13 March 2026), Simon Tomes is joined by co-host Demi Van Malcot, and the pair kick off with an unexpected theme: demos that actually go right. Demi shares the rare joy of a full, 20-minute end-to-end demo where nothing broke, and Heleen later echoes the streak with her own successful demo, helped by a hard-won team rule: no last-minute database cleanups or changes before showcasing work.
Simon and Demi also spotlight whatâs new in the MoTaverse, starting with Moments, the feature that merges the old memories and memes into a richer, blog-like format with improved formatting options. They call out community Moments from International Womenâs Day, including Rosieâs reflection on âbrag booksâ and Cassandra Lungâs ideas on making achievements visible. Demi shares a standout takeaway from Into the MoTaverse with Natalia: build confidence by doing hard things, then keep doing them until your âhard thingâ becomes normal. The theme ties neatly into Chris Prattâs reminder that getting started is often the hardest part, especially when sharing publicly.
When the community joins the stage, the conversation turns practical. Judy shares how, as the only QA on her team, she pushed for faster feedback loops by asking developers to run a lightweight risk-storming style check before handing work to QA. The result: fewer surprise bugs, smoother demos, and a cultural win worth celebrating publicly. Heleen and Demi add reflections on how hard it can be to be the voice of quality when youâre outnumbered, and how progress often starts with asking clearly for what you need, then reinforcing improvements with visible appreciation.
The episode closes with a fresh idea from Simon: a new AMA format on the MoTaverse, reframed as Ask Multiverse Anything. The concept invites members to post an AMA as a Moment, gather questions in comments, and then publish one Moment per answer, creating a searchable trail of community knowledge and reusable learning content. As the chat debates whether quality folks are âassumption journalistsâ or âassumption detectives,â the group lands on a shared truth: a big part of quality work is spotting assumptions, naming them, and turning them into better conversations.
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In episode 126 of This Week in Quality (Friday 6 March 2026), Ben Dowen is joined by Rosie Sherry to unpack recent professional membership changes in the MoTaverse, why theyâre happening now, and what theyâre meant to protect and enable. Rosie walks through what remains available on the free tier, including core MoT profiles, the Club, and chapter events, plus the ability to mark yourself as Open To (work, speak, teach, write). That âOpen Toâ directory then becomes a useful Pro-only discovery tool for employers, event organisers, and teams looking for contributors.
The discussion then digs into the bigger reasons behind the shift. Rosie shares how the MoTaverse has evolved from ânot just a forumâ into a platform with responsibilities, including rising spam and bad-actor behaviour, increased moderation and safety requirements, and the realities of sustaining quality with a tiny team. In a timely example, they saw a spike of âmomentâ spam right as the changes were about to go live. Rosie explains how these pressures shaped product decisions, including why richer formatting features were delayed, and how moving publishing capabilities behind Pro creates a protection layer and reduces âcommunity debtâ that burns out small teams.
Ben adds context from the conference-review side, pointing out how much effort goes into filtering low-value promotional submissions, and why a Pro-first approach can reduce noise while enabling the team to better support contributors. Rosie also addresses concerns about exclusion, pointing to practical options like discounts by request and the scholarship fund for unemployed members. The chat contributes plenty of support too, comparing the membership ROI to courses, conferences, and even gym memberships, and highlighting how MoT helps people become better testers, leaders, and community members.
The episode closes with Rosieâs long-term vision: the MoTaverse as a quality and care-led tech community, broadening beyond testing into a place that can influence how the wider industry builds better products and services. They wrap up with shout-outs to community contributors, upcoming events and chapters, and a call for companies willing to host local meetups with space and food support.
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In episode 125 of This Week in Quality (Friday 27 February 2026), co-hosts Nataliia Burmei and Eamon Droko welcome the community for a wide-ranging conversation about careers, confidence, and the support systems that make tough work moments easier to navigate. Nat opens with a simple code of conduct reminder, âBe nice, be human, be supportive, be engaging, be fun,â setting the tone for a chat that mixes practical advice with plenty of warmth and humour, including confusion about a âfake Eamonâ while the real one races in from a client UAT.
