Report on Testival.eu

TL;DR

In this post I will give brief report how we successfully connected 35 software testers. Testival.eu is an software tester event that was held last weekend in Microsoft Inovation Center Split.

Format

We mixed unconference model with two speaker sessions.

Venue

We had at our disposal three rooms: one with 40 seats, smaller one with 15 seats, and hall that also contained chairs.

big room

hallway

small room

Participants.

Conference was free. Problem with free conference is that some people will register, but will not show up at the event. Our heuristics is 50% drop offs, and that was the case with Testival.eu 2015. From 70 registrations,  we had 35 participants with 34% of female testers! In the week of event, we asked registered participant to confirm their arrival.

Friday

We started with introductions. After that, Zeljko, Davor and I explained unconference format using post-it cards, in manner that we first time saw at CITCON conference. Great way to keep people interested in the conference. Here is table with proposed sessions:

Alert! In unconference manner, participant are encouraged that they arrange sessions and merge them. We forgot to put deadline on that action! For example, I found out too late that my proposed session was moved earlier and I miss it. Also, Maaret said that before merging topics, it is very important to consult the card authors before you can do that.

Saturday

We had open and closing sessions. Open session was “Collaborative Exploratory and Unit Testing” by Maaret Pyhäjärvi. That session created my a-ha moment. Maaret is putting a lot of effort in collaborative testing. Which I think is a great idea. She also had a session about mob testing.

In between opening and closing keynote, we had unconference sessions. Microsoft Information Center was witness of lively discussions about software testing. We had lunch at konoba (dalmatian restaurant) with traditional local dishes.

lunch time

Closing session was “How do natural scientists test their ideas?” by dr. Dario Hrupec. Dario explained how scientists test ideas. After his discussion with Maaret, he got his A-ha moment, what scientists and testers have in common: they both need to explore in order to be able to discover potential problem and propose its solution. For that activity, intelligence is not enough, curiosity and creativity are also very important.

closing session

In the end, every participant shared its a-ha moment. We also draw lucky winners of three tickets for WebCamp 2015 conference.