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I'll be playing and (talking about) failing at ConTEST New York

I’m really looking forward to ConTEST in New York on November 29th – December 1st.
I will be presenting in two sessions at the conference: One on play, which I’ll do with Jess Ingrassellino, and one sharing my experiences performing great testing by embracing failure.
I know what you’re thinking: “I don’t play at work; I work, and I certainly don’t fail at my job.”
I appreciate that. Really!
But we also know that people who play well perform better, and that the best way of learning is through failure. In these turbulent times, playing and maintaining a readiness for learning seems more important than ever.
I think that soon HR people will want to read about failures, not successes, in resumes. People will reflect, talk and care about failures more than successes. We need to create a positive brand out of the failures of course, i.e. share narratives about what we have learned – and might still be learning.
Apart from that, I can’t tell you much about my talk on failure yet, as I’m still thinking about how to structure it and which of my own failures I will be sharing. They keep popping up and deciding which ones I’ll start with, go through, and end with is difficult.
Jess and I did our session on play first time at the CounterPlay conference in Aarhus, Denmark in March, then a few days later in Copenhagen, so I can share some more on that.
One of the good things about Denmark is that we have a culture that generally value playing.
We finally now even have wide support for more play in the parliament as they are currently working on http://jyllands-posten.dk/indland/ECE9963902/ny-paedagogik-efter-20-aar-leg-skal-afloese-laering-i-daginstitutioner/http://jyllands-posten.dk/indland/ECE9963902/ny-paedagogik-efter-20-aar-leg-skal-afloese-laering-i-daginstitutioner/changing legislation to stop kindergartens from having agendas fully focused on learning. They are putting free play back at the top for our children. The decision is backed by strong research showing that children that play freely perform better when they grow up.
I spent my time in kindergarten in a forest, where we played and explored all day long. I like going back to the particular forest from time to time and feel like “little Anders” again.
I take this as a reminder that we benefit from to re-connecting to our inner playful child from time to time. Tt makes us happy, but also makes us better performers. Even when problems queue and we need to be ok with being at risk failing.
The session at ConTEST will be a safe place to play. We will introduce participants to musical exercises that everybody can perform.
Jess has a doctorate in music education and is a virtuos violionist, and we will experience her play her beautiful instrument and teach us to perform in ways we probably thought we could not.
ConTEST has allocated us one hour, and we will make sure we have time to engage conversation about the good things we find in playing – conversations which you can take with you and continue at work.
A tester who participated in our workshop when we did it in Copenhagen recently came back to me about his experience:
“I didn’t get exactly what happened…”
“But you seemed to enjoy it?”
“Yeah!”
And that’s really all Jess and I ask you to: Engage and enjoy.
You may not feel you “get it”, but that’s part of playing: Performing without having to necessarily “get it”.
I hope you’ll join me at ConTEST!

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Lacking a photo of me playing, here are my sons Jens and Troels playing with our poodle Terry in a forest.