Conference Of the Testers, By the Testers, and For the Testers

Bug DeBug Chennai Jan 29th 2011.

A Conference not by any professional\training oriented networks.

A Conference not for marketing commercial tools.

A Conference where no certificates sold.

A Conference where  no one talked from birds eye view, instead the real testers talked about ground reality.

A Conference from where  testers left  with hearts filled, not hands filled with useless pamphlets.

And most importantly the conference started on time and went as per the scheduled, isn’t this one point enough to prove this was conference with a difference ?

I traveled with Pradeep and Santhosh the previous day evening to Chennai, that was one of the most enjoyable drives I had in recent times.

Vipul Kocher, President, Indian Testing Board  started the conference with his keynote address  on “Present problems and  future solutions”, participants wouldn’t have asked for any better start. Vipul asked serious of hard questions  like “What was the last or the latest innovation that happened in testing?” He suggested testers to use heart as well along with brain  :). His key-note covered various problems and challenges faced by testers, and he credited that bugs are the only perfect being Here is his presentation slides.

Next  was a simple but very powerful presentation on “Economical, Robust Web Automation using Sahi” by its founder Narayanan Raman. He shared the views about the current automation tools which make the testers to a tester developer. I too realised this after working in automation for a year or so. If you look at my earlier posts related to automation which recommends testers to learn DOM, HTML, Xpaths. Later realized that I shouldn’t be  a tester developer. But it seems Sahi has over come those problems of learning Xpaths and DOM, the demo showed the tool is very  simple to use, cross-platform cross browser supports is really the big advantage.

This was followed  by a talk on “Notes from a problem solving tester consultant” by the bad boy of software testing Pradeep Soundararajan, who was also the winner of  ”NLTE Problem SolvingExport of 2010″ . He was at his usual best, the talk was filled with arrogance and humor. Here is his presentation.

Next presentation was “Smarter ways of doing Selenium Automation(Functional Test Automation)” by Ruturaj Doshi. unfortunately I missed this presentation, you can find the slides here.

Followed with delicious lunch.

The first session post lunch was on “The Emerging Trend of Cloud Computing and Software Testing” by Anuj Magazine. The presentation was interesting with lot of reference to history in general. He talked about emerging testing trends and its advantages and drawbacks in  virtualization and cloud computing world, slides are here.

Then it was the bug hunter, Ajay Balamurugadas, had just two slides one with a mind mapping diagram which had the essential skills needed for\to a bug hunter. He asked lots of questions and  tried to keep the session as interactive as possible. Slides are here.

The presentation sessions ended with talk on “Testing at Startups” by Praveen Singh, Founder 99 Tests. He shared his experience about the challenged faced while testing in a start-ups. He mentioned building testing skills and joining community and building authority are important for testers. Here is his presentation.

This was followed by interesting Q&A sessions,  hope that turned out to be very useful for budding testers, and the interesting questions got “Lessons Learned in Software Testing” book sponsored by Moolya Testing.  Testers were asked to share testing tips and the best tips got rewards.

Then the testers had chance to network and interact with the fellow testers. I too meet many testers, whom I knew so for only throw blogs and twitter.

Hats Off and double Thumbs Up to Bharath & Chennai Software Testing Group and RIA-RUI for organise such an event without any high priority issues .

Every tester now proudly can say  this is my(our) conference, Thanks to the organizers and volunteers for making this possible.

Bug DeBug க்கு  ஒரு ‘ஓ’ போடு (Hip Hip Hurry to Bug DeBug)

Here are snaps from the conference