I had an opportunity to speak at SEETEST 2017 conference.
And it was the really enjoyable experience! Very Well organized. What impressed me most was that all panels were in English. Which even when this conference was addressed mostly to 'local’ testers. It was open to the whole world.
Before the conference, I had some adventures, but I also managed to do some sightseeing. And I do like exploring
My first day was tutorials, and I must admit I didn’t have much luck. Both tutorials had in my opinion too much talking to little exercising.
Tutorial Day
First one was „Session Based Testing” by Geoff Thompson.
My goal for that session was to refresh my basics from season based testing. I did that and a lot more. I had an incredible opportunity being in same exercise group as Maaret. She has style! It was short 30 minutes exercise, but I have learned quite a few tricks from her.
It was a glimpse in her tutorial which was also about exploratory testing. (And I heard a lot of good options about it)
I decided to go to the „Problem Solving for Testers” by Paul Gerrard
Maybe it is confirmation bias, but I feel validated that someone who is so long in this business sees the same problems as me.
Seriously. My presentation and Paul workshop did make a lot of the same point. It was so much that I was afraid that my talk would be view as a rehash of his. Another beautiful thing happened that day. I’ve met Kinga Witko. And It was really nice to meet her and listen to her options on testing.
Conference Day
The second Day Started with Keynote by Paul Gerrard
„Will Robots replace Testers?” – And again I can see lots of similarities to point I am making in my talk.
In short, his opinion is: „Not really” in next few decades. With with of course he also mentions that this is estimate cause future likes to surprise. I will write more about ai in next few months.
Next was my presentation, „When Machines Lie to us and why manual testing is still needed.” I had few problems, my slides were not looking good for a projector, but we managed to fix it at least partly.
I have lots to improve – my rating was 3 out of 5 not bad for beginner speaker. Unfortunately here lies an another issue with the organization. Outside of tutorials, minimal feedback was collected. You could only rate both presenters and talk on scale 1-5 that is All.
Well, in theory, you could leave a review, but It looks like I was the only one who did it. As much as I like the fact they collected any feedback, I wish for it to be little more than info than just stars. I can’t improve when I don’t know what is wrong 🙁
One thing that I wished for was more questions. But looking at other panels, outside of Kinga’s presentation, that was the theme of the day. Even on keynote presentations, few questions were asked.
Next, I went for „Production monitoring and analysis in the cloud”. By Mladen Savov and Nasko Georgiev. Presenters had few helpful ideas that I will probably share with my company since we are also heavily investing in monitoring. Unfortunately, I haven’t stayed for the whole presentation I had to leave some 15 minutes early. One plus of that was that I managed to get my lunch without any queues.
Another keynote was Maaret and this one was also a good one. How to make teams awesome.
She had lots of good thought also reminded me of something that I used to do.
Prise Developers is they do something good. Actual constructive, positive feedback not empty world. I think I will go back to doing it.
After that, I had to take the break all excitement from being presenter wore me out.
But I am curious what happened at REST API testing in Clojure when I was checking its rating it was rated 1 star (now it is rated 2)
Next on my list was „Test Automation? Do it the right way! Do it for the right reasons!” By Stefaan Luckermans I have mixed feelings about this presentation guy had knowledge. But his slides were unreadable from where I was sitting – they had a lot of text and big images taking half the screen. Plus intense light was also problematic.
I have mixed feelings about this presentation guy had knowledge. But his slides were unreadable from where I was sitting – they had a lot of text and big images taking half the screen. Also, in my opinion, his presenting style was too aggressive for my liking.
At this point, warines started to set in mine. I think half hour coffee breaks were a little too long. I understand the goal was networking, and give an opportunity to vendors. But there wasn’t much to do during those breaks, even if you wanted to talk to vendors there were only 4 of them and nothing more in the Exhibition area.
Last three presentation were:
„Web Service test automation” By Milovan Pocek
„Continuous Testing for Web Apps” By Gjore Zaharechv
„Taylorism as a test process improvement” By Adrian Rusu And I decided to catch few minutes of each.
And I decided to catch few minutes of each. That was the wrong idea cause I can’t say what any of them was about :). Leason learned. Voting with feets is good but trying to attend three panels at once is just silly.
And that was it end on adventure with SEETEST 2017 editon.
Overal it was an enjoyable experience very well organized with room for improvement.
For me, the most important part was networking I have made few new contact. Including finally meeting Kinga and Maaret.
Would I do it again?
Yes, I will put my paper for next year.