The Importance of Community for Software Testers in 2024 with Chris Trimper

[00:00:04] Get ready to discover the most actionable end-to-end automation advice from some of the smartest testers on the planet. Hey, I'm Joe Colantonio, host of the Test Guild Automation Podcast, and my goal is to help you succeed with creating automation awesomeness.

[00:00:24] Hey, why is community now more important than ever for software testers? And today's AI-driven world or buzz, let's explore the irreplaceable role of human expertise in software testing. So stay tuned as we unravel the unique value that human experts bring to the table in an era dominated by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and all this hype you've been hearing and why, you need to join the Test Guild community today to stay ahead of the curve. Hey, I'm Joe and today will be speaking with Chris Trimper to help answer this burning question around the community for testers. If you don't know, Chris has over 16 years of experience dedicated most of the time to adding efficiencies in the testing process through functional test automation. He is currently a test automation architect for a QA team at a large healthcare company. He is a long time automation guilder and he is our awesome Test Guild community leader.

[00:01:20] This episode of the Test Guild Automation Podcast is sponsored by the Test Guild. Test Guild offers amazing partnership plans that cater to your brand awareness, lead generation, and thought leadership goals to get your products and services in front of your ideal target audience. Our satisfied clients rave about the results they've seen from partnering with us from boosted event attendance to impressive ROI. Visit our website and let's talk about how Test Guild could take your brand to the next level. Head on over to TestGuild.info and let's talk.

[00:01:52] Joe Colantonio Hey, Chris. Welcome to The Guild.

[00:01:55] Chris Trimper Hey, Joe. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to be part of The Guild in any way that I can, whether it's through having an opportunity to share in one of your podcasts here or just joining the community in all different levels, even just attending events and just popping questions in and just really continuing to just share the knowledge that we have as this wonderful community of testers.

[00:02:17] Joe Colantonio Thank you for being an example, because you really do contribute to all the community, especially on webinars. You're always asking questions. A lot of times people just lurk, but you're not a lurker, you're someone that actually participates. So I really appreciate that for sure.

[00:02:30] Chris Trimper No, I appreciate that. I mean, we learn by asking questions. And especially in an age where you don't have to be worried about fumbling over your question. You're too embarrassed to stand up to a microphone in a live session. You can sit there at your keyboard as anti-social as the sound. I could sit there on my keyboard. I can think through my thoughts, I can orchestrate them, and I can ask them, and I can ask a question to a person that in the past may have been intangible for me to get access to, but through platforms like yours, I'm able to talk to these people to have my questions answered by some of these experts from literally around the globe. And it's really freaking cool.

[00:03:05] Joe Colantonio Absolutely, love it. So speaking about answering questions and getting interactions with people all around the globe, I'm just curious to get your take on this. AI it's been the buzz. Obviously, there's a lot of hype. There are probably a lot of things where it's not going to live up to the hype to probably be an AI bubble, but I still think there's going to be an uptick in people using like ChatGPT generative AI to help them with their software development and testing. And a lot of times that information may not be complete or may be completely wrong. I think nowadays it's even more important to be in touch with fellow software testers in the community to bounce ideas off of and not necessarily just rely on ChatGPT type of technology. But what are your thoughts on that?

