(This is part one, as it came out a bit long, the next part will be out in a few days)
European Testing Conference is over, and it was the best ETC so far. Each year I come to ETC with higher expectations, and each time they somehow manage to surpass them and look as if it is the natural order of things. There will be a retrospective post for me later, but for the meanwhile, I want to sort out some of my experiences from the conference days (I wrote briefly about the days before the conference here).
The morning started with a nice breakfast at the hotel, getting to chat a bit with some people (With whom - I don't remember. Or rather, I remember most people I talked to, it's only the when that is a bit fuzzy) and after that - registration and the first keynote in which Gojko Adzic presented his newfound approach to automatic visual validation. His main message was - UI tests are considered expensive, but now we have the ability to change this equation - not because of the tool (that looks nice, I got the impression that it was some sort of a mix between Applitools eyes (comparing really small elements, defining textual conditions, and Galen framework), but rather because we can now parallel a whole lot of test runs using headless chrome on AWS lambda. So sure, this won't work for you if you are not working on AWS, or can't parallelize your tests, but it's a nice thing to consider, and see how far can we go towards this sort of goal.
Following the keynote I went to a talk given by Lisi & Toyer. Frankly, I came to this talk with very low expectations - sure, another "share and collaborate" talk. Perhaps this is why my mind was blown. Toyer & Lisi managed to tell an interesting story about how they created a "pact" with a specific goal in mind, and how many benefits they got from it. I think that what really got me, though, was the genuine excitement they expressed around the whole process. I went out of this talk with a strong feeling of "that's a great idea, I should try it one day" (and, since most of the times "one day" equals "never", I'm looking for a volunteer to smack me on my head if I don't make anything more concrete out of this within 30 days, in this very blog).
Then came speed-meet. Since last year, I learned to notice the good things in it - it forces people to open up and speak to people they don't know, and really breaks the ice fast. Still, it was a bit too loud for me. How loud? This loud. One thing I did learn before is to completely ignore the mindmap drawn by my partner and tell them I'd rather look and listen to them and not to a piece of paper, so that helped a bit. I still got to shout towards some people I've never spoke before, and people I didn't speak with enough. I think I only needed a silence bubble in order to properly enjoy this event.
Following the speed meet, and one minute alone in a quiet corner to recharge and let my ears some rest, there was lunch, with quite a nice setting to help people talk some more, this time in a quieter manner.
After lunch - workshops time!
A while before the conference I've decided to go to the Gherkin workshop (I don't like calling the given-when-then formulation BDD, since for me BDD is a lot broader than that) in hope that I'll manage to figure out why some people find this artificial, restrictive format useful. Or, at least, learn when to use such a thing and when not to. Going through a workshop with some experts seemed to be the best chance I could give it.
Well, apparently, I should have read the fine print better - the workshop was targeted towards the already convinced. Those who are using, or planning to use, the Gherkin formulation and want to learn how to do so better. I got to see some bad examples, discuss why they might be bad, and how to write a proper one. Frankly? Initially I thought that it was a well built workshop that I came to with the wrong expectations, but the more I think about it, the more I believe it was a waste of everyone's time. Writing a single gherkin scenario is easy. The tips we got there were trivial (and easy to find online) and the discussion level was not deep enough to justify our time (nor I think it should have been). A better workshop, still aimed at the users, should have been how to maintain a good suite of Gherkin scenarios, as even a relatively small number of well defined scenarios can become a terrible task to read and understand when there is no way to organise them. My personal limit before asking for a different format stands around 5 scenarios. If I have to read any more, the rigid format is becoming actively harmful.
Anyway, rant time over, and I had a talk to prepare to. After dealing with some technical difficulties (I knew I had to purchase new batteries for my clicker) and tweaking the slides a bit to make sure that everything on the slides was visible, I started talking a bit about automation and some ideas on structuring a part of it. The slides can be found here (and will soon be available at the conference site). I got some valuable feedback from Richard Bradshaw after the talk, and as far as I can tell - it seemed that the audience response was good (thank you Mira for your very kind words).
I then had a chance to relax a bit during lean coffee, which always feels too short (In fact, checking the schedule, I see we didn't even have an hour - it was too short!), but I got to have an interesting discussion with new people I have yet to meet. I think I need to become a bit better at facilitating the discussion, but it went rather well even so. Between this and speed-meet, I have a better experience meeting people this way.
We went on discussing the subjects at hand until the day's closing keynote where Lanette was sharing a whole lot of cat pictures and an interesting point alongside them.
I was a bit tired after such an intensive day, which was not over just so - the conference dinner event was scheduled for this evening, and so I went. Nice people, nice vibe, and everyone got a free drink. The place itself, though, felt like a restaurant, and so people were sitting at their tables (A large table, but still) instead of wandering about. I had a nice chat with Karlo and Emily, but finally my fatigue got the better of me and I took a tram back to the hotel to crash.
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