One sunny afternoon in San Diego over three years ago, I took a call with Adi Bolboaca. That call has since it happened defined a lot of what my "hobbies" are since (conference organizing) but also set an example of how I deal with things in general. From idea to schedule that call was all it took. We decided to start a conference.
The Conference was named European Testing Conference to reflect its vision: we were building the go-to testing conference in Europe and we'd take on the challenge of having the conference travel. In the three edition so far, we work with Bucharest (Romania), Helsinki (Finland) and Amsterdam (Netherlands).
As the Amsterdam Edition is well on its way to take place in February 19-20th 2018, someone asked how we position ourselves - how is European Testing Conference different?
Testing, not testers
Our organizers are an equal mix of people who identify as tester and programmers. What brings us together is the interest to testing. The conference looks at testing as different roles do it and seeks to emphasize the collaboration of different perspectives in making awesome products. We like to think of testing as Elisabeth Hendrickson said it: it is too important to be left just for the specialized testers. Our abilities to solve the puzzles around feedback make a difference for quality, speed of delivery and long-term satisfaction for those of us who build the software.
Practical focus
We seek to make space for sessions that are practical, meaning they are more on the what and how as opposed to why, and they are more on the patterns and practices. We start with the idea that testing is important and necessary, and seek to raise the bar in how testing is done.
Enabling peer learning
We know that best sessions in conferences with regards to learning often happen in the hallway track where people are in control of the discussions they engage in. Many conferences formalize hallway track to happen on the side. We formalize hallway track sessions to be a part of the program so that we increase the chances of everyone going home with a great, actionable learning from peers.
Peer learning happens with interactive sessions that have just enough structure so that you don't have to be a superb networker, you can just go with the flow. As a matter of fact, we don't give you choice of passively sitting listening to a talk when you could learn from your peers in an interactive format, so these session are always conference wide.
The do three different kinds of interactive sessions:
Lean Coffee and Open Space are regular sessions in conferences, but we have not seen anyone else do them as part of the day program, whole conference wide. You will meet people in this conference, not just listen to the speakers we selected.
Schedule by session types
Interactive sessions have no talk sessions to listen to passively at the same time. Similarly, when talk sessions take place, we have four of them scheduled on tracks. We also have in-conference workshops, and again when it's time to workshop, there's no talk sessions available simultaneously. This is to encourage a mix of ways of learning. It's hard enough to select which topic to go for, and if the session type is also a variable, it just gets harder to get the learning mix right.
Speakers selected on speaking their stories
All speakers we have selected have been through a collaborative selection process. This means that we did not select them based on what they wrote and promised they could talk on, we had a chat with each and every speaker and know how they speak. We're hyped about the contents they have to share as part of our great program.
Some of the talks are not ones the speakers submitted. When collaborating with a speaker, sometimes you learn that they have something great to share that they did not themselves realize they should have submitted.
Track speakers are keynote quality
We take pride in treating our speakers fair, meaning we guarantee them that they don't have to pay to speak but we compensate the direct costs of joining our conference. We go a bit further, sharing profits with the speakers. This means that the speakers are awesome. They are not traveling to speak with the vendor marketing budget to sell a tool or service, but are practitioners and great speakers.
Enabling paired sessions
Our program has sessions with two speakers, and when we select a session like that, we pay the expenses of both the speakers. While we strongly believe that a two person talk is not a talk where two people take turns on delivering a talk one could deliver, we actively identify lessons that require two people. We pair in software development, we should be able to pair with our talks too.
Organized by testing practitioners
Our big fancy team is a team of practitioners doing the conference as a hobby. We love learning together, creating together and making a great program of testing available together. We spend our days testing and programming. We know what the day to day challenges are and what we need to learn. Our practitioner background is a foundation for our ability to select the right contents.
Traveling around Europe
The Conference was named European Testing Conference to reflect its vision: we were building the go-to testing conference in Europe and we'd take on the challenge of having the conference travel. In the three edition so far, we work with Bucharest (Romania), Helsinki (Finland) and Amsterdam (Netherlands).
As the Amsterdam Edition is well on its way to take place in February 19-20th 2018, someone asked how we position ourselves - how is European Testing Conference different?
