10 Years of Blogging

I'm a little late, but it's time to celebrate anyway. Ten years ago, in March of 2004, I began blogging here. Hello World was, of course, my first post. You have embraced and sometimes challenged my words. Thank you for continuing to read and to engage with me. I learn a lot by writing. It is my hope you learn a fraction of that by reading.

After a long break where I published rarely and two years with no posts, you may have noticed that I am back. I waited to write this until I was sure I had some momentum. Last time I stated my return to blogging, I slacked off shortly after. Well, I'm back again and I have a lot I want to talk about. Those who continue to read after the hiatus, thank you for sticking around. I'll try to make it worth your while.

After four years as the Test Development Manager responsible for the Windows Runtime API, I am moving on to new things. I love what we did with the new API, but it is time for change. I will remain in the Operating Systems Group and in the Test Development discipline, but will be working to enable greater use of data in our testing processes.

For more than a year, I have been thinking about how to utilize data in our testing process. I have been inspired by the work of Seth Eliot, Brent Jensen, Ken Johnston, Alan Page, and others. They paint the picture of Data Driven Quality where we determine our success by observing users rather than by test pass rates. As you can see from my recent posts, I have joined their ranks.

No anniversary is complete without some stats. Over the past decade, I have written 418 posts. You have left 1194 comments. The most popular post was about how much memory Vista really needed. It garnered over 119,000 views.

A few have managed to miss my Twitter handle in the about me section. I can be found at @steverowe on Twitter if you want to engage with me there.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 14, 2014
  Thx Steve. I am only a recent enjoyer of your writing so it's nice to hear that you hope to publish regularly. Test is an area in which I don't try nearly hard enough.

• Anonymous
  July 14, 2014
  Hi Steve, Thanks for coming back to blogging. I am an entry level tester. Reading ur latest posts from 2014. Congrats for 10 years of blogging. Hope you share,few test ideas. Regards, Srinivas

• Anonymous
  August 03, 2014
  Srinivas, my suggestion to you is that switching to dev as soon as possible. Dev has more future than SDET, and it is better for you to switch now instead of being switched later.