I finally pulled it off!  My company brought Michael Bolton to teach a private 3-day Rapid Software Testing course and stick around for a 4th day of workshops and consulting.  On the fourth day I had Michael meet with QA Managers to give his talk/discussion on “How to Get The Best Value From Testing”.  Then he gave a talk for programmers, BAs, testers, and managers on “The Metrics Minefield”.  Finally, he did a 2.5 hour workshop on “Critical Thinking for Testers”.

My brain and pen were going the whole four days; every other sentence he uttered held some bit of testing wisdom.  I’ll post chunks of it in the near future.  I attended the class 6 years earlier in Toronto and I was concerned it would have the same material but fortunately most of it had changed.

The conversations before/after class were a real treat too.  After the first day, Claire Moss, Alex Kell, Michael Bolton, and I met at Fado for some Guinness, tester craic, and much to my surprise, to listen to Michael play mandolin in an Irish tradition music session.  He happened to be a very good musician and (of course) gave us handles to tell a slip jig from a reel.

Several days later, I’m still haunted by Michael-Bolton-speak.  I keep starting all my sentences with “it seems to me”.  But best of all perhaps, is the lingering inspiration to read, challenge, and contribute thoughtful ideas to our testing craft.  He got me charged up enough to love testing for at least another 6 years.  Thanks, Michael!