Archive for December, 2010

For several months we had been looking forward to visiting EuroSTAR and finally the day had come. This year the conference had a perfect theme “Sharing the passion”. That is what ALL conferences should be about. Colleagues meeting to share and inspire.

Last year I did the rookie mistake and attended as many presentations as I possibly could and my brain felt as a battered piñata. This year we chose a more relaxed approach. We spent most of the time hanging around the expo talking to other conference visitors. Test people have a tendency to be most pleasant and eager to discuss any subject. Doing this it was easy to see the passion shining in the eyes of everyone.

There were also something very soft and cozy about the conference. Several presentations felt easy and relaxed and most speakers managed to use humor to give testing examples.

All this passion and coziness aside, the presentations were educational and a good source for inspiration.

While browsing the program I got my eyes on a tutorial about passion for test and stress. As I currently experience a lot of stress at work I felt this could be interesting. But as I continued to read about the other tutorials, they all sounded exiting so perhaps I did not have the time to… oh, that is exactly why I should attend it. And so I did and I was both very pleased and a bit disappointed. The relaxation exercises were not as easy as you would think. It was hard to think about nothing but your breathing. The disappointing part was that the connection to testing was rather weak.

Though I might be biased, I must say that I was impressed by Linda Hoff’s presentation “Help! I’m stuck in a scrum project”. What made this presentation stand out was the level of conclusions. I have attended several scrum presentations that have addressed scrum on a high and abstract level. This time it addressed practical problems that many could relate to. So I was not surprised when people came up to us (her) and wanted to discuss the subject further for the rest of the conference.

So my conclusion is that there are a lot of passion driving the test industry forward and the will to share and gain knowledge is everywhere.

Oh, and testers rock!

It is official, the supertesters love the EuroSTAR audience. For the second year in row we are treated with standing ovations. What can top that?