As a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy “trilogy” I’m well acquainted with this section:

As she was getting into the elevator Tricia, slightly preoccupied,
realised she had left her bag in her room and wondered whether to duck back out
and get it. No. It was probably safer where it was and there wasn’t anything
she particularly needed it for. She let the door close behind her.

Besides, she told herself, taking a deep breath, if life had taught her
anything it was this:

Never go back for your bag.

I’m currently attending the Nordic
Testing Days in Tallinn and as usual I have scouted the schedule for the
sessions I’m interested in. This morning there was to be a workshop called (Re)invent
your test strategy with exercises using the TestSphere cards. The workshop was
starting at 10:30, after the half-hour coffee break so there was plenty of time
getting to the room. As my phone was really low on battery I therefore took
this opportunity to go up to my hotel room to charge that phone and get my other
one in case I wanted to document anything from the workshop. Said and done I
then went to the conference room where the workshop was held and got there 15
minutes early. Judge of my surprise when I found out that the workshop was full
and there was no way of getting a seat. Looking stupidly at the track chair this
one sentence kept repeating in my head “Never go back for your…”.

I’m aware that in Tricia McMillans
case she missed a space ship when going back for her bag the first time and she
missed the gig of a lifetime when she didn’t go back for her bag the second
time and in comparison missing out on a workshop might seem as a minor issue
but here and now it’s really frustrating. I guess that the lesson learned is to
stop and consider what you might be missing when you do or don’t go back to get
something you forgot but at the same time there are quite too many unknowns for
doing a proper risk assessment…

Change of plans

As one of the speakers on the conference didn’t
make it here today I have agreed to do my talk today instead of tomorrow.
Suddenly I got really nervous and think I need to do some dry runs on my talk. Since
I shortened my talk I’m not 100% in control of my slide deck so this might get
interesting…