This document outlines an agenda for a workshop exploring skills that have no practical application. The workshop will begin with participants sharing skills they've learned that are not useful in their daily lives. The presenter, Alan Richardson, will then demonstrate skills like juggling and card tricks. Attendees will break into groups to teach and learn each other's skills. Through practicing and discussing skills transfers, the workshop aims to explore how sharing and learning skills can have unexpected value, and draw parallels to teaching testing skills.

1. Why you should learn skills that
have no real application in life
Or... Skill Acquisition and
Transfer Explored
A workshop
Alan Richardson
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/07/06
www.CompendiumDev.co.uk
www.EvilTester.com
www.JavaForTesters.com
www.SeleniumSimplified.com

2. In this session we will explore skills that have no ‘real’ application in life.
You know you have them – those skills that you spent weeks, months, possibly even
years learning. Which have no real application in your day to day life, or your professional
life.
Come prepared to share them. You don’t have to justify them. You just have to share
them.
We’ll start with a discussion of those skills. And list the skills in the room.
Then your brave, and incredibly talented, session host – Alan Richardson, will
demonstrate for you a few skills with no ‘real’ application in life – to the extent that he has
learned them: juggling, pen twirling, dice stacking, and the riffle shuffle.
One, or more of those skills will be selected by the gathered skill sharers. And a
demonstration exercise of sharing that skill with a volunteer, someone who does not have
that skill, will follow – much hilarity may well ensue during this demonstration.
Then the room will break out into chaos as you split into smaller groups and learn a skill
from someone else. We will do this at least twice so that people who share, also get to
learn.
Then we will debrief about what we learned about the value of sharing, and learning skills,
that have little or no perceived value.
Come prepared to share a skill. Expect to laugh, and be challenged, and if you come
expecting not to learn anything of value – then you might well return having learned
something of real and lasting value.

3. Logistics
● 09:30 – 10:30
– Warmup
– Theory
– Demo
– Exercise
– Debrief
● 10:30 – 11:00 Break
● 11:00 – 12:00
– Reminder
– Amended Demo
– Exercise
– Debrief
– Exercise
– Final Debrief

4. Warm up

5. A couple of minutes of chaos
● Get your demo stuff
● Warm up your demo stuff
● Adjust tables and chairs to make space

6. Remember what it is like to learn?
web.archive.org/web/20050205225705/http://www.fingerdexterity.com/brainrewire/brainrewire.htm

7. Theory

8. What are skills?
● Skills that have no 'real' application in life
● Skills for testing?
● Thoughts? Concepts? Lists? Comments?

9. What skills are in the room?
● What skills are you prepared to share?
● List
● Overlaps?
● How long did it originally take to learn these?
● Can we learn these in 10 minutes?
– Catalogue
– Expectations

10. Motivation
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2010/08/10
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

11. “patterns that connect”
“What pattern connects the crab to
the lobster and the orchid to the
primrose and all the four of them to
me? And me to you? And all the six
of us to the amoeba in one direction
and to the back-ward schizophrenic
in another?”
Gregory Bateson
Mind And Nature: a necessary unity

12. Motivation
● Why?

13. They're a natural born X'er
● (tester, guitar player, footballer, etc.)
● Nature vs Nurture
● This can be done

14. “...there was one superstition
current among even cultivated
persons. They suppose that if one is
told what to do, if the right end is
pointed out to them, all that is
required in order to bring about the
right act is will or wish on the part of
the one who is to act.”
John Dewey
Human Nature and Conduct (1921)

15. Practice
Enemy Ace #139, DC Comics, by Joe Kubert

16. Practice
● What do we know about practice?
– What is practice?
– How do we practice?
● Examples from 'skills'?
● What have we learned?
– How do we practice testing?
● Compare and contrast?
● What have we learned?

17. “...a child, when told to do a certain thing,
will do it incorrectly. You will find this most
common in actions which have to be
performed with the hands – the method of
holding a pen, for example. The teacher
explains and demonstrates, and yet most of
the children do a simple thing wrongly, to the
great exasperation and irritation of the
teacher.”
I.G. Griffith
The F. Matthias Alexander Technique and its
relation to education

18. Teaching
● How to teach skills?
– Styles?
– Approaches?
– What is important for success?
– What is detrimental to success?
Groo #20, Marvel, by Sergio Aragonés

19. Teaching
● How to teach skills?
– Styles?
– Approaches?
– What is important for success?
– What is detrimental to success?

20. Caveats

22. Caveats and Aims
● Use what you know
● Throw out your rule books
● Experience 'teach' - to impart a skill
● Experience 'learn' – to acquire a skill
● Observe, yourself & others
● Manipulate, yourself & others
● Adjust, your approach and techniques

23. Demos
Who wants to learn?
Marvel Comics,
“The Man Called Nova”,
Fabulous First Issue, 1976

24. Caution, Demo in progress...

25. Demo Debrief
How did we do?
Marvel Comics,
“The Man Called Nova”,
Fabulous First Issue, 1976

26. Skill Transfer Exercise
● Split into small groups
● Teacher transfers skills to group using whatever
means seem suitable for the skill and the group

27. Skill Transfer Exercise End
● Thank the teacher

28. Debrief
● What worked?
– For you as a student?
– For you as a student?
● What didn't work – for you
● What would you do differently as a teacher?
● What would you do differently as a learner?

29. Testing Debrief #1
● How does this relate?
● How do you 'teach', 'mentor', 'tutor', 'pair'
testers?
● What lessons can you take to testing?

30. Break

31. Previously we learned...

32. Demos

33. Skill Transfer Exercise
● Teachers teach for 15 – 20 mins
● Students can move between groups as and
when they want to

34. Debrief

35. Skill Transfer Exercise
● Teachers teach for 15 – 20 mins
● Students stick with the teachers
● Students feedback often to the teacher
● Teacher adjust based on feedback

36. Final
Debriefs
● Debrief
● Relation to
testing
Marvel Treasury Edition #6
Dr Strange

37. Marvel Treasury Edition #6 - Dr Strange