Share latest trends, solutions, and practices around Test Automation, DevOps, and Robotic Process Automation

I head the Quality Engineering Services for an IT Services company and have more than two decades of work experience. I have worked with several Fortune 500 customers in defining enterprise strategies to align quality engineering with Digital, Agile, and DevOps. In addition, I have experience working with Global Teams driving cross-functional project teams to synchronize their efforts to achieve business goals. I am a keen planner, strategist & implementer with expertise in test automation, digital assurance, UX research, and test data management. I have published several white papers on prominent testing websites and have written three Kindle Books, “Test Automation Best Practices,” Getting Ready to Work,” and “Test Estimation Simplified.”

The podcast is all about discussing the latest trends, challenges, and practices around automation of testing, DevOps, and robotic process automation with leaders from Product, IT Services, and Global 1000 organizations. The podcast will help IT professionals improve the automation levels, select the right tools and maximize returns from investments. The topics that I intend to cover in this podcast include test automation, Artificial Intelligence, No-Code/Low-Code Development, Analytics, Test Data Management, User Experience Testing, DevOps, RPA Testing, etc.

The audience for the podcast are professionals working in the Software Industry
 

I have been observing a decline in the knowledge level of IT professionals and felt that they are very disconnected from the industry. Most of them are confined to a product or a project and never had time to look beyond. Also, many of them did not know where to get information in in a concise manner. Personally, I felt that it might be tough to do videos due and decided to take the route of podcasts.
I happen to see an advertisement for podcasting on Instagram and decided to take up a free session. The free session gave me the confidence that I can run a podcast but then I decided to take up the full course. Within 2 weeks I was ready to publish my first podcast. The training that I took up was from Bijay Gautam and this gave me a lot of confidence and the required expertise.

My goal was to run an interview-based podcast but my first few episodes were solo as I wanted to do a pilot to make myself comfortable. Networking is very important for interview-based podcasting and my LinkedIn network helped me a lot. The planning started in February and towards the end of February, I was published by the first episode. I would have spent around 30 hours releasing the first episode as I was learning many things on the job.
 

I am releasing episodes on a fortnightly basis and now I am taking only around 5 hours excluding audio editing per episode. I do the planning and publishing work during the weekend. But the recording is done after office hours. Most of my guests are based out of Europe or US and I do my recordings after 1030 pm. Podcasting is a passion for me and once you have a passion for something you will find time somehow 😊. Currently, I am self-funded, but I will be looking out for sponsorship after a few more episodes.
 

Currently, I do not have a sponsor, nor do I make revenue from this. I am sometimes spending money on audio editing as I get this done via freelancers. The podcast has helped me to connect with top-notch leaders in the automation industry. Also, I have been able to learn about some cool stuff happening in the IT industry. The learnings mostly come in from the research that you do for finding out guests and also while you prepare the notes for your guest interviews.
 

The basic tools and platforms that I used for my podcasting are

a) A good microphone
b) Laptop
c) Calendly
d) Audacity for basic editing
e) Zencastr for recording the interview with Audio Recording
f) Podbeans for Publishing

The first step is to find an interesting topic aligned with my podcast theme. The second step is to find a product or a company that is aligned with the topic and then get connected with the SME in the company. Over the last 5 years, I had worked on improving my network on Linked In. This has helped me greatly in finding the right guests for the show. You start email conversations with the guest, the interview topic is explained and then a time slot is booked. Once the recording is completed the audio recording is edited and then the write-up is prepared for publishing. The podcast is then published and the downloads are tracked.
 

Most of the downloads are coming in from Podbeans, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. The marketing is mostly done with LinkedIn currently and I am also exploring other channels to improve the reach of the podcast.
 

If you are keen on sharing information and insights around a topic please get started. In my case, the course from Bijay was the game-changer. There are a lot of courses similar to this in the public domain.
https://www.bijayspeaks.com/
 

Please visit www. automationhangout.com