[00:03:46] Chris Trimper I absolutely agree with you. And I don't think anything is going to replace in total the networking that exists. Whether or not you have an opportunity to attend events, conferences, seminars, sessions, and whatnot. I hate using the word pre-pandemic, but it's a reality. It's there. It's in our past. But pre-pandemic, where that would be, where you would get together, you would network with people. You would find people that were like you'd ask questions and bounce ideas off of them. Now, with the ever-growing things of community platforms and digital communities, you continue to have that opportunity. And yes, I recognize that. I think of ChatGPT as the ultimate CliffsNotes. It's read all the things, it summarized all the things, but you can still summarize and wrong, and you can still have gaps. I think to have that ever-curious mind of human beings like us to bounce ideas off is going to continue to be great. I think of AI in these chatbots and things as I like the term copilot. If you think about when extreme programming was a thing, I think it lasted for like 2 or 3 minutes. You have two people just hammering away at a problem. I think chatbots can kind of be that, but there's always going to be checks and balances, and I think you need people for those checks and balances. I think we need to continue to have those aspects and to use them both responsibly. Much like I think the term is cookbook, there used to be code cookbooks. You could pull snippets out of code cookbook and use it, but you might still have questions about it. You might need to understand how to apply it more, and you might want to check that the code you're pulling from the cookbook is applicable to you. Same thing with the chatbots. But frankly, they're not going to be able to bring that wealth of knowledge at this time. The communities and the people in the communities actually can't.

[00:05:27] Joe Colantonio Yeah. Love it. It's more like AI assistants not replacing someone, but a tester using it. I use it just to get ideas sometimes. I'm like, whoa! That's completely wrong, but it got me thinking about something else, so I definitely agree.

[00:05:38] Chris Trimper Oh for sure. I mean, again, think about sessions that you've attended at conferences. It's not a rule that every conference session that you attend, you have to agree with the ideas there. I mean, there is supposed to be a challenge. So it's just human nature as you evolve in your career, whether it's in software or not in software, you expect to be challenged. Your challenge, not because people want to prove you wrong, but your challenge because you want to have the opportunity to have different ideas come to the table. That's what it's about. Maybe the chatbot brings a unique idea to you like, oh, that's cool. I don't agree with it at all but that got me thinking about something else.

[00:06:10] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. And I love that. A lot of times, like you said, sometimes someone goes to a conference and they may be demonstrating how to do API testing, but they may be using, I don't know Rest assured or Postman and someone goes, well, I don't use REST assured. I don't use Postman. But the principles that going over would apply to basically any tool. It's about the concept, not necessarily the tooling that they probably get some benefit out of.

[00:06:30] Chris Trimper Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, some of the pros of some of the AI bits is, is they can really help you. I guess I use a term that lots of contracting firms use to accelerate your ability to go into something. So if I'm just getting comfortable with, say, Python, and I really want to help me get myself pass some concepts, it might be able to help me accelerate my learning path. The second substitute not going to make it sort so things for me, but it has the opportunity to do stuff like that and it has the opportunity for you. Oh, I didn't think of it that way. Let me integrate that idea with my idea to make something that's uniquely mine.

[00:07:04] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. Because of the kind of shift with like you said, people after the pandemic, more people are working remotely. And also, I think with AI, it's changing things up a little how people are doing software development. I'm just curious to get your take on we just started a new thing at the Test Guild at Automation Guild. Chris, I think you've been involved since the beginning with the Automation Guild in 2017, and we've been using Slack for our community platform, and we recently replaced it and we'll be using it for Automation Guild 2024 happening February 5th to 9th something called Heartbeat. And I just want to get your takes on it because you're also going to be a community manager. You've been helping set things up. Get people ideas why community is important, but why having the right platform with the right functionality is going to help them as well, especially if they join the Test Guild this year at Automation Guild. So maybe it's a loaded question, but maybe break that down?

