I recently (January 2019) saw a tweet by someone who speaks regularly in the software / agile testing community. It was short and direct. But it had a broader impact on me beyond the words. Here’s the tweet:  

I’m a practitioner. Most of my days I’m not traveling/speaking but delivering software to partners and users and making that a better experience for us all. You don’t have to do what I do. You don’t have to tell me you disagree. Some use too much effort to correct my reality.

That complained about folks trying to correct “their reality” that they present publicly.

And I’d agree with them if they were a 100% practitioner working on private projects in private companies. That is, not in the public forum.

However, they clearly have chosen to “go public” with their ideas. In recent years, they have become an accomplished public speaker, idea presenter, and role model for many, many testers. And not solely limited to testers, but beyond to software development teams.

And with this sort of role, comes great responsibility…or at least I think it does.