My first experience at TestBash Germany

I was lucky enough to attend TestBash Germany from Ministry of Testing. It was a first for me and I was very curious to see how it was in person and feel it from the inside.

As I have been working in the field of testing, I've already attended some other conferences, events and meetups testing related. I also attend other kind of events, whenever possible to broaden my knowledge and use it to grow as much as possible.

I have to say that TestBash is different from other testing events (we'll go over it later on).

If I would do a mindmap of TestBash, a simplified version would be one depicted ahead.

Let's go over my days (yours could be somehow similar), what I did and what I learned.

Day 0 - Settling in

I traveled alone from Portugal and I thought I was the only Portuguese but I had the good surprise of discovering that there was also other colleagues from Portugal, which shows the level of interest TestBash has.

However, right after my arrival I was checking Twitter and I found out that there was this "guy" I didn't knew and that was asking if anyone would like to have a beer right after landing. I thought: why not? I'm alone, he's probably alone, let's meet and drink/have a snack, talk about testing and have a good time :)

We had dinner together and had a great time. And happens that he was Jack Taylor and was going to present a talk about Test Automation at the conference day, which went just great.

The takeaway: don't be shy. And if you are, you may not be alone :)

Day 1 - The workshops

I've decided to attend a workshop related with security testing (from Lena Pejgan) and another in the exploratory testing topic (from Nancy Kelln).

The workshops are not "regular trainings". In other words, they are small workshops (3h) and thus you don't have the time to go deep on topics. However, that does not mean that they are not useful; on the contrary, these sessions are practical, with examples we can exercise together within teams and together, within the whole workshop group.

Thus, these workshops are not meant to dump you a bunch of theoretical information; they're meant to give you the essentials so you can understand the concept, experiment it and explore it further later on.

In security testing we explored and almost exploded :) a web based application - a juice shop, having a ordering mechanism. The application itself has a bunch of hidden challenges for us to overcome. It was cool and we tried some concrete examples of attacks to our application. For the ones interested, they can extend the workshop at home/workplace and keep executing the remaining challenges.

In the afternoon I attended the exploratory testing workshop from Nancy Kelln. We played with robots/cubes, whose function was unknown for us at start.

There were plenty of different cubes that we needed to test/explore, find how they work and how they interconnect with each other. It was quite a challenge because:

1. one of the cubes (moving part) was damaged
2. some of the cubes didn't behave as apparently they should, because there were different versions of the cubes and there were incompatibility issues :D

Well, no worries. These problems also simulate real life. How many times you're given something that doesn't work? How many times someone "doesn't tell you the whole truth"? :D

The idea was for us to use the "robots/cubes problem" and use it to apply exploratory testing, having some sort of "management" on it (maybe "visibility" would be a better word). Thus, we had to create a Test Plan that would be shown to the stakeholders and signed-off by them. Afterwards testing would proceed through exploration. Finally, we would produce a very high-level and simple report as a table, where progress and comments could be tracked.

My team decided to implement the Test Plan as a mindmap.

You can see right ahead the output of our testing report.

Takeaways:

1. security testing: extend your knowledge with additional learning and guided exercises
2. exploratory testing: try the ideas behind Nancy's workshop, in a very simplified way and only go more complex if needed, namely in terms of the output test report

The day ended with a pre-conference meetup at Xing's office.

Day 2 - The conference

After having met Vernon at the pre-meetup held the day before and discussing his outfit for the conference, we met once again at the conference venue; he's a very fun and cool guy! So we kindly connect instantaneously, although he seems very serious in this photo :)

Concerning the conference itself, it had a bunch of talks. Some can resonate more with you, depending on your background and expectactions. There was also an open discussion, where anyone could raise whatever questions to the experts on stage (yes, there many on the audience also.. so you can also be an expert in your domain/s).

This one is from Parveen Kahn, where she talked about her Agile journey

We could talk about every single one but it would make this quite extensive. The conference ended with 99 second talks, where anyone could go on stage and talk/do whatever. I didn't participate *but* now that I've seen how relaxed it is, for sure I'll be on stage next time.

During the whole conference day, Alex Schladebeck was live blogging about it. You can read her posts at The Club to feel like you where there, or even as a recap, in case you've attended.

Anyway, there are some breaks and lunch time where you can exchange ideas. There was also a post-meetup event, where most of us got together to drink and have dinner. Some other people, non-conference attendees, also joined since they like so much this event format that they took their time to say "hi".

Day 3 - Packing up and go back home

I had to return home but for those who could stay for one additional day there was the "open space" where people could interact with each other. Next time that's one thing I'll definitely will try out. I crossed with some attendees having breakfast; they had a rough night :)

In sum

This is my own personal experience. Let me try to sum this up in several points.

What I liked

• meeting other people, with all sorts of backgrounds and from different locations/contexts; I also had opportunity to talk with lesser known people, such as Richard Bradshaw and Elisabeth Hocke :)

• exchanging experiences
• workshops content

What could be better

• I think the AC at the conference day could be slightly colder; we're sitting for a great part of the day and if you don't have coffee it can be hard to stay fully tuned

What I loved

• the event layout
• the friendly people and openness to chat and share knowledge

Is it worth it?

For sure. It's a paid event but if you have opportunity, you should try it out; you can also attend the pre and post event meetups for free if you want to stay in touch.

The best way to come with takeaways and learn as much as possible is by interaction. So, if you go, and even if you're introvert, try to say hello to the person next to you... that person can also be introvert (or not) but you'll see the conversation starts and it can be quite fun while learning a lot.

Differently from other events, the conference has a single track so everyone will be together; you can take advantage of breaks to exchange ideas or even to say hi to one of your fans.

This is not a kind of event where you go and come back with a ton of highly detailed information; it's an event that gives you clues that you can then try to discuss with someone else or use later on at your work place.

Curious findings

• I met several ex-developers that became testers and are now happier people (some of them keynote speakers)
• Several people from testing come from non-IT background, yet they are learning how to code and addressing automation in different ways
• Some people complained that unfortunately testing is not very well understood by some stakeholder (I agree) and that this makes their work difficult and sometimes also undervalues the work of testers
• There are so many great speakers; the event format seems to help people be comfortable enough to speak of what they like; and this is just great!

Now what?

If you never went a TestBash, you should try for it! Don't forget: go with an open-mind and connect as much as possible. You don't need to connect to everyone (it's impossible) but having good conversations with a few of the attendees for some time can be quite valuable.

If you were not able to attend, you should be able to see the recording of the conference in the "dojo".

If you want to get in touch and talk about testing, agile, etc, you may find me at Twitter @darktelecom.