TL;DR
This post is about testing the EuroTestConf. Every journey comes to an end.
Every journey has it’s ending. And I learned that it is about journey experience, not the destination. The closing keynote was by Ulrika Malmgren – The one with the compiler always wins. My mental energy was depleted, and unfortunately I did not take any notes.
Here goes applause for the organizers.
This was the last EuroTestConf. The reason is financial risk. EuroTestConf is the only conference that I know that shared profit with speakers. I need to explain what is profit, it is the difference between income (tickets + sponsors) minus expenses. Speakers’ travel and accommodation as part of costs.
As one of the organizers for Testival conference and meetups, I know that organizing a conference is an enormous job. I think that sharing profit was too much and that killed this excellent conference. And I was looking forward to the EuroTestConf T-Shirt, which was unfortunately not available.
For example, Test Bash is a conference that has the same quality as EuroTestConf, but it is also a sustainable business case.
On the first day, we got requirements change 🙂 Here is an updated schedule sheet. We got printed ones that required updates. Belgrado room color was exchanged with Madrid. Madrid was yellow, but it become red. And vice versa. Room Strasbourg’s schedule becomes Wenen.
Wenen and London colors were not distinguished enough, so I had trouble connecting talk with the room.
Open space should be a separate event. We got too little time for too many excellent proposals.
Everything else was excellent. My biggest take away was that I was able to practice to approach to unknown people and start software testing discussions. I finally broke my introvert box. I wrote 20 pages of notes in the Cornell note-taking method. I found this approach most useful to transfer those notes into blog posts. Previously I tried mind mapping and sketching, but those techniques did not work because I could not remember key presentation points.
I hope that this is only a temporary pause for EuroTestConf, or that something new will emerge.
