Introducing TestingConferences.org

For the past few years one of my professional goals has been to attend (at least) one testing conference or workshop per year, mostly because it’s such a great way to recharge and learn what other practitioners are doing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good source of events aside from talking with others, so I pulled together a list on my own. The value of any events list is only as great as the number and quality of events listed so I’ve open sourced the list and posted it online with the hope that it becomes driven-by and representative of the community as a whole (as opposed to what I might like or prefer).

Introducing TestingConferences.org – a simple list of software testing conferences and workshops published collaboratively with the testing community.

I hope this site is or becomes a useful resource for the software community as a whole. I also hope others will help by contributing because that’s the only way it will become better or at least maintain its usefulness. It doesn’t matter if you are a vendor or just a fan of workshops and conferences, please add to it!

A little more detail

I’m not sure how I found my first conference, StarWest, back in 2011 but I did. Every other conference or workshop I’ve been to since has been a referral or recommendation by others, including:

• The Rapid Testing Intensive workshop (RTI)
• The Workshop on Teaching Software Testing (WTST 13)
• CAST
• STPcon
• STARWest (I’ve been to this twice I think)

I say referral / recommendation because the primary way this stuff was and is communicated are through the people who’ve attended. Sure you can Google “software testing conferences” or come across an advertisement in a testing publication but those are only useful if you have an idea of what you are looking for. Even if you do those things you might come across the most advertised, most popular but not necessarily anything near you (especially if you are outside the US) or relevant to your particular tastes. To me, that’s sad.

Conferences and workshops are great tools for conferring, collaborating and learning. At least part of your decision to attend a conference or workshop is determined by knowing what conferences are available and where they are located. That’s where this list comes in. There was never any single source of active conferences and workshops; especially with workshops you had to be in-the-know, else just stumble across one that was occurring.

Now I’m asking for your help so we can publish this list collaboratively within the testing community.

Helping:

• Interested in what conferences and workshops are considered eligible?
• Already on GitHub, then contribute now!
• Never used GitHub or git before? Learn how to Contribute.

Truth is I’ve been developing this site for a while and promoting on Twitter as I added events. I suppose you could say this site has been in stealth mode and this is the official reveal.