Thursday, November 09, 2006

Hola SPAIN - QA&TS international conference and me ...

Hola SPAIN….

I was at Bilbao, SPAIN for a QA&Testing conference on embedded system – oct 18-20. I spoke about “Test case design and Automation” – a topic that I am working on since last 3-4 months. My talk and others in Test automation track were the ones that focused on “non embedded’ software systems. This paper was an initial attempt to explore the two big, complex and more of mis-understood concepts in software testing – “Test case design and Test automation”. I will be continuing to work on this topic and explore more about these. I was also given an opportunity to express my views about “Future of software testing and Challenges” at a round table discussion in the one the evenings at the conference.

I met few nice and interesting people in the conference – Paul Jorgenson, Scot Barber, Ray Arel, Doron. At lengths, I discussed with these people about various topics ranging from automation, Test design, Testing and automation in Embedded systems space.

Paul Jorgensen,(Author of the book "Software Testing A craftsman’s approach") - with his depth of experience in testing (both from Working Telecom industry and University experience), was a pleasure to listen and discuss. He gave me a patient hearing for my bugging questions on topics related to test design. His presentation on “All pairs testing” was one of thought provoking papers of the conference.

Ray Arell of Intel was very lively and quickly mixed up with group and I never felt that we were meeting for the first time. His presentation on “How to expand and improve your Test capabilities” was another great presentation of the conference. Ray is a highly experienced professional with about 21 years of exp and has to his credit a book on the topic “Change based Test Management”. Ray with his witty comments, kept the participants hooked up to him all the time. My discussions with him were related to testing and related practices in microprocessor/Semiconductor industries. We traveled together right from Bilbao to Bangalore.

Scott Barber (www.perftestplus.com) managed to be at the conference on the second day and was another interesting person to meet. Scott’s proximity with people like James Bach, Michael, Bolton, Cem Kaner, especially made me to spend more time with him and understand his current areas of interest. He is performance Testing Guru – gave lots of good tips and hints to me on the topics ranging from Performance testing, Test automation, Challenges in Independent Test consulting and future trends in Test automation – which prefers to call as “computer assisted Testing” (Which I agree with him). Thank you Scott - for all those valuable suggestions that you gave me.

One very pleasant side effect of my presence in this conference was ‘exploring” the beauty of city Bilbao. I am nature freak and love to hang around greenery, water bodies, lakes etc. Few locations in Bilbao provided me a perfect opportunity to be with the nature. I struggled with language at few occasions and that with the food – it was difficult to find a 100% veg food that I need. Conference organizers at every dinner and lunch – made special effort to some closest Veggy food for. They did great job at making this conference. In all, it was a very enjoyable and knowledgeable trip for me. I definitely look forward to participate in QA&Test Conference 2007 … bye Bilbao till then.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow... Thanks for your comments.

Anonymous said...

It was a pleasure to meet you. I enjoyed our conversations and hope we run into one another again soon!

--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Executive Director, Association for Software Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
you will find it in your life."