We’re just wrapping up the 7th Workshop in Performance and Reliability Testing, in Exeter, England. It’s been a textbook example of a “LAWST-style” peer conference. We were lucky to have Paul Holland’s experienced hand at the tiller as our facilitator. Julian Harty tended to our every IT need. Antony Marcano, lead and directed the content of the workshop (more on him later). And the people at Transition Consulting provided facilities, entertainment, and other logistical support for us. The machine was well oiled.

I met lots of new people, and I’m pleased with them all. (The attendees were James Bull, James Dobson, Dan Downing, Rachida El Amraoui, Richard Florence, Ainars Galvans, Antony Gorman, Julian Harty, Paul Holland, Antony Marcano, Gordon McKeown, Raymond Rivest, and me.) I’m choosing three to write about, here:

Ainars Galvans

I appreciated, for instance, meeting Ainars Galvans, who blogs frequently at www.testingreflections.com. I had some impression of Ainars, just from his writing. The self-reflective way he writes captured my attention. But meeting him in person, I am particularly struck by his warmth and sincerity (or as the joke goes: if he’s not sincere, he fakes it well). I think Ainars has the heart of a seeker, and I will get even more out of his blog now that we’ve met.

James Dobson

Then there’s freshly minted independent consultant James “Jamie” Dobson, inventor of “Conservative XP.” He defies description, but let me try. Imagine walking into a run-down sports pub somewhere in Yorkshire during an important rugby match. Now, amidst the cheering boozed-up crowd, pick at random some rough-looking lad with wild hair and crazy eyes. There are many to choose from. Pry the fellow out of the pub (you may need the help of a couple of bouncers) and into the street, then threaten him a statistical testing problem that requires knowledge of the cumulative distribution function of the exponential distribution.

If, amidst his grumbling protestations of never having studied statistics, this man proceeds to solve the problem by reasoning from first principles, graphing the relevant function with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk, then showing how the answer is actually irrelevant because in practice he would brute force it with his test server, then you must be talking to James Dobson.

When I first saw Jamie, at the WOPR7 welcome dinner, I thought he had sat down at our table by mistake. When he first spoke to us in his thick working-class Yorkshire accent, I knew he MUST have the wrong table. But his words rivetted me, peppered as they were with references to Buddhism, Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, and General Systems Theory, to name some of places of his mind. And it all made sense! Somewhere between his criticism of my Google hat in terms of the political semiotics, or slinging XP lingo with the confidence of someone who doesn’t merely walk the walk, but slashed the trail through the jungle with his own machete, I realized that Jamie is my kind of thinker.

Antony Marcano

I knew of Antony Marcano from his TestingReflections website and because my brother Jonathan sent me a “Dude, he’s one of us” message, last year. Antony is an agilist of the kind I like to promote– the agile kind.

Antony was the “content owner” of WOPR7, which means he controlled the agenda and tried to synthesize and focus the ideas that came out of the meeting. Wow, he did a great job. I’ve been content owner of several peer conferences, myself. It’s hard. I would say that Antony is the best I’ve seen at this, other than the venerable Cem Kaner himself, who is the King Arthur of content owners.

Antony exudes an interesting combination of critical and sympathetic thinking. Normally, these qualities don’t mix well, but he makes it work. I came to a realization while watching him work. Though I’ve seen a lot of smart people, I rarely meet smart people whose presence in the room actually amplifies the intelligence of other people. Antony is one of those. I estimate a five point gain just sitting next to him in a conversation.

I define “leader” as someone who regularly influences my own thinking about the craft, as well as the thinking of people I respect. Up to now I have not thought of Antony as a leader in our field. I assumed he was just a guy with a website. Seeing him take such an active and helpful role in directing WOPR7, I must now say that Antony is certainly in the process of becoming a leader, in my community. If he puts his mind to it, he will soon be considered a leader, worldwide.

You can find out more about him through his blog and contact him through his company etest associates.

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