[00:07:54] Chris Trimper No, it's fine. I mean, it's a funny question because too many people put overemphasis on tools, too many people put overemphasis on people. It's say equilateral triangle of things that people process and tools, and it applies to communities as well. For better or worse, I'm sorry to those people who are employees of Slack, it's expensive. It's expensive. It is something that is a what per user charge. And Joe, you've done an absolutely amazing job allowing the community to be either low-cost or near net free to its members and subscribers. I can't fathom how you would be expected to shoulder the financial weight of having to pay for every individual person access Slack to get its premium features like history and some of the new features and some of the chats and other things like that you would need to use. So it was inevitable that we would have to shift. And the new platform that we're shifting to is allowing it. And please correct me, Joe, to keep it as low of cost as possible with those premium features. Some of those premium features are theoretically unlimited history. I mean, how many years back you really want to go, but you're not going to see things just fall off? Joe, you're not going to now have to make the decision of, well, we had an immense amount of conversation at Automation Guild 2024 and oh! that took us past our quotas. So it's only going to be around for months. I'm sorry. Oh, I'll put it out in a text document for you and just have fun with that. No, that's just not a good experience. You're not going to allow yourself to continue those conversations. Like, let's create a community that's occurring during a conference to real deal. Could you imagine if something was there archiving and having all the conversations you had in an in-person conference so that you could reference them later? That is the neatest concept I can think of when it comes to conferences. That's what the community is providing. There are some new features that we're using in it such as some really like special interest areas and tool-specific areas for some of those more popular tools and special interest, AI being one of them. But performance test automation, mobile testing, and the like so that not only can you subscribe to the overall channels and just get a feel for like what's going on in The Guild, but you can say, oh, I'm in mobile testing. I don't care if you're a day one or day 501 in your mobile testing realm, you want to know, how do I find like minded people with mobile? There's a channel for that. There's the ability to have live chats and things of that nature. This particular platform does have the ability for you to customize your experience how you want it. Do you want to have it in your browser? Do you want to have it as a desktop application, giving you like toaster notifications? When things important to you are there, do you want to take it with you on the go and mobile? You have the option for all of those. Yes, I do realize that some of these features are also in Slack and others, but you're getting these premium features for as a member, no additional cost to me as a member.

[00:10:46] I mentioned those notifications. You also have the control. And I think Joe will do more of a write up on this later to control your notifications, to make them tailored towards you. And you can even have a tailored towards you by experience. So when you're at your phone on the go, you don't want your phone to be buzzing every five minutes because there are some hot topics going on? While on your phone, you can say, I don't want to be notified for everything, but when you're in your browser, when you're in the heart and soul of things and you want to be notified of cool stuff, you can be notified of it. And that's really just scratching the surface of some of the things that it brings us there, and it brings us such immense management. So we are now fulfilling role as community manager, but also as a longtime member of The Guild, we can serve and have members served with the best possible experience they can have. And I think it's just going to continue to grow because as more special area interest grow, instead of just blasting out to the general channel and either getting met with crickets because nobody's paying attention to general channel or feeling like, oh, I'm afraid to ask this question because I'm the part of these people that don't care about it. You can say, oh, I want to go to and I'll just look at it. I got it up on the other screen now I can look at it and I can say, oh, I'm going to go to the mobile area because, man, I'm having struggles with this mobile stuff. I can ask like-minded people questions any time of the day. Don't have to wait for that conference session. I don't have to sit at a conference and go, oh crap, there's a track here and a track here. That's the mobile one. That's the desktop one. I don't know which to go to. It's here for you all the time.

[00:12:19] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. I've been dragging my feet on this decision for a while. Seven conferences. Every time I ask the community, hey, should we switch from Slack? They say no. But like you said, we lost history after 90 days. And when I pressed it out, it was at least $10,000 or more for a monthly that we'd have to pay for active users. And it really stinks to lose that history. But now with the new heartbeat community, we will always have that history, which I think is critical. So now you can go back, you could do a search. You had a conversation at Automation Guild, 2023, 2019. You'd be able to find it if we had used it from the beginning. Also, what I like is if people aren't being engaged or seeing you having a problem with, say, Postman and you post it, you can actually do a search for Postman because when I ask people to join the community, I ask them what their expertise are. And then now we could start tagging people. So if it doesn't get any traction, we could say, hey, by the way, whoever the person is who has that tag, could you help this person out? So it actually has some more engagements that way as well that I look forward to using for sure.

