June 30, 2018

Notes: Day One of Agile Testing Days USA - Tues. June 26, 2018

I had such a wonderful time at Agile Testing Days USA, a European-based software testing conference that came to the United States for the first time this June, held up north of Boston, up in Danvers, Massachusetts.

Ever since I became a Meetup Organizer of a local Boston area software testing group, I have been having the most fun running many a social media campaign on LinkedIn and Twitter, reaching out to the software testing community to recruit speakers, hosts, sponsors, and members.

With Agile Testing Days, Tuesday June 26th - Wednesday June 27th, 2018, I managed to meet many of my favorite text-based life forms face-to-face!

My experience started out on a very high note: I met Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory face-to-face!





VIDEO: What We´ve Learned Since Agile Testing -- Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin

https://youtu.be/FIJQPHNS5Jc

Lean Coffee With Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory


I have been a fan of Lisa & Janet's book Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams ever since I came across it in grad school, studying for a Masters of Software Engineering at Brandeis. I refer the book to every developer I meet who is QA-curious, wondering how to interact with testers. When I heard that they both would be there at the conference, I packed my copy of their book hoping they would sign it.

Agile Testing Days started off with a Lean Coffee, a coffee-and-conversation session kicking off each day. Tending towards social awkwardness, I made sure to show up early, grabbing the first table that opened up so I could get enough time to warm up to the event. When the moderator of the table introduced herself as "Janet", I did a double take. Could it be?? Yes! She was Janet Gregory, and Lisa Crispin was moderating the conversation at the other table. Although I had been chit-chatting with Lisa about being a possible speaker for my Meetup group, it was intimidating meeting her face to face.

I still managed to get an autograph from the both of them!



Selena Delesie: Evoke The Soul of Agile

The first keynote was presented by Selena Delesie, an agile coach and trainer. Selena talked about, in her keynote, about "Evoke the Soul of Agile".










API Testing FUNdementals with Dan Gilkerson & JoEllen Carter

After the keynote, I took a workshop in API testing with Postman, using it as an exploratory testing tool. I need to convert my notes into a blog article one of these days.



Lunch With Angie Jones

I've written many a blog entry about Angie Jones, a Senior SDET at Twitter who is a powerhouse in the field of automation. She was a guest speaker at a Ministry of Testing - Boston Meetup back in June of 2017. She has been a mentor to me as I have tried to navigate the world of automation.

And I managed to finally meet her face-to-face!


Angie Jones: Owning Our Narrative

Angie's keynote, relating the history of the turn-of-the-century musician to software testing cannot be described. It must be experienced.

Until I can find an Agile Testing Days USA recording, this version given to KWSQA has to do:

TQ2017 Keynote - Angie Jones - Owning Our Narrative https://youtu.be/kK_TgsjYqJ4









The thing that stunned me, most of all, is that Angie, after meeting-and-greeting people all day, she came to a Ministry of Testing - Boston Meetup to run a killer workshop.

Ash Coleman: Defining Heuristics In An Agile Environment

Since I spent most of my time being riveted by Ash's talk, this section of the blog is brought to you by Angie Jones, and Claire Moss, Live Tweeter, extraordinaire!








Other Scenes from Day One! 


Agile Testing Days was an amazing experience. I must go again next year!




You can read more about Justin on this blog in:


View my Notes on Day 2!

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

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