Dragons Out

I just found this piece of paper "Kari Kakkonen’s entry to Honeywell Futurist Competition in 1995." I think this is my first non-school fictive text. Man, did I anticipate Wi-Fi, 5G, Fast Internet, smartphones, Facebook, electric cars, business optimization, big data, increases in efficiency, and downshifting! Read and be amazed.  Essay about Future: Thoughts of a Net Repairs man on April 15th 2020, 06.15.20 Summary The essay describes the future seen by a Finnish net repairs man Ville. As he is doing some routine work, he thinks about how the net - the global communication network - developed and affects everyday life. He thinks about the physical structure and availability of the net. He considers the numerous uses of the net, the business opportunities, and threats. He notices some technologies created with the aid of the net. He wonders how good influence the net has had on the Finnish and the global society. Essay Thoughts of a Net Repairsman on April 15th 2020. 06.15.20...

Last week I participated in Mimmit koodaa (women code) program's  This is Not a Webinar  where two of my Finnish Dragons Out! books were prizes in a book draw. The event was most inspiring also for a man - it was great to see equal opportunities rising for women to participate in the Information and Communication Technology field. Through great examples, it becomes a norm that it doesn't make a difference what gender you are in the ICT field. I'm happy to give one more example with my book's characters which are equally represented. I even start the book with a little girl as the main heroine. I'm happy to congratulate Heidi Särkioja and Katri-Maija Karvonen for winning the book prizes! And thanks to my publisher Avain for giving these books, too! Another item I would like to raise in this blog post is the conclusion from the feedback survey that I ran this winter/spring among those who preordered Finnish books and among the Finnish schools that received donated boo...

This week I had the joy of being interviewed by Marko Suomi for his Takakansi podcast which has over 100 episodes of interesting book and author interviews. You can listen to it here:  https://takakansi.fi/2021/04/06/kari-kakkonen-miten-ajatella-kuin-testaaja/ We discussed the Dragons Out! book of course, but also software testing in general. What is software testing, for your regular person? I explained that it is checking that all that is supposed to be is there, but also trying to explore the software in ways that reveal the unexpected circumstances. You can find defects in both ways. Usually, you end up running the tests that check against the user requirements multiples times, and thus these tests are good candidates for test automation. This repetition is because of the iterative nature of software development - software is built as parts and the developers are continuously integrating more code to the software they already have and what has been tested. Anything may break wh...

Last week was a blur spent on running an online version of ISTQB General Assembly. Many things to do in a short amount of time. However, I also had the pleasure of presenting my Dragons Out book project at JSTQB conference in Tokyo, Japan. I delivered my talk online as the case has been for all corona-time presentations. This time the suitable balance of reliable presentation and audience interaction was achieved by a recorded presentation and a live Q&A through Zoom. Particularly interesting was that I got questions both verbally from the host Kenji Tonishi translating them from Japanese participants and from the Zoom chat where Hidetoshi Suhara translated Japanese text to English. As they translated my answers back to Japanese, I had time to switch between the two forms of answering questions. Another great experience! The questions themselves were interesting, too. I'll pick one: "Have you ever come up with a dragon that you have then discarded?". My answer: "...