Monday, October 11, 2010

vodQA 2 - plan so hard for it, and its over so soon!

We were planning for vodQA 2 since about 6-7 weeks. But we suffered our first hiccup when I had to go to the US on a QA Coaching assignment for 3 weeks. Fortunately, my return was a few days before vodQA (7th October 2010).

It was a tough time being away ... constantly thinking about if all things are taken care off or not, if we are getting adequate help for the core organizers or not, what blockers are existing, and so on and on.

However, our core team here in ThoughtWorks office really slogged it out, at times pulling people by their ears :) to ensure we are on track.

All this meant that I didn't have to do much when I came back.

On THE day, just before the event though, we suffered another hiccup - our audio-visual vendor refused to come up till a good few guests had already arrived. So it was awkward start to the event ... but things settled down pretty fast and then the event did go through quite smoothly.

Pictures from vodQA 2 are available here

A lot of positives from the event:
1. More than 101 external guests arrived. Of these there were a significant number of people who had also attended our first vodQA event on June 10, 2010.
2. The talks were very interesting, and very apt to the changing dynamics of the industry.
3. In the initial feedback that we have gone through, people seem to be craving for such type of events - which is a very positive sign for us that we are doing something right, giving something to the community that will help them share, learn, grow and connect.
4. We incorporated the feedback received in our first vodQA to make this more tuned to what people wanted to experience.

A few people mentioned in the event - "this is our QA family, and we want to see it grow".

Finally, the event came, and went - leaving behind lot of good memories. I will post the presentation and the videos links as soon as they are posted.

Meanwhile, here are the topics that were covered in vodQA 2:

Speaker / topic list:

Full Length talks
1. Deepak Gole & Saager Mhatre - Sapna Solutions
Automated acceptance testing for iPhone

2.Parul Mody & Vijay Khatke - BMC Software
Cloud Testing

3. Ashwini Malthankar - ThoughtWorks
Effective use of Continuous integration by QA

4. Vijay and Supriya - ThoughtWorks
Test your service not your UI

5. Ananthapadmanabhan R - ThoughtWorks
Twist : Evolving test suites over test cases

Lightning Talks
1. Satish Agrawal - Persistent Systems
Leadership and Innovation in a commoditized industry

2. Anay Nayak - ThoughtWorks
Fluent Interfaces and Matches Fish bowl topic: DNA of Test Automation