[00:13:21] Chris Trimper Yeah. No, absolutely. It's going to be a journey. And I'll promote the heartbeat development team community and whatnot because like when the iPhone 15 came out, not every development team could predict what would happen. And there was a new weird thing where because of the ratio of the screen and maybe it was the Dynamic Island. I'm not an Apple aficionado. I have an Apple phone, but I barely know what I'm doing with it. There was a problem with it. We reported it as an issue we gave them details. I'm a good quality tester, so I'd like to believe I wrote up a pretty reasonable defect for them, and they were able to respond to it in a matter of days and have a roadmap for how it was going to get fixed, and also have it where there was a fix available in there Play Store, whatever the App Store. And just a matter of news less than a week turn around. I'm not saying that every single thing, every one of our beck and calls that we think is a neat idea is going to get fixed that way, but I like that they have a very attentive group and community there. There's an immense amount of support for the platform that we're using.

[00:14:22] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. Also, what I think what's different about our Automation Guild is it's not one and done. It's not the event's over. We're all done. We live on in the community forever. So anyone that buys a ticket now will get access to all the recordings after the fact, but they also will get access to that community within Heartbeat. That's Automation Guild 2024 and they'd be able to have access to that forever. And what I introduced said no extra charge as well as I'm going to introduce monthly community experts to join us every month to do a new session as well to keep the community even more active. So hopefully there's not as much dead space. It's the event all the activity will be going on. And then after the event, for Automation Guild ticket holders, we'll be having these expert speakers come in once a month to have a new session and to regather The Guild together to kind of keep the quests going. So new feature, hopefully, that works out. Like I said, I haven't raised any rates. This is part of the normal guild ticket that you've people have purchased. Any thoughts around that Chris? How that's going to work. We'll see. But yeah.

[00:15:22] Chris Trimper I mean, I think that's really cool because how many times are you at an event virtual or physical? And it's that last session of the last day and you're right in the high, like, man, I just wish this high could keep on going. Well, whether it was verbally asked for or not, Joe, you're you're given that to us. You're letting that high ride. You got to wait a little while in between. You're going to let it be like a roller coaster. Oh, and, oh, we got another event. Oh, oh, we got another event. That's really admirable and cool. And I think that's something that's going to help drive things and just help keep the community alive, then help give the community what they're yearning for, which is just whether it's more interactions, more knowledge, more opportunities to learn more. I'm the kind of person that likes to take knowledge and put it in my back pocket. What I mean by that, in case that has any weird connotations for some people, is it's I want to keep it there for a rainy day and keep it there for something, so that when I come up in that situation like, whoa, there was that session in The Guild or that person did it, wait, I don't remember the whole thing. There's a community I can go on and ask. Maybe I'll get in touch with the person that gave the session. Maybe I'll get in touch with 5 or 6 others, said, no, no, I already did that. Here's what I learned from it. It's just this collaborative world-wide ecosystem that is the Test Guild.

[00:16:32] Joe Colantonio It's a good point about speakers. I invited them all to the Automation Guild channel as well. Hopefully, they'll stick around forever. But if you did watch a session maybe two months after the fact, you rewatched and you said, oh, I wish I asked this question to the speaker, you could search the community. Most likely the speaker will be there and you can ask them the question. So it's great, great use of the community I think for that also.

[00:16:52] Chris Trimper Yeah, it's absolutely stellar. And I know as someone that's been an active member in the community in years past, I say a vast majority of speakers have been certainly active around their sessions and then active after the fact, either inviting people to connect with them and whatever. The appropriate way to connect with them is to follow them in whatever the appropriate way to follow them is and content. And then in addition, just to reach out with them for questions about their technique or just overall area of expertise.

[00:17:20] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. So to mix it up a little bit, I don't know if you have the list in front of you both. So any sessions at this year's Automation Guild that really excited to get the community behind?