Fresh from the first MoT London chapter event of the year, Eamon shares highlights from a packed evening at RAM Space, praising the organising team and reflecting on talks that bridged disciplines, including a standout session on testing authentication. With Nat starting a new job on Monday and reflecting on time between roles, the conversation naturally turns to job hunting and how the market is feeling in early 2026.
Community members bring powerful perspectives. Maithilee shares how the job market is beginning to feel more positive than late 2025 and how staying active in the MoTaverse can make unemployment feel less isolating. Ady recounts two times he left roles without a clear next step, including the shock of having a signed contract rescinded at the start of the first COVID lockdown, and how community connections helped him recover quickly and find new opportunities. Shawn adds a âthird-order connectionsâ lens from sociology, highlighting how wider networks can surface roles you would never otherwise see. Gary celebrates a surprise shout-out from his CTO and shares a personal story about encouraging his daughter to leave a damaging work situation, which led to her landing a dream job in publishing. Preeti reflects on making the hard choice to leave a role in a tough market, and credits community learning, sessions, and one-to-one conversations for helping her rebuild strategy and confidence until offers came through. Finally, Judy offers the counterpoint of staying too long for stability, describing how it can be easy to ignore cultural warning signs until the breaking point forces a reset.
Along the way, the chat keeps things human with playful threads about eggs and other everyday moments, underscoring a key message of the episode. Careers are hard, job searches are emotional, and quality people need both practical guidance and community humour to keep going.
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In episode 124 of This Week in Quality, host Ady Stokes kicks off with a birthday celebration for co-host Demi Van Malcot, a quick time-warp reflection on how fast the show has grown, and a week packed with community energy. Demi shares a bumpy âbirthday week in qualityâ that includes a test data crisis, a perfectly-timed article on cognitive load, and the buzz of the Epic Test Quest launch party. Ad highlights the momentum around WIZZO, an AI helper embedded in Slack thatâs being shaped by the testing community through real feedback and iteration.
The conversation quickly turns into a lively and honest debate about AI guardrails and the growing sense of âenough already.â Demi talks about struggling to concentrate on audio content, laughing at MoT wordplay, and eyeing chapter meetups as a âmeetup tourist.â Ady shares his own packed week, including a Call for Insights conversation with Simon about making âthinking in testingâ more visible and an aspirational goal of writing a book, alongside ongoing work on the Software Quality Engineering Certificate and shout-outs to community contributions showing up in newsletters.
From there, the episode leans hard into the AI dilemma. Ad raises the growing public conversation about AI in high-stakes domains like healthcare and online safety, asking what responsibility belongs to platforms versus users. Judy joins with a candid âbig sAIgh,â pushing back on pressure to adopt AI tools that require constant supervision and verification, and questioning what âgenuineâ even means when AI-generated content floods professional spaces. Her rant lands so well it becomes a running theme, affectionately labelled ârainbow vomit,â complete with new community emoji energy.
The stage fills with real-world stories. Christine celebrates Epic Test Questâs graduation and launch, shares what it took to ship while wrangling AI hallucinations during refactors, and invites the community deeper into building tools by testers for testers. Chris Pratt reflects on how in-person MoT London events became an inflection point for his confidence and involvement, and shares a sponsor update plus a reminder to unregister if you canât attend so people on the waitlist can join. Shawn adds a skeptical perspective on AI adoption, pointing out the risk of using AI to fill roles nobody in the organisation can properly validate, and reframing the dream as AI reducing burnout rather than replacing human empathy. Nadja shares a behind-the-scenes view from an AI-driven project where sheâs effectively âthe guardrail,â putting processes and checks in place after months without a tester and watching developers finally prioritise quality thinking.
