In this day an time I now realize that in order for me to reach my full potential as a QA that I must be technical. In my experience the QA individuals, including myself, were not very technical. This position never sat well with me. I would hear developers discussing new technoloiges and I hated the fact that I could not participate. However, I made a decision at my previous employer that I would become more technical. An exceprt from "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" states that tester's should run with the developers. My experience has shown me that this statement is true. I recongize this is vital to my success as a QA individual to "run with the developers". When I gained the respect of the developers I worked with and expressed intrest in their craft, they had no reservations about teaching me. Through my interactions with them I began to tech to my QA tool belt. I'm reminded of a time where I was testing accounting reports for a web-based application. We had web services that would execute stored procs, web services that would create trigger files that were picked up by a Buisness Objects automated that would ultimately create these accounting reports in .pdf format. This project was interesting because we needed an environment that would allow us to move the calendar date without disrupting other process. This is where it got fun. The developer tasked with setting up the test site gave me access to the server and showed me how execute web services, stored procs, create simple SQL statements. Man I was in tech heaven to say the least. As my knowledge grew while testing the system I ran into issues while I was testing. With the knowledge that I had gained I was able to inform the developer that some key stored procs were missing. Did this resolve the issue? No, but the developer was appreciative because this would have caused issues later. Man, I was able to provide the developer with good information regarding a potential issue with the product. I would have never been able to identify this issue nor have the confidence to articualate this problem without the technical skills I gained while testing this product. From that day forth it is vitally important for me as a QA person to become just as technical as the developers that I work with.