Newsletter 3

Welcome to the third Access Newsletter. I had hoped to re-format the newsletter into a Word document and send out a snazzier looking PDF to you all, but unfortunately that old enemy time caught up with me. I will definitely attempt to do this for the next newsletter as it was something that nearly everyone who provided feedback commented on. Anyway, on with the news this fortnight . . . .

Dr John Eklunds Conference Report
During The First week of July John Eklund gave a keynote speech at The Fifth International Conference on Communication Technologies in Education. This is a conference of about 150 delegates coming from a wide range of countries, although quite a few Australians were present. It was a great experience - I have done many papers and invited talks before but this was the first time I have been an opening keynote. It's the best speaking spot as all eyes are on you to say something special and you really get an opportunity to set the tone of the conference. I put a lot of preparation into the talk and it went really well, giving Access Testing Centre some valuable exposure at an international venue. The publication details are:

Eklund J (2004) Driving the Future of e-Learning. Keynote Address to The
Fifth International Conference on Communication Technologies in Education.
In Fenstrom K (Ed.) Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference on
Communication Technologies in Education, Samos, Greece July 1-3, 2004. P.
2-13.
and here's a link to the presentation if anyone cares to check it out.
http://www.testingcentre.com/jeklund/ICICTE.zip

A word on "Helping the Environment" by Peter Wright
Well, last week my family and I had a couple of days leave up in the Blue Mountains. One day we decided to go Jenolan Caves. The trip took us via Mount Victoria, Hartley Valley and Hampton. On our way through Hartley we saw for the first time, the generation of electricity using wind. I was astounded at the size of these giant "Wind Machines" they were using. There were two of them and they were each, the size of a small office block. It was great to see an alternative to coal burning. Also this year I became a member of the "World Wide Fund for Nature Australia". I was so pleased to see their yearly summary of achievements:

* A Sanctuary for Whales
* Clean Generation of Electricity
* A Haven for Squirrel Gliders
* Protecting Tassie Forests
* Tracking an Endangered Turtle Species
* Protecting Wetlands in Northern NSW
* Protecting and Re-Establishing the environ for the Black Winged Stit
* Protecting the Natural Environment from Weeds
* A Rare Discovery of a Bird (the Eastern Yellow Chat)

I hope they keep up the much-needed successes.
 
Testing on The Rocks
Chao, Lizzie and Tessa have been very comfortably installed in a sunny meeting room on the 4th level of 121 Harrington Street, The Rocks. This is the home of Dimension Data, who has done the development for one of the RTA projects (which we are testing). A temporary test lab has been set up - not only do we have lovely avocado green desks and chairs, a test server and hub, the longest power strips in recorded history, but we also have access to tea, coffee and soft drinks. The lunch room has a goldfish tank with two fish (only one of them has a name though...). Chao and Lizzie have been recording tests in QuickTest Pro, and have really done an excellent job of automating a complex workflow. The recording continues for the rest of this week. Tessa has been writing the manual test cases and logging any defects found by the team. The Project Manager here is pleased with the progress of the testing effort, and very impressed with the work done in the automation.
 
Recruitment
We are currently looking for people to fill a range of roles from Test Analysts for work in the Lab through to Senior Test Engineers to work on a couple of projects starting at the beginning of August, one of those is a 6 month contract at UNSW so if you know of anyone who may be interested please get them to forward their CV to me - jobs@testingcentre.com
mailto:jobs@testingcentre.com.

We are also currently recruiting in Melbourne for TLF Conformance Testers, we have filled one role and have one left to fill. This will start as a contract for the first two months until we get our larger premises up and running and then it is likely to become a full-time position. Again, if you know anyone who may be interested please let me know, they must have a strong multimedia background.

North Sydney Leagues Club
North Sydney Leagues Club are based at Cammeray, they have recently sent me a corporate membership discount offer. According to them there are all sorts of reason that you would join the clue including; great entertainment every week, instant wireless internet connection within the club, discounts at over 200 shops throughout the North Shore and cheap gym, pool and sauna facilities. If you are interested please let me know.

Staff News
Since the last newsletter Richard Martin is now working down in Optus at North Sydney along with David May. Joining them on Monday will be Tuan Pham who is new to Access, so welcome to Tuan.

We also have a couple of new faces in the Lab. Welcome to Alejandro Alvaro and Bill Rankin who started with us last week. John Tan will also be joining the team in the Lab on Monday - welcome John.

Linda Milne has also recently joined Access for a 6 month contract at MLC. Some of you will already know Linda as she has been working with us periodically for a few months now and attended the team building afternoon we had in April. We wish Linda the best of luck for her knew role. The latest word is that Lizzie Beaton and Chao Luan will finish up their RTA project at the end of next week. We have had excellent feedback from the project manager who is grateful for all the help that she has had from that team - which includes Tessa Cotterrell. Tessa will remain out there until the end of the month when we wish her farewell. Congratulations and well done to all three.

Happy Birthday to Amy Yiu and David May for tomorrow, Mauri Ahtee for yesterday and Janet Small for next Thursday. And Happy Birthday to anyone else I may have forgotten.