Testing, not testers
Our organizers are an equal mix of people who identify as tester and programmers. What brings us together is the interest to testing. The conference looks at testing as different roles do it and seeks to emphasize the collaboration of different perspectives in making awesome products. We like to think of testing as Elisabeth Hendrickson said it: it is too important to be left just for the specialized testers. Our abilities to solve the puzzles around feedback make a difference for quality, speed of delivery and long-term satisfaction for those of us who build the software.
Practical focus
We seek to make space for sessions that are practical, meaning they are more on the what and how as opposed to why, and they are more on the patterns and practices. We start with the idea that testing is important and necessary, and seek to raise the bar in how testing is done.
Enabling peer learning
We know that best sessions in conferences with regards to learning often happen in the hallway track where people are in control of the discussions they engage in. Many conferences formalize hallway track to happen on the side. We formalize hallway track sessions to be a part of the program so that we increase the chances of everyone going home with a great, actionable learning from peers.
Peer learning happens with interactive sessions that have just enough structure so that you don't have to be a superb networker, you can just go with the flow. As a matter of fact, we don't give you choice of passively sitting listening to a talk when you could learn from your peers in an interactive format, so these session are always conference wide.
The do three different kinds of interactive sessions:
- Speed Meet makes you go through people while giving the structure to ensure that it's not the usual chit chat of me introducing myself, it is learner driven what the introducer gets to share. Each participant creates a mind map, and the person you get to know will drive the discussion based on what they select on your map.
- Lean Coffee is a a chance of discussing testing topics of the whole group's choice. Regardless of its name, it is more about discussions and less about coffee. We invite our speakers to facilitate tables of discussions, so this is also your chance of digging in deeper to any of the topics close to heart of our speakers.
- Open Space makes everyone a speaker. A good way to prepare for this is to think about what kinds of topics you'd love to discuss or what knowledge you'd like to share. You get to propose sessions, and they could also be on topics you know little of but want to learn more about.
Lean Coffee and Open Space are regular sessions in conferences, but we have not seen anyone else do them as part of the day program, whole conference wide. You will meet people in this conference, not just listen to the speakers we selected.
Schedule by session types
Interactive sessions have no talk sessions to listen to passively at the same time. Similarly, when talk sessions take place, we have four of them scheduled on tracks. We also have in-conference workshops, and again when it's time to workshop, there's no talk sessions available simultaneously. This is to encourage a mix of ways of learning. It's hard enough to select which topic to go for, and if the session type is also a variable, it just gets harder to get the learning mix right.
Speakers selected on speaking their stories
All speakers we have selected have been through a collaborative selection process. This means that we did not select them based on what they wrote and promised they could talk on, we had a chat with each and every speaker and know how they speak. We're hyped about the contents they have to share as part of our great program.
Some of the talks are not ones the speakers submitted. When collaborating with a speaker, sometimes you learn that they have something great to share that they did not themselves realize they should have submitted.
Track speakers are keynote quality
We take pride in treating our speakers fair, meaning we guarantee them that they don't have to pay to speak but we compensate the direct costs of joining our conference. We go a bit further, sharing profits with the speakers. This means that the speakers are awesome. They are not traveling to speak with the vendor marketing budget to sell a tool or service, but are practitioners and great speakers.
Enabling paired sessions
Our program has sessions with two speakers, and when we select a session like that, we pay the expenses of both the speakers. While we strongly believe that a two person talk is not a talk where two people take turns on delivering a talk one could deliver, we actively identify lessons that require two people. We pair in software development, we should be able to pair with our talks too.
Organized by testing practitioners
Our big fancy team is a team of practitioners doing the conference as a hobby. We love learning together, creating together and making a great program of testing available together. We spend our days testing and programming. We know what the day to day challenges are and what we need to learn. Our practitioner background is a foundation for our ability to select the right contents.
Traveling around Europe
Europe is diverse area, and we travel around to connect with many local communities. It sometimes feels ambitious of us, as every year we have a new community to find and connect with to sell our tickets. Yet, going to places and taking awesome content to places is what builds as forward as a bigger community.
We love other testing conferences
We don't believe that the field of testing conferences is full - there's so many people to reach and enable to join the learning in conferences. If your content and schedules are not right for you, we encourage you to look at the other. We love in particular conferences that enable speakers without commercial interest by paying their expenses and often give a shout out to TestBashes (all of them!), Agile Testing Days (both Germany and USA), and are delighted to be able to mention also Nordic Testing Days, Copenhagen Context and Romanian Testing Conference.