[00:17:30] Chris Trimper Oh, well let's see. I'm going to go at this live and say, well, if I wanted to know what these sessions that Joe is talking about are and where would I go? I would go to TestGuild.com, and I would look in the upper corner of the screen and see something that's aptly linked Automation Guild. Why would I not go to Automation Guild? Because you might miss out on some of the really sweet content that's on the Test Guild. I'm going to click on Automation Guild, and I go to the really cool page that makes me feel like I'm in for an epic quest. And if I scroll down a little bit, sorry, this is just the tester and me talking through the different steps. I kind of pop through some-

[00:18:06] Joe Colantonio Don't say something broken.

[00:18:07] No, no, nothing's broken but we got two steps to reproduce. I mean, that's just what it is as a tester. There are a couple of really cool ones that pop out to me. I know this one's going to just be yet another one of those battles. Cypress vs. Playwright. That's going to be the battle until the next big thing comes out there. I'm not naming names because I want to focus more on the content than the names.

[00:18:29] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. Yep.

[00:18:30] Chris Trimper Granted, some of the names, there are some phenomenal names here. But let me remind one thing. Was it last year, Joe, that I looked at the keynote speakers for Star East and five of them got dip their toes in the waters of speaking at one of The Guild events?

[00:18:47] Joe Colantonio Yes. Yes. Awesome.

[00:18:49] Chris Trimper In other words, I'm reminding you just because you haven't heard of somebody doesn't mean that you won't not hear of them in the future.

[00:18:54] Joe Colantonio That's a good point, Chris, because that's another thing I get in trouble for, sometimes. I try to get maybe speakers that are experts but been may not presented before. I try not to have the same speakers over and over and over again, you see at every conference. Not that that's bad, but I like to bring in some fresh insights for people that are experts. But you may not know them, but they definitely will teach you something.

[00:19:14] Chris Trimper Oh, yeah. I mean, sometimes you just need that event to just help them walk the plank into the amazing water that is in speaking, etc. and there's been just dozens and dozens and dozens of individuals that have been like that, either launching or continuing to accelerate their public speaking career, etc., through The Guild. I mean, that's part of the community aspect of it. You don't just go and say, oh, last year's Star East for the top ten speakers. Those are the people I need to have. No, I want experts in these areas, and I think you do a nice job of kind of tailoring it across every like you're not just going to go, oh, mobile the hot topics. We're going to talk about mobile. You want it to be something for every for sure. But yeah, going back to it, you know I see something manual to automated intro to coding for testers. It is never ever, ever, ever too late to have the either go back to basics or the getting started. There will always be someone that's looking to get started, change, or shift. Maybe they're not even a manual tester, maybe they're a VA. Maybe there's someone that writes business requirements and that other stuff looks so cool. I want to learn more. Maybe it's also somebody saying, I'm a little rusty in some of these areas because I've been from this project to that project. I want to just get back to basics. There's never an opportunity that you should stop learning. So even those are great. Another session clean code and test automation. Dear Lord, do not look at my code and test automation. I need that session something fierce. This one struck me because of the title says I'm an SDET. Now what? I think a lot of us when we get promoted, depending on how a promotion occurs, like, yeah, I did it. Oh crap. So it just shows that it's reality. Some others. I mean, you can't go wrong with the title like this. A Path to Becoming a Test Automation Rockstar. Maybe only be rock stars, don't we? Other really awesome sessions in here. Shifting left and shifting right. That's obviously something that's big. And I think we can never have too much information about that. Those are things that continually evolve. You don't just do it once and you're then done. I'm intrigued. I hear model-based testing coming back. I think there are a lot of unique new opportunities to have describing your flows and paths and models as something that's, I hate to say it this way, but relevant again, I think everybody thought that UML died. I think that's what it was. And that's like, oh yeah, that's a thing of yesteryear. But it just goes to show, just like bellbottoms, what's new is old again, denim jackets. Joe, you probably still have your denim jacket somewhere.

[00:21:39] Joe Colantonio I used to have a denim jacket with the big Van Halen patch on it, Jimi Hendrix. I don't know, you're probably not that old.

[00:21:46] Chris Trimper I think many of us will be crying a bit because you used the word used to, as opposed to it in your closet in a garment bag.

