We live and breathe technology in our daily modern lives. What is the importance of testing in this world of omnipresent technology? Among a crowd of testers there won’t be much doubt about the importance of testing, I guess. I wonder sometimes – seeing technology developing at the speed of light – where it leaves us testers in the near future. I guess I need some good fortune telling to understand what technologies and ways of working I have to embrace and how to adapt to become future proof in testing. Do I need some magical thinking perhaps? I hope EuroSTAR 2017 will shed some light on this. Through this blog I’ll pass it on.
Tuesday
Looking at the conference program, it is very promising. I see lots of topics that potentially answer my doubts about the future. First of all, I can’t wait to learn the magical way of thinking as is promised by key note speaker Jasper van Luit. Will I from Tuesday onwards really believe that everything is possible just by adapting a magical way of thinking? And will I understand how to practice magical thinking? I hope so, I need it sometimes.
Where to go to next from there? Oops, that is hard to decide upfront. I have not figured out my personal roadmap through the conference. “Thinking about Test Management” seems interesting, as the role of a test manager in Agile teams is much under debate … and I am a test manager, only in a more traditional way of working (I hardly dare to state this). On the other hand there’s a talk of Michael Bolton, who is a famous test celebrity and therefore a must-see talk. Then there are three other talks on advanced types of testing. I have not yet made up my mind yet. Fortunately one talk getting clearance in my agenda. I’ll have to see “Asking ‘Else’ – A Tester’s Magic Word”, because I from the description I spot a fortune teller as it reads: “I believe the future of testing lies in the individual quality and non-linear mind-set of testers …”. Check me in.
Wednesday
The program for Wednesday shows a couple of nice modern topics like IoT, big data, test automation … of course and not so new anymore. However, my attention is drawn to a talk from a Spotify test manager. Since I am a heavy (and happy) Spotify user and since Spotify is a model company for it’s advanced ways of working (the Spotify Model) I’ll have to attend this one, I guess. Another eye-catcher on the program is a talk on Tinder (no I am not a Tinder user, I know Tinder users). But thinking about it, I am intrigued by how to test an app like that. Testing all the rules and intelligence of a dating app must be impossible! Surely that requires magic thinking and magic testing too!
Again, the afternoon topics are interesting and make it a difficult choice. I see: cloud testing, crowd testing, machine learning testing, no-testing and magical testers on the program. I hesitate now: which of these will help me best in my queste to become future proof? Luckily after that I do not have to make a choice anymore. Mickey and Minnie, please bring on some Walt Disney testing to ease my mind.
Thursday
Again, Thursday is fully packed with promising talks: robo-testing and testing robots, DevOps killing test automation (some of us even haven’t started) and some workshops too. Nice to get some hands-on exercises after all these talks. And nice to know: the best talk will get a reprise in the Do-Over-Session. If a fortune teller can let me know which one that will be, I’ll save it for Thursday.
Between the conference days, there will be conference nights with activities too. Just too much to write about now. I am not sure when I’ll be where after conference hours. Only sure it is Copenhagen.