Across the episode, the group returns to a few sharp ideas: AI might make us more efficient but not more effective, quality folks are often the ones forced to provide the guardrails, and the industry is inventing new vocabulary to describe whatâs happening, from hallucinations to confabulation. The result is a funny, messy, and very real community conversation about how to keep standards high when the tools are moving faster than our ability to trust them.
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In this Friday 13th episode of This Week in Quality, first-time co-hosts Oleksandr Romanov and Claire Norman lean into the dateâs reputation and explore the superstitions that quietly shape how teams test, release, and demo software. Claire opens with a collaboration win, bringing designers and engineers closer together and proving that small invitations can unlock earlier, better involvement. The hosts then share MoT updates, including new Call for Insights conversations with Simon and the newly announced 2026 MoT Ambassadors, before inviting the community to unpack the rituals and âbad luckâ rules we all recognise.
The chat lights up with classic beliefs and their origins, from why Friday the 13th became notorious to the evergreen âdonât ship on a Fridayâ rule. Oleksandr adds a familiar developer-flavoured superstition, âit works on my machine,â and the group discusses how missing information, pattern-seeking, and bias can harden one-off incidents into lasting process rules. They also ask the bigger question: which superstitions are actually useful heuristics, and which ones deserve a gentle challenge with data?
Community voices bring the theme to life. Ady shares a packed week, including recording SQU(e)C content on accessibility and navigating the emotional rollercoaster of briefly being â404 not foundâ on the ambassador list, plus a reminder that bugs love to disappear the moment you screen share. Gary describes how a Friday release disaster led to a long-lived quality gate checklist, even after the original causes were fixed, while Demi recounts the familiar pain of âcursed demosâ where last-minute deploys and restarts sabotage confidence right when it matters most. Then we hear a high-stakes story involving mismatched builds across customer and merchant apps, payment gateway panic, and the hard lesson that transformed their release and sign-off process.
The episode wraps by reframing superstition as psychology. Claire highlights how our bias toward assuming the worst can be useful for testing, but also stressful if left unchecked, and how learning about biases can help teams stay grounded. The result is a lively, relatable conversation that turns Friday 13th energy into practical reflections on risk, rituals, and building calmer release habits.
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In this episode of This Week in Quality, Simon welcomes a returning legend to the virtual stage as Deanna comes back from maternity leave and dives straight into everything thatâs evolved across the MoTaverse. Together they turn the chat into a rapid-fire âwhat changed while Deanna was away?â tour, calling out highlights like Into the MoTaverse, My Reports, company pages, thank-you stars and badges, membership updates, SQU(e)C, and the growing momentum behind chapters as the next evolution of local meetups.
The conversation then zooms in on why chapters matter and what becomes possible when in-person events connect directly to MoT profiles, memories, recordings, and the star system. Chris Pratt, a new organiser for MoT London, shares behind-the-scenes insights on stepping into a fresh organising team, raising the bar after a strong year, and what to expect at the next London event. He previews talks that reframe everyday testing work, including one on authentication that treats login as an adversarial system and another on how quality assurance is evolving into quality engineering, plus a call for potential event sponsors to support food and drinks.
Deanna also invites Mat on stage to reflect on community moments heâs enjoyed, including the MoT Christmas quiz, and to share the real-world grind of job hunting in 2026. Mat talks candidly about being asked for âcommercial experienceâ with specific tools, using that pressure as fuel to keep learning, and leaning on the community for momentum. Building on that, Simon encourages professional members to book recorded one-to-one insight conversations that can be published back into the MoTaverse, and hints at future ambassador-led conversations as the programme grows.
Later, Ady Stokes shares an energising update from the Leads chapter, describing an âI Am Remarkableâ workshop focused on self-promotion without the cringe. The session helps people push past imposter syndrome, recognise their achievements, and practise saying them out loud. Sean Ye joins from Ottawa with a practical quality win of his own, containerising APIs for on-demand sandbox environments to enable automated integration and regression testing, and using AI tools to navigate dense AWS documentation more effectively.
