START2 manifesto

The START2 network is a form of knowledge and experience exchange based on a set of principles. These principles exist to mitigate common perceived problems in knowledge exchange where participants are from different competitors.

The START2 setup could be a complement to for example lean coffee or open space.

Examples of perceived problems with regular conferences:

Vendor expectation management focus from commercial business agendas
Sponsor pleasing from conference staff means sales or marketing presentations rather than true knowledge sharing
Bleak presentations that has to be made with thoughts on the least knowledgeable person in the expected target audience
Presenters boasting their experiences rather than open up displaying their fears, problems or weaknesses for support by others
Information is broadcasted from the speaker rather than focus on discussion and true experience exchange
The non-loud-mouths get little room for their thoughts and ideas in a big crowd
Conferences attract people of various ambitions and not only people who want to develop their skills and insights:
- People who want to get away from work for a while
- People who want to get entertained while resting the brain
- People who want to know they are doing everything correct so they confirm they don't have to change
- People who are pushed to the conference by management
- Whole departments for HR checkbox reasons

Why START2?

Back in the early 2010's a network of experienced QA professional was gathered under the name of START. The initiative was ongoing for a few years until it eventually died out. Recently a lack of forums like this has become apparent. Hence, this new manifesto is compiled in hope of a new era of knowledge sharing.

Key concepts

The centre of gaining insights isn't just knowledge, or even experiences. The centre of gaining insights is discussing the experiences to gain understanding on why something works in a specific context and not in another.

Sharing with a focus on problem solving rather than boasting.

To enable these discussions the manifesto below has been produced.

START2 manifesto

The actual manifesto is on GitHub. It is open-source under the Apache 2.0 license for collaboration for transparency.

The manifest below is a version I try to keep up to date:

Must-haves
1. Meetings are to be held at neutral grounds like someone's home, chambre separee, summer house, or conference facility. START2 sessions are not a marketing event.
2. Each meeting should be centred around a specific theme to enable choosing relevant participants.
3. Each participant should bring a short presentation on the choosen theme. The presentation must be about an actual personal experience.
4. After each presentation plenty of time for discussions is planned since discussions are the center of gaining insights in experience exchanges.
Should-haves
1. Any START2 event should have lot of time to mingle. If you bring a lot of people enthusiastic around the same subject or topic together and give them time they'll happily enter nerd-mode.
2. The group size should never be larger than 10 people since bigger groups get problems with participants not participating.
3. START2 event time should be enough for everyone to hold their presentation and everyone to have a lengthy in-depth discussion about the experience presented.
Could-haves
1. Any presentation discussion is more meaningful discussing problem solving. Hence, presentations could prefferably be centered around perceived challenges in the topic to be truly valuable.
2. Discussions could be timeboxed to a set time.
3. If some people stay silent/inactive in discussions due to other people being more extrovert or louder, a Internet-forum like comment system of diffently coloured postit notes or similar could be used. Each participands has a set of these and if any of these cards are held up by a participant, the moderator make sure all people get their things said. The colour codes may be:
  * Green for new thread
  * Yellow for comment on current topic
  * Blue for reply to previous comment