[00:21:54] Joe Colantonio No, I wouldn't even fit in anymore. That's like a 75 pounds all my life until I got married.

[00:22:01] Chris Trimper That sounds like a pretty wicked jacket. That's right. Everybody's going to go to a thrift store looking for one of those right now. There are other sections here becoming an automation craftsman. Removing the pain from mobile test automation. I'm not sure you ever can, but maybe it's lessening the pain. Mobile automation, we do that a lot and I organization it's rewarding but challenging. And I think that notion is something else that I think is important when it comes to the community aspect. I feel like especially now that we're all in this work from home bubble, I hate to break it to you. That's not a virtual background. That's a real background. I'm at home. There's no coworker here or there anywhere physically that I can touch, have a coffee break, sit down with. So, sadly, I think the opportunity to feel alone in your job is really high. I feel like the community helps us understand and realize that we're not alone in the venture we're going on, and we're not alone in our pain and sorrow. And I know that sounds fluffy and whatever, but I think that's really important. We should be able to feel like we have somebody we can reach out to, that a phone a friend type of thing in the community ought to be able to be that whether it's you're banging your head up against the wall about something or you're frustrated about this thing, maybe some of us have already been passed that, maybe some of us are struggling with it right now, and we have that opportunity all as a community. Not that it's supposed to be. We're shoving things down people's throats. But the entire community has an opportunity to lean on each other. And that's the beauty of what's been built here.

[00:23:26] Joe Colantonio That's a good point, Chris, because I don't know if people know this. This is all community-driven. So the topics I do a survey for past Automation Guild folks at the beginning of the year and ask them, hey, what's the number one thing is struggling with? And then based on that, I get the topics and then I get a call for speakers based on these topics. And then I have The Guild once again vote on the ones that they want to see. It is a community effort from the lineup as well. In the topics. I don't list the speaker names, so there's no bias, it's just a topic. What it's about people up or down vote it and that's what usually gets selected.

[00:23:58] Chris Trimper That shows way of saying if for whatever reason it's not good, it's all of your fault and you vote poorly.

[00:24:05] Joe Colantonio Yes. So don't blame me. I mean, I'm a bad judge too. Sometimes I like, oh, this is awesome. And then it doesn't get as many votes.

[00:24:12] Chris Trimper I feel like this is I'm going to be aging myself. What was the TV show where there would be like singing or dancing do on there is like text this, this, this or the person. So all of you cast your votes and all of your votes have counted. They've been tallied up and this is what we get. But you know what? I got to give the community some mad props because this is a darn good looking event. We usually say, I usually think of myself as a member, an attendee. Oh, this was one of the greatest lineups we've ever had. And then and then the community and those that offer up sessions. Knock it out of the park again.

[00:24:45] Joe Colantonio Yeah, I'm excited by it. For sure.

[00:24:47] It's pretty bonker sauce. I don't know, like two more test automation for data quality. I know everybody's got that kind of whirlwind problem, and I'm happy to see a session on open telemetry and observability. I think that's an area that's got so many areas. It's sad that it gets bundled into nonfunctional because I think it can lend itself to functional as well. We'll go on traditional terms for things like performance and security or nonfunctional. But it is a very good attribute. I mean that's just scratching the surface. Encourage each and every one of you. We're just probably going to put the link down below to go and check the sessions out and go, how could I go wrong? We go a tiny bit further. Am I allowed to mention the price, Joe?

[00:25:28] Joe Colantonio Oh, sure.

[00:25:29] Chris Trimper So for your 3-day event, it's just $197. That's pretty darn cheap. And 5 day, $297. So all of that cool stuff that you're going to see in that link below for not a bad investment whatsoever, including the really nifty bonus stuff that Joe was mentioning. That's the best bang for your buck you can get in software conference that I can think of.

[00:25:47] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. People should just check off the page. We got a really cool page design done. As you mentioned, the theme this year is Dungeons and Dragons, so try to make it as fun as possible. So if you check out the landing page, you get like a D and D vibe for sure.

