Workroom PlayTime 044 (and onwards into 2026)

Workroom PlayTime 44 is on Thursday 15 January at 2pm London time. We'll meet on Zoom, and we'll look at a library without code.

Plans for 2026

I'll continue to run short, (roughly) weekly, online interactive workshops throughout 2026. I've learnt a lot doing it in 2025, had fun, and enjoyed your company. Wahey! And thank you!

Here's an idea of what's planned...

• January – Interesting Testing: other people's projects that challenge my perspective, and may challenge yours.
• February – SpeakerPrep, to work on ideas and abstracts
• March – Testing Decisions, looking at costs and returns. Maybe Puzzles...
• April – Unix tools for testers, returning to 2025's emergent theme
• May – Agents for Testers, because that's what Bart and I are learning about...

You'll see that I plan to run themed sets in 2026, roughly one set a month. A couple of weeks after the end of a set, I'll run a long† session to re-cover some of the ground – adding context and materials around the exercises.

From now‡, all short Workroom PlayTime sessions will be open to all subscribers. I may restrict the longer sessions to paying subscribers, or set a fee for non-subscribers.

I'll try to run most Thursdays, but times are likely to be more irregular. This may be good – outside your working hours may be better for some of you, others may be able to come without setting an alarm or staying up late. It's bad for marketing – and a pain in the diary for all.

As a weird coping mechanism, I may run the same session a couple of times for different geographical groups, or I might offer an asynchronous path: I welcome any suggestions and will experiment more with time and format this year.

One thing that was clear in 2025 was that Workroom PlayTime is better with friends. Tell contacts, bring colleagues: your word-of-mouth will help build a gang that enjoys playing and learning and testing together.

As a bonus, all these exercises are in the world now, for anyone, forever. Maybe you'll find something that is handy to play with in your own gang. I need your nudges to keep making them – I'm deeply grateful for your support.

(†) By 'short', I mean 20 minutes or so. By 'long', I mean 90 minutes or so.

(‡) I write 'from now', but it's been that way since... um... May?

↓ signed-in subscribers will see joining info and links below ↓