Exercise: Abstract Judgement

An exercise to think about our own judgement, to help us write things that other people will judge.

Pick an upcoming event whose sessions are described online. Use https://testingconferences.org if you don't have one in mind.

Read the sessions. Which would you go to? See if you can work out why you feel like that. Any patterns in what you read?

Is there just one reason? If you have several reasons, how different are they? Any underlying patterns in how you judge?

Publicly: Share your patterns.

That is not the end of the exercise.

Privately: look at your own work – how would you judge it, based on your patterns? How might someone else judge that work? What might you change about it?

Extension: If you've got time, try a different event – or think back to an event you went to, and read into the abstracts for the talks you went to.

Extension: If you've got the urge, do this with music, or chocolate, or political ideas, or friendships...

Background: read Judging by Content, Delivery, Bravery for what I find I judge against.

This exercise exists in different forms, typically around building an aesthetic; I'll add links to the ones where we judge chocolate (or beer), generated pictures and code.