At the start of August I attended North East Agile Testing (NEAT) meet up at Campus North in Newcastle. While I feel I am active within the software testing community (through Slack, Twitter, blogging etc.) this was actually the first time I had ever attended a face to face testing event. While at NEAT I found it easy to express my views about testing (possibly helped by the free beer) and tried to share my experience by answering some of the questions which were being asked.

2017 has been a stressful year for me so far. I bought a really ugly flat in February, then found myself with two months to make it habitable and move into it. While frantically arranging appointments with trades people and deliveries of essential things (like carpet and furniture), a call for speakers came up for the Agile North East Lightning Talk competition. I was already so stressed out from trying to move house, the stress of giving a talk felt insignificant by comparison.

This is a follow up on [my earlier post] (http://testingfuntime.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/learning-to-talk-finding-your-voice-and.html) about learning how to give a technical talk. I did it! I gave my talk! The feeling of euphoria afterwards was overwhelming and I think I might still be buzzing from the experience. I wanted to write a mini blog post to say a massive THANKYOU to everyone that came along to the Newcastle Testing meet up on 1st November. It was good to see a mix of both familiar and new faces.