The blogosphere is pregnant with conference posts these days. And good ones too I might add.
- In his blogpost conferences on the cheap, Matt Heusser gives some helpful tips on keeping the cost of attending testing conferences down in these difficult times.
- Matt also created a conference wiki where everyone can add any kind of testing event or conference that is taking place. A great source of information, that is still expanding as we speak. If you know of any noteworthy events that are not yet listed, feel free to add them.
- Very recently, the Software Testing Club spawned an interesting testing conference discussion whether or not people are paying for conferences out of their own pocket.
I think being at conferences is great fun. You meet peers. You talk and share ideas. And get ideas, as well. Occasionally, you attend a track that makes you go “what was that all about?!”, but in general I get tremendously inspired. Not only from the track sessions – most of the time the hallway discussions provide some decent food for thought as well. Of course these benefits aren’t always very measurable, but conferences are doing their very best to provide attendees with ways to convince their managers and prove the added value. Eurostar even provides a justification kit and a Conference Evaluation & ROI Worksheet for reporting on the ROI back home.
But there’s always other ways:
- You can get in for free as a speaker, but in that case there’s some effort involved. Writing abstracts, papers, making a presentation. Can be quite a hassle – tit for tat. And you have to get selected of course.
- Some conferences give away conference tickets in lotteries. Slim chance, but you never know.
- Step out of the dark side and show your face to the community
– be a video star. Are you ready for your close-up, <insert name here>?
Test Side Story 