[00:26:00] Chris Trimper I've been starting to play a lot more retro games and realizing how bad I am at them. I feel like this is Legend of Zelda where you it's dangerous out there. Take this. Don't go alone. Everybody is dangerous out there. Don't go alone. Get into The Guild. That's right.

[00:26:15] Joe Colantonio That's awesome. So, Chris, any advice for maybe newcomers to The Guild community that may be joining, especially for how to leverage it for their growth, really take advantage of the benefits of the community?

[00:26:26] Chris Trimper I think the two things I can think of is don't get overwhelmed to consume overwhelming. Know that you don't have to frivolously take notes because you can go back and rewatch the session. You can even go back and watch the Q&A. Just be in the moment and enjoy it. And the reason I mention that is oftentimes with some new people in either The Guild community or other areas, they're seemingly bordering on scatterbrain, like, oh my gosh, I got to do all these things, all these things to do. So they're just firing tons of stuff out. They're not even having a chance to give themselves a moment to think. Take the time and think. Just absorb it. You're a sponge. It's fine. And also realize just because somebody has got X amount of years of experience and some title which they have rightfully earned, does not mean that that you can't reach out to them. Is every single person going to get back to you? Sadly, the answer is no. But just because someone's speaking and has X amount of years of experience that they've advertised does not mean they're not willing to take an opportunity to have a conversation, exchange, or whatever with you because you're new. Because I guarantee there's lots of things that each of those people that are new to the table have experience with that I have literally no idea about. So we're all in new at something. It's just so just come enjoy and just enjoy the waters. They're fine.

[00:27:42] Joe Colantonio Yeah, I don't know if people are going to take advantage of this option. Maybe spin up their own guilds like a beginner guild or something within the community. But like you mentioned, there's a call a voice room where you could start it up, invite different members, and start up your own little get together all within the same platform. So we'll see how that works out this year for sure.

[00:27:59] Chris Trimper Yeah, certainly if you're diving into the platform and it seems overwhelming, don't hesitate to reach out to myself, community manager, or any of those that are either been there for a while. Believe it or not, I don't know which side Joe is going to be on. So this guy Joe is more than welcome to answer questions of people. So he is not unapproachable either.

[00:28:19] Joe Colantonio Absolutely.

[00:28:20] Chris Trimper He does sleep certain times and sit down and have meals with his wife. So there are times you won't. It's just a fun place to get together, and you don't have to sit there and wait for your that 3-minute window that you have with the speaker. That window is near infinite because the community just continues to go on.

[00:28:36] Joe Colantonio Absolutely. Well, Chris, I want to thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for being the community manager at Test Guild. Like you mentioned, Chris is an awesome resource to have. He responds right away. So once you join the Automation Guilds get access to community, you can start interacting with either one of us and anyone else in the community right away. So look forward to all your questions and all your awesomeness within the Automation Guild community this year. So thank you so much, Chris. Appreciate you and any parting words of wisdom before we go?

[00:29:03] Chris Trimper Just dive in and have fun and don't hesitate to ask the questions. The community is there for everyone.

[00:29:08] Thanks again for your automation awesomeness. The links of everything we value we covered in this episode. Head in over to testguild.com/a479. And if the show has helped you in any way, why not rate it and review it in iTunes? Reviews really help in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. So that's it for this episode of the Test Guild Automation Podcast. I'm Joe, my mission is to help you succeed with creating end-to-end, full-stack automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.

[00:29:43] Hey, thanks again for listening. If you're not already part of our awesome community of 27,000 of the smartest testers, DevOps, and automation professionals in the world, we'd love to have you join the FAM at Testguild.com and if you're in the DevOps automation software testing space or you're a test tool provider and want to offer real-world value that can improve the skills or solve a problem for the Guild community. I love to hear from you head on over to testguild.info And let's make it happen.