Category Archives: User Group

On conferences and insomnia

Posted by on September 3, 2011 1 comment

For me, the sign of a good conference is insomnia the night after the conference.

Its as if my brain is unable to let go the new ideas and discussions I’ve had with other testers. Ideas that haven’t had an opportunity to be digested and reflected upon and usually around 2am after the close of a good conference my eyes snap open, my brain alive and alert ready for action.

Ideas and discussions from the day merge and meld into a boiling cauldron of fizzling synapse and bubbling endorphins and, as much as I try to breath deeply relax and let it all go, I know deep down its all pointless.

I’m going to have to get up and write down my thoughts and ideas.

STANZ Melbourne is one such conference and its given be a double dose of insomnia resulting in frenetic writing at 12, 2 and 4 am until finally my brain exhausted became compliant and allowed my poor weary body to sleep.

STANZ is sponsored and hosted by SOFTED. These folks at SOFTED really understand and ‘get’ software testing and it shows.

As well as  hosting this conference and getting some pretty impressive speakers in(I urge anyone who has the opportunity to hear Goranka Bjedov speak to do so) they also sponsor the Sydney Testers Meetup by supplying thirsty and hungry testers with drinks and nibbles at networking events.

Whats more they host peer workshops. The last one they hosted in New Zealand which was a huge success so much so that next year they hope to host one in Sydney.

Watch this space.

For me, STANZ gave me two core learnings.

The first was Goranka’s talk about the future of quality. I think this was really insightful and gave me much food for thought. The concept that quality is dead and that as testers we need to reflect how this will impact us. I’m not sure yet what this means for me(I need some more 4 am thinking on that one!) but  somewhere deep down, this struck a real chord.

The second re-enforced to me the power of sharing problems and getting ideas from your network of testers. In 30 minutes, Trish Khoo had a plethora of new ideas and suggestions for me to take away. Many thanks Trish.

Now off to order a double shot espresso….

 

Dublin Software Testing Automation Morning

Posted by on August 20, 2010 3 comments

I went to the Softtest Software Testing User Group networking session last night. About 10 erstwhile software testers gathered together on a wet and windy night to discuss how to help software testers in Dublin.

We had some great discussions, a lot around automation tools, but also on the topic of up-skilling at little or no cost. I’m a big believer in this. I think it doesn’t have to cost a lot to keep yourself trained up as a software tester, you only need a willingness to learn.

We at Softtest have been throwing the idea around for a while to hold some practical hands on automation testing sessions. The idea is that testers would come (for free) learn a bit about an open source tool (JMeter & Selenium are two considerations), get to ask questions and hopefully get to use the tool a little.

We think a Saturday morning would work, and Softtest would supply a venue, breakfast and strong coffee. But we would need Volunteers.

Software Testers who have open source software testing automation skills willing to come in and share some of their knowledge with others.

So are you a Dublin based software tester, with a bit of spare time on a Saturday morning?

If your Interested in attending or helping out with your automation skills? Leave a comment or email me at amcharrett@gmail.com

Testing a SaaS Platform

Posted by on April 22, 2010 1 comment

I thoroughly enjoyed the webinar yesterday by Joel Montvelisky on  Testing on the Cloud. Its of keen interest to many Irish Tech companies, so I was happy to organise on the behalf of SoftTest a webinar for its members. Softtest is the Irish Software Tester’s Special Interest Group.

I learned quite a bit from this webinar. In particular that the amount of testing is actually reduced by hosting your application in the cloud. Things such as installing on different machines, upgrades and patches to multiple versions etc are not required as really there is only one release that everyone accesses. Obvious when you think about it.

He also noted that one of the side benefits of hosting your application on the cloud is that you are able to monitor how your clients are using the application. This becomes an excellent source of  data that testers should make benefit of. It can help testers focus their testing on areas that customers really use, instead of relying on second guesses or vague feedback from customer support and sales staff.

I’d encourage anyone looking into this area, to take a look at his webinar and slides below.


Testing a SaaS Platform

Thanks once again to Joel for speaking, Sogeti for their technology and their excellent marketing guru Michael O’ Connor for assisting and facilitating the webinar.