Czech Test 2014 was my first conference as speaker and I really enjoyed it when feedback was also quite positive. That is why I decided to send paper this year too and I am glad it was accepted.
Unfortunately date of the conference was in a time of finishing project at my work so I could not attend whole conference and I saw only several other speeches.
Kari Kakkonen – Exploratory Testing Basics and Experience
I like exploratory testing and this was interesting point of view when I really like the idea “Exploratory testing is not a substitution for proper test documentation”
Phil Royston – Is Testing Like Electricity?
Very nice presentation and cool speaker.
- “We do not build our test industry to be attractive enough to attract new talents”.
- “Bad quality means bad profit and/or reputation. Sad is when profit is what scares you more.”
Aleš Baránek – Testing Team Without Testers
It was not about “without testers” but more like “what personalities you should have in your test team”. I have very mixed feelings about this talk when I really remember only few things.
- “Managers love Inventors”. Really? I would disagree because my experience is we scare them.
That was the end of the first day when there was an hour networking session with attendees followed by boat trip for speakers. I enjoyed the boat trip but I would prefer to have some networking activity for speakers and attendees together when we can continue in discussion. I think that such networking is the most important thing on each conference.
Veronika Jelínková – How-to Kill Procrastination
For me, second day started by interesting talk about procrastination. I really like idea to have at least one keynote from the area out of testing and this topic was chosen very well because I think IT people procrastinate a lot of, I am not an exception. This speech was good, but very long (15 mins over) and sometime unorganized.
- “Chilling out is not procrastination”
- “Studying could be procrastination -> Get a job”
- “There are so many options to choose from that it is almost impossible to make a choice”
- “Be a hero” – yes everybody needs to start working on him and be an example – “It would be better if they are ten heroes than none ”
- “Most of us are addicted to something. Question is if we know it.”
- “If you have skills and you do not have challenges you get bored. If you do not have skills and you have challenges you get scared.”
- “If you really want to do something than start with it in 3 seconds before your brain will start to think why you should not do it”
- “Close the back doors. Forgot about your Plan B”
Ivo Zelenka – SW Quality Measurement
I did not like this presentation. Speaker was not well prepared and topic was really not my piece of cake – may be because it was too close to waterfall and controlling people.
Richard Taylor – Agile Test Metrics
I like Richard and the way he speaks. Topic was good but charts itself were very small – you always get and idea what it is about but hard to see it in the presentation
- “What is and opposite to Agile? Dinosaurs…”
- “Big number of minor defects in one area could be a problem. Specially when the area is User Interface”
- “It is always about trends. One time measurement has no meaning.”
Vojtěch Barta – Visualization of Quality
Finally my speech. I was a bit scared by the fact that there were three talks about reporting and metrics in a row when I was the last one. However it was very good because it was aligned well starting with theory leading to more practical presentations.
I hope you enjoyed mine one. I tried to make it practical but 45 minutes is very short time to make it complete. I would like to do whole tutorial on this subject once. It was also the first talk when I decided to use Prezi instead of PowerPoint and I think it was good idea. It helped me when I was preparing the speech because it force you to think in flow and you will never use too many words on slides as you tend to do with PowerPoint. I also think I get more attention from attendees, which was good concidering this was the last talk at Friday late afternoon.
You can see slides here Czech Test 2015 – Vojtěch Barta.
It was nice conference and I am looking forward to attend next year. I will send paper again and you should also try it. Get out of your comfort zone and try it – speaking on conference is fun and it is challenge that will teach you a lot of. See you next year.
