ETC 2018, did I say it was awesome?

Yes, I did. The first part is here.
However, that was only the first day of the conference.
The second one started with a nice breakfast where I got to speak a bit with Abbey and Llewellyn and as we were getting (a bit late) to the opening keynote of the day, Llewellyn shared an awesome strategy of getting changes to an open-source project you use: Hire the maintainer for a day or a week to make the change with you - that way the feature you need will find its way to the core product (so no need to fork your own version of the tool and enjoy updating). It will also probably be way cheaper to get your solution, as the maintainer knows the project very well, and by pairing with them you can add your specific domain knowledge to the solution.

Then we got to the keynote, just as the speaker was starting. Topic of the talk: become a skeptic.
The talk left me with a somewhat ambivalent feeling: On the one hand, it was very well presented by a speaker that clearly knew what he was doing. On the other hand - it felt a bit lacking in terms of content, and more so - actionable content. Sure, I can get intuitively why being skeptic might help a tester, but it felt a bit like preaching to the choir: I couldn't find any real, concrete reason to become a skeptic, and I am not really convinced in the value of skepticism as a tester's main approach.

However, after the keynote I got to Abbey & Lisa's workshop on pipelines. What can I say? It was great, with good exercises and even better explanations between them. Within the very limited time-frame for this workshop (it can totally be a full day one, I suspect. Or at least 1/2 a day) we managed to decide on a pipeline based on the pain points each of us have at work, and got to realizing our pipeline is waaay too long (we estimated a week to go through everything there). It is interesting to see how much of a discussion one can get simply by laying out the process your code goes through to production. I really enjoyed this workshop.

Then, a tough choice between 3 talks I wanted to go to I've attended Alex's talk on exploratory testing, and about practicing speaking out the way we test. If you have not yet got the chance to hear Alex speak, you should. The talk was sheer fun (or rather, sheer learning fun) and I liked the way she managed communicating her thought process and involving the audience in the exercise.

Following this talk I attended Mirjana talk about production monitoring and some of the tools they are using. This one was particularly interesting for me, as almost all of the tools she mentioned are either used by people at my work, or are intended to be used somewhere soon (I even participated in a POC for some of them) and seeing some of the benefits she was able to get out of those tools was really nice. It also connected well with something Gojko mentioned in the opening keynote: make stuff visible for the developing team. Great insights are gained that way.

The open space is always a great event, and this one was not any different. One thing I need to do is practice more self-restraining, and limit myself to owning only one subject, as there are always so many great topics. I started by going to a discussion led by Ron about how to train new testers. Apparently this is a tough question for all of us - we know to do this by mentoring or pairing, but teaching this in a mass-centered way is posing some difficulties. Sadly, I left the discussion early due to a mistake on my part with regards to the next session start time, so I had 20 more minutes before the discussion I led. Instead I joined a discussion about management. Then there were two discussions I posted: Tools & the way they change the way we think, from which I gained insight about the way some tools changed the processes of the team, and the need to constantly monitor the effect of new tools on the team culture. The second discussion was a bit tougher - how to help a colleague who's struggling to keep up, and when to give up. My takeaway from this discussion - Different things might work for different people, and don't give up easily (However, you'll know when you've given up, so don't prolong it more than is necessary) .

Great day, isn't it?
We had a blast closing it with a Keynote by Dr. Pamela Gay about some of the challenges she faces in her work in NASA, which, in case you wondered, includes identifying craters on Mars or on the moon and correlating pictures taken by astronauts with google-maps. Both tasks are difficult for professionals and for computers. However - people are great, and are willing to help, if you are willing to filter out some of the data. The coolest part? You can join the effort (but please wait until tomorrow at least).

Then, the conference was done. Or, mostly done - a lot of people met for dinner and we had some fun chatting around. It is amazing how when the conference is over, it seemed that almost everyone around just wanted to extend the experience just a bit more. It was really tough to do the "responsible" thing and go to sleep early in order to catch a cab at 5 AM to the airport. Still, this is what I did.
At the morning I shared the taxi with Abby, so I got to extend the conference ambience to the last possible moment (though, I must admit - at 5 AM, the ambience is mostly sleepy).

What amazes me is that while the sessions themselves are really good, what makes this conference so great is in the more difficult to tell about, small moments: speaking with new people and those I've met before, seeing everyone around me smiling (to themselves and to each other), and sharing an experience. My only regret is that I did not get to spend more time with people, and some people I wish I could catch up with a bit more. However, I will follow the advice given by the conference organizers at the open space: Whatever happened is what should have happened, and it could not have been any other way. I'm very happy things were as they were.

So, until next year :)