It’s now over a week after the end of EuroSTAR and I just finished my last article about this fantastic conference. You can find them all here.
For me it’s now time for a personal review and summary.
First of all I want to thank Emma and the EuroSTAR team for inviting me to the conference and being a media partner. The conference was well-organized and in my eyes flawless in execution. The two dinners were stunning locations and the food was really good. Well done!
It was great to meet so many people again whom I met first time at Let’s Test in May, and who welcomed me back with an open and friendly spirit.
Guna is a great person and brought so much energy to the Test Lab. This baltic, blue-haired bundle of energy made me smile every time I went to the Test Lab. Guna it was an absolute pleasure to finally meet you in person. It was always fun to interact with Guna on Twitter, and will be even more fun, now that I have a vivid image of her before my inner eye.
Finally meeting Colin “Jim” Cherry aka Klaas Kers meant so much to me. Colin just beams with wisdom. There was this short (well, for me most people are short), silent, friendly and open-minded person, not exactly how I imagined him, and he was just an inspiration to my EuroSTAR-experience. Colin made his TestHuddle-blogs so special, that I questioned the usefulness of all my writing so far. Since I met him I want to re-read all his blog posts again with his person in mind. Colin you are an awesome person, and I am very thankful, that we finally met.
Michael Bolton invested more than two hours of his time into helping me review a blog post I was writing a few weeks ago and discussing with me about the nature of testing. It was even more a pleasure that James Lyndsay joined the conversation and let me allow a short look into his mind and how he thinks. You are both an inspiration to me! Thank you gentlemen.
At the community dinner I had the pleasure to share my table with Allison Wade, who is responsible for all the STAR-conferences in North America, and more, and Shmuel Gershon, who was later that week announced program chair of the next EuroSTAR conference. Chatting with those people in the location in the caves underneath a chateau was special for me.
At the conference awards dinner in the next cave location I was joined by Carly Dyson, Nick Shaw, Paul Coyne, Kristoffer Nordström and Iain McCowatt. The evening brought a very passionate discussion about testing in the financial sector between Carly, Paul and Iain. I just loved watching it for two reasons. First, the passion all three of them show is fantastic. And second, witnessing a discussion about testing from three native speakers. English is not my mother tongue, and neither it is for my colleagues in our Munich office, but it is the language of choice, since we are an American company and not all of my colleagues speak German. According is the level of skill and precision in using English. Being surrounded by native speakers and listening to the discussion was an absolute pleasure.
The “Lightning strikes the Speakers” keynote session on the evening of Day 2 was special. It was very intense, but all seven speakers were talking about great topics, all regarding the future of testing. Testing will experience a huge change in the near future, it will be a challenge, but those talks showed how it can be made possible and what is necessary. I am looking happily forward to what the near future will bring to testing. I am ready to be a part of you.
Julie Gardiner’s talk about the survival skills for testers was speaking from the heart. Experiencing Julie’s talk was a pleasure. She has a great stage presence and her 5 step message was spot on.
Meeting the NewVoiceMedia team at EuroSTAR was very nice. I finally had the chance to meet Rob Lambert in real life. Rob is a person I greatly admire for his stage presence and I am very thankful for all the valuable information he shares with the community. And meeting also Kevin Harris and Raji Bhamidipati was a pleasure. NewVoiceMedia seems to breed great people, as you see with so many speakers from that company on the program of EuroSTAR.
And of course my buddy Dan Billing is also a part of the NewVoiceMedia family. Seeing him again was also great and I am happy to pair up with him for Let’s Test.
Now EuroSTAR 2015 is really over for me. All blog posts are written and on Monday and Tuesday I will share some experience from the conference with my team in the office. Now it’s time for me to prepare for my own first ever conference talk in Brighton at TestBash in March.
I can’t wait to meet so many enthusiastic testers in one place again soon.
Test Pappy 