# [[system/cards/The Lost Art of Taking Good Notes]] ## Details Conference:: [[Conference/Eurostar 2023]] Date:: Length:: 45 minutes total: recommended 30 minutes talk + 15 minutes Q&A ## Pitch ### Teaser video The hardest part about working in tech is keeping up with all the changes. To be a good tester these days, we need to know about microservices, blockchain, AI, IoT, Kubernetes, observability, and more. I'm Nicole van der Hoeven, and I'm a Senior Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs: which means it's not only my job to understand these trends... I also need to be able to learn them quickly and implement them well enough to teach people how to do the same. My secret is pretty simple: I take notes. No, not that kind of notes. My notes look more like this. They're more like a Personal Knowledge Management system of interconnected ideas that help me compare different tools, learn new programming languages, and remember technologies I last looked at five years ago. In my talk, I'm going to show you why building this system has made me a better engineer *and* give you practical tips so that you can do the same. Check out my talk *The Lost Art of Taking Good Notes* at EuroSTAR 2023 in Antwerp, Belgium. ### Abstract The quickest way to learn, improve, and thrive as a tester or developer isn't to learn more and more programming languages or testing frameworks. It's to take notes-- and take them well. Most of us grow up taking notes in school, but we stop doing it when we need to learn the most: when we get a job. The reason is that we never graduated from taking disparate notes to creating a personal knowledge management system. Jotting things down is the FIRST step to taking good notes. We can take things further by linking notes in a web of knowledge that resembles our own brains, interrogating new knowledge to understand how it does or does not fit into what we already know, and using our systems to learn and improve at a pace we just can't do without notes. In this talk, Nicole van der Hoeven discusses what a personal knowledge management system is, why it's essential for any career in the tech industry, and the surprising effect of collaborating on notes across teams. She also shows a sneak peak of a tester's vault of knowledge that she's developed that helps her keep up with the fast-paced development of modern tech trends, as well as concrete examples of how she's used it to become a better tester. ### How does your talk support the conference theme? My talk proposes note-taking as a personal way to learn as well as a clear way to collaborate, learn in public, and communicate knowledge across organizations. ### The Day After *Please detail how a tester can apply the learnings to their work the next day.* They can start not just taking notes, but also creating a note-taking SYSTEM that will be the foundation for a productive career. They will learn how to take notes the right way, enabling them to learn new and complex topics AND apply them in their daily work. ### What are the three biggest learnings that delegates will gain from attending your talk? - Taking good notes is essential in an industry like tech where things are constantly changing. - Creating a personal knowledge management system can help shoulder some of the cognitive load of learning. - Sharing your notes leads to clarity and transparency within project teams. ## Premise in one sentence Continuous note-taking helps you keep up in the tech industry by helping you not just record things you've learned but also build your own knowledge base-- one that grows iteratively and reaps benefits over time. ## Structure - The problem: Tech moves quickly, and we need to match its pace. - The solution: Taking notes - What is [[Personal Knowledge Management]]? How is different from the way we used to take notes? - [[Continuous note-taking]]: we should take notes the way we build and test software: iteratively and continuously. - Principles of continuous note-taking - Your notes are never "finished": [[Iterative and incremental work]] - [[Timeboxing]] via [[Sprint|sprints]] while processing notes - High-quality produced work is the primary measure of progress, not the notes themselves. (they should be useful) - Requirements tracing for notes - [[Retrospective]] in the form of regular reviews to adjust processes. - The process of continuous note-taking - Read - Write - Link - Test - Deploy - Monitor - What is Obsidian? - Use cases - Devlog/test log - Learning in public - Presentations - Meetings - Notes on tech - Collaborating via GitHub ## The presentation [[sources/Presentation/Mine/The Lost Art of Taking Good Notes]]