Friday, December 3, 2010

TWiST #22 with Jane Fraser and More TWiST-Plus from PNSQC 2010




It’s funny, since I started doing the podcast, I have not really invested in any podcasting infrastructure. The whole thing is done on a Toshiba Sattelite Notebook PC running Windows 7 and I’ve been using a generic Verizon Wireless promotional headphone and boom mic set-up. It’s OK, but the connection points for the audio are shorting and so it’s become not so reliable. You might think that going out and getting a replacement microphone and headset would not be a big deal. Unfortunately, I’ve become annoyingly picky after doing this now for almost 20 entries. I tried two different headsets but neither of them had the sound quality I was after. I ultimately decided that I’d do a hybrid approach; using the ear buds that I use when I listed to music on my MP3 player and using a cool desktop microphone made by Logitech and connects via USB. You will hear the difference, I hope, in next week’s podcasts when I produce them (this week’s already went to press before I made the changes).


So for today’s episode, Matt sits down with Jane Fraser, a QA director over at Electronic Arts (the gaming powerhouse with office in Redwood Shores, CA, Canada, China, Vietnam, and India). Much of the talk for this episode had to do with the challenges of testing and managing testing between all of these locations, and how many techniques that work for smaller local groups just don’t work as well in these distributed and somewhat autonomous locations. Anyway, it was neat to hear her perspective and see the state of an industry I left five years ago. So click the link if you want to hearEpisode 22.


In addition, I also did a Twist-Plus episode with Media Monks regarding their Virtual Extreme Programming workbench project and with two High school participants of the Lego League robotics competition challenge, both recorded during the poster paper presentations at Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2010. You can listen to the latest Twist-Plus episode here.


Standard disclaimer:

Each TWiST podcast is free for 30 days, but you have to be a basic member to access it. After 30 days, you have to have a Pro Membership to access it, so either head on over quickly (depending on when you see this) or consider upgrading to a Pro membership so that you can get to the podcasts and the entire library whenever you want to :). In addition, Pro membership allows you to access and download to the entire archive of Software Test and Quality Assurance Magazine, and its issues under its former name, Software Test and Performance.

TWiST-Plus is all extra material, and as such is not hosted behind STP’s site model. There is no limitation to accessing TWiST-Plus material, just click the link to download and listen.

Again, my thanks to STP for hosting the podcasts and storing the archive. We hope you enjoy listening to them as much as we enjoy making them :).

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