The episode wraps with a wave of excitement about how fast the platform is evolving, how following and activity feeds help you stay connected, and why showing up, online and in-person, keeps the MoTaverse moving.
#ThisWeekInQuality
#MoTaverse
#Chapters
#Community
#CareerGrowth
#QualityEngineering
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In episode 121 of This Week in Quality, co-hosts Simon Holmes and Judy Mosley settle in (coffee vs. missing tea!) and zoom in on how the community is shaping the year ahead through goals, risk thinking, and career growth moments worth celebrating. They highlight the #MyGoals memory-post challenge on ministryoftesting.com (and the Goal Setter badge), reflecting on how different people approach goal-setting and why âshowing upâ each day can matter more than the end result.
Simon shares updates from the MoTaverse, including the latest releases in the Software Quality Engineering Certificate (SQUEC), especially a set of short, practical audio perspectives on quality culture. A standout theme is framing quality in terms of risks people actually care about, and making consequences visible beyond test cases and requirements. Judy connects this to a real-world âbug surfaced at the worst possible momentâ story, fuel for MoTâs Bugs in the Wild learning collection, and the group explores Cassandra Lungâs powerful idea of mapping âcircles of consequencesâ to help teams (and leaders) feel the real impact of âlow priorityâ issues.
The conversation then opens up to the community on stage. Helene shares the pain of repeatedly flagging an issue that only becomes urgent when a deadline hits, and the challenge of being trusted while also being overloaded. Cassandra expands on building buy-in through human impact, ânightmare scenarios,â and deliberate risk decisions, plus a very relatable dose of consumer-side quality frustration while moving apartments. Daria Zion celebrates her first MoT article going live, Five practical ways to use AI as a partner in quality engineering, and shares how sheâs improving interview feedback and hiring workflows. Ujjwal Kumar Singh talks performance reviews, experimenting with Playwright tooling, and proposing a move from test reports to a quality narrative, while Simon flags new My Reports features in MyMoT for tracking course progress and community activity. Finally, Demi Van Malcott closes the episode with a brilliant win: an official promotion to Quality Manager, and a reminder that growth often starts by taking on the work before you feel ready.
#ThisWeekInQuality
#MyGoals
#QualityCulture
#Risk
#QualityNarrative
#CareerGrowth
#MoTaverse
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In episode 120 of This Week in Quality, co-hosts Eamon Droko and Simon Tomes focus on the power of sharing as a learning strategy, in Eamonâs first time co-hosting the show. They kick off with a look at Eamonâs new Into the MoTaverse episode, touching on themes of showing up, bias and inclusivity in hiring, and the value of talking openly about your day-to-day work. Simon reflects on how speaking and writing in public helps you notice your own progress, and they both champion memory posts on ministryoftesting.com as small, frequent reflections that build a visible learning journey and strengthen your profile.
The conversation then turns to whatâs new inside the MoTaverse, especially the launch of chapters as the next evolution of local meetups. Eamon shares his new role as a co-organiser of MoT London, while Simon explains how chapters connect to the MoT star system, making activity a proxy for learning and career growth. Community member Neil Taylor joins the stage to compare old-school one-and-done training courses with MoTâs ongoing community-supported learning, and to explore how long-term testers can move towards quality engineering by identifying and closing gaps over time.
Later, Ayesha Saeed shares her excitement about becoming Accessibility Guild lead at her consultancy, where an accessibility lab and an expanding team are raising awareness across roles, experimenting with AI tools to support audit work, and helping people experience assistive technologies first-hand. Gary Hawkes celebrates completing the A testerâs role in continuous quality course and talks about using memory posts as micro-blogs, pushing for a legacy automation refactor, and the frustrations of accessibility losing priority once contracts change. Throughout, the group returns to a simple idea: start small, find one ally, share one thing youâve learned, and let the community carry that learning further than you could alone.
#ThisWeekInQuality
#Sharing
#Accessibility
#QualityCommunity
#MoTaverse
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