Ministry of Testing Leeds - February 2019

After a brilliant January meetup, we're looking to keep the format of one longer and one shorter talk.

This month we'll be concentrating on Mental Health in the workspace and within the testing industry. This is a very important topic and one that affects many people in the industry, often silently.

6.30pm - 7pm: Networking and food

7pm - 7.45pm: TALK: Mental Health in the workplace - Gem Hill (details below)

7.45pm - 8pm: Break

8pm - 8.25pm: Lightening talk - Mental Health in Software Development - Rowan Gill & Kim Crowe (details below)

Here are the speaker and talk details:

GEM HILL:
Gem is a Senior Tester at the BBC, and has recently joined the Voice + AI team, working on BBC skills for Alexa and other voice platforms. She has two podcasts (Let’s Talk About Tests, Baby, and Inner Pod), and can be found on twitter @Gem_hill. She drinks a lot of tea, reads a lot of comics, and loves to bake.

Mental Health in the workplace
In 2018 I returned to therapy, which meant discussing time off for those appointments with my boss. Then I got a new role, so had the same discussions again. It went well both times! I've also had it not go well. In this talk I'll use my own experiences, the experiences others have shared, and my own training to help people handle conversations around mental ill health. I'll talk about things my workplace has done to help me.

The talk will be helpful, with examples and concrete tips for having these conversations, hopefully making these conversations less scary for all involved.

ROWAN GILL:
Rowan is a software developer in the early stages of his career. Joining Infinity Works as part of their graduate program having not done any coding before, Rowan is now a consultant on the Hermes account, working to keep those parcels moving efficiently!

KIM CROWE:
Kim has been a software tester for just over 5 years now. Prior to that she enjoyed a career as a research scientist.

Her career began at the University of Leeds shooting x-ray beams at crystals in the pursuit of new discoveries in membrane biology. After deciding to take a move away from academia, she shifted tack from doing her own research to helping people with theirs as a scientific consultant at GE Healthcare.

After being interested in technology for a long time, she then decided to take the plunge and begin a career in software development as a software tester. Since then, she has held a number of different roles as both a tester and a product owner, utilising skills gained over the course of her career.

Mental Health in Software Development
This talk will discuss mental health in a software development environment and how the challenges that we face everyday can effect our mental health. Following on from this we will discuss some ideas that your workplace could consider to help them become a more mindful employer and help safeguard the wellbeing of it's employees.

Thank you to our hosts Infinity Works and our sponsors Fruition IT, FDM Group and Computershare.