Workroom PlayTime in 2026

Jan 13, 2026

Mostly from the message sent announcing Workroom PlayTime 044

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, met new people and enjoyed their company. Wahey!

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.

I will continue to experiment with time and format this year; running the same session a couple of times for different geographical groups, possibly offering an asynchronous path, dipping into video and audio.

(†) 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?