I just finished my second ever test conference: Star West 2010 in (hot, rainy!) San Diego. I have attended many development conferences over the last 2+ decades as a developer or development manager, and have attended conferences which include test sessions (Agile 2010 for instance). But this was only my second bona fide, testing-centric conference. I brought two of our testers with me. It was the first conference of any kind for either of them.
The conference did not get off to a good start for us. The content of the first day sessions on Monday were disappointing for me. Tuesday was significantly better, and Wednesday and Thursday was a mix.
When we were disappointed, it was often due to the content being too simplistic for us. It became evident that we are doing much better at adopting agile at our company than the typical audience member the show is geared towards. We came to the conference ready to discuss the myriad of testing challenges we see at our company as we relentlessly try to improve ourselves. We came away thinking “Gee, we’re doing pretty well!” That kind of thinking is a recipe for mediocrity and I will not let us think that way for long. There was a wide variety of presentation skills, and some presentations were frankly fresher than others; some seemed stale.
When we were engaged it was due to a presenter either going deeper into agile (which we were hungry for), a very practical session (such as free or cheap testing tools) or a presenter striving to break through the same old testing thoughts and presenting something challenging.
But here is what was most exciting to me about the conference. I emailed the conference leadership at SQE after my disappointing first day and told them about my experience and how I thought they could improve the conference. They thanked me for the email which is what I had hoped for – that they took it in the spirit of honest, helpful feedback I intended. But they then modeled humility, continuous improvement and strong leadership by asking to meet with me to hear my thoughts in person. That is being intentional about improvement and it speaks volumes about the leadership of the conference.
Here’s what I think: 80% of the conference attendees are first-timers (SQE’s figure). My anecdotal experience (supported by those with more experience than I) is that in general (exceptions abound!) testers are not as proactive in staying current and providing thought leadership to their domain as developers are to theirs. The content of Star West is meeting the attendees at the level they want to be met. The problem is testers want to be met at too shallow a level. Don’t come to a conference to learn what you can read in a book. The best way to improve Star West is for attendees to improve themselves and demand deeper content. There was some good content at Star West and I am glad I went, and I am glad I brought 2 team members. But we could go much deeper, and energize and empower testers to be change agents in their organizations. That would make for exciting future Star West conferences.
