Ronan Healy

It’s all about community! The goal of the TeamSTAR Competition is to reward the hard-work of meet-up organisers and to gather & connect local communities of software testing & QA professionals.

We asked you, the testing community to host local meet-ups to gather and develop the testing community in your area. And that’s exactly what happened! Dozen’s of testers gathered for meet-up’s across Europe as part of the TeamSTAR Competition. Read the blog posts about some of the meet-up groups that participated in the competition. View EuroSTAR Blog.

The results are in..

The competition this year was fierce! It was very difficult to choose a winner. However, there can only be one winner. We are delighted to present to you the 2019 TeamSTAR Winner…..

WrotQA, Wroclaw, Poland

Congratulations to the WrotQA team! 4 members of team will be joining us in EuroSTAR, Prague! View their meet-up blog.

Follow WrotQA on Facebook and Twitter.

Well done to the team involved in arranging a fantastic meet-up. Thank you to all of the attendees for coming along.

We would also like to congratulate the winner of the TeamSTAR attendee competition, Sandra from [Pro] Test! Sandra will also be joining us at #EuroSTARConf this year.

A sincere thank you from the EuroSTAR team – thank you to every single team that entered the competition, that put time and effort into hosting a meet-up and to every persona that attended a TeamSTAR meet-up. We love just love seeing the community grow, connect and test toegether!

Keep and eye on the EuroSTAR Blog to see what the TeamSTAR winners get up to at #EuroSTARConf, this November in Prague!

Join the online testing community at the EuroSTAR Huddle for free software testing resources.

EuroSTAR is all about networking and connecting the testing community. The TeamSTAR competition enables global testing communities to come together and celebrate testing. SANAE took part of the TeamSTAR competition on October 10th and successfully gathered the Bratislava testing community. Continue reading to learn more about the SANAE TeamSTAR event ‘SANAE Software Testing BEER.EX’.

Author: Nina Chorvátová

SANAE Software Testing BEER.EX

We are proud to play a major role in building of the software testing community. The goal of SANAE Software Testing BEER is to build up a regular informal meeting platform to support SW testing community and introduce it to IT people outside. After four successful Testing BEER events we made a decision to try to organize all day event with presentations, good beer and food accompanied by smart people. We would like to make our BEER bigger and better creating an informal networking environment.

The selected day 10.10.2019 was not accidental. As well as the location easily accessible by car or public transport. Binarium is a place designed for innovation, cooperation and creativity! So this was the reason why we went for it! It was the right place for our planned event! ‘Let’s go practical!’ was the perfect motto of our event.

When we started to contact the speakers for our event, we realized that the short notice before the planned event caused that some of our top picks were already busy. Nevertheless we found perfect gems to fit in our perfect piece of jewelry. Ard Kramer said YES and we were more than pleased. We invited more speakers from Slovakia and at the end we had a perfect group of speakers who delivered excellent talks.

Program was set, invitations sent to all partners and major IT companies and tickets sold out in a record time. As our event was coming closer, we were spending our nights with preparing graphics for marketing materials. One day before the event, four of us met at Binarium. We had all materials from marketing company, our partners and EuroSTAR. We had to prepare everything for the upcoming big day. Beer became the light motive of our event. We had our fantastic beer from a small Slovak brewery in Bratislava, non – alcoholic APA beer and provided visitors with items like beer pads and bottle-openers. Promo materials for participants, such as booklets about presenters, name labels with program and more were placed in bags made from recycled cotton.

The first participant arrived at 8 o’clock October 10^th2019.  Our nice young colleagues at the registration desk welcomed every participant with a full bag of goodies, personalized name label and a lunch voucher.

After the registration, participants could enjoy tasty breakfast. The actual program started at 9.00 with opening speech by SANAE managing director Oliver Olšovský. After that, our key speaker Ard Kramer delivered the first presentation with the topic ‘Is there a Risk?’ Big event needs a big opening and this fitted perfectly. Eight more speakers followed, changing topics from technical to more process oriented and back. Questions from the audience were placed via sli.do, and the discussion was sparkling as the best beer. Closing block was dedicated to a discussion with our keynote speaker Ard Kramer. And the big finale was choosing the best speaker via application sli.do and the winner was Filip Hric from sli.do.

At the lunch and coffee break there was a little space for networking as well as checking exhibitors’ area and meet suppliers form SW testing area. Evening networking started with beer, corn-dogs, bagels and other delicious snacks, continued with our game Corn hole and more board games. Ended with… A great success story! That resulted in our decision to continue building a strong testing community in Bratislava around our regular event – SANAE Software Testing BEER.

PS: During pre-event social media marketing activities and the event itself, we used #EuroSTARConnects hash tag to increase our chance to win TeamSTAR 2019 competition. We even promised that one of the delegates promoting #EuroSTARConnects on post from out event will join us at EuroSTAR in Prague if we win. So there is no other option for us than a win.

Author: Nina Chorvátová

Well done to the SANAE team for organising a fantastic TeamSTAR event!

EuroSTAR is delighted to bring back the TeamSTAR Meet-up Competition which rewards the hard work of meet-up organisers. This blog shows the hard-work, dedication and passion the Sarajevo QA Crew have put in for the Bosnia & Hergzeovenia QA Community. Continue reading to hear all about their TeamSTAR meet-up which took place 19th Sept.

Author: Nina Mučibabić

Hello QA people! This is the story about the QA Meetup “Let’s test together” which was held on 19th September in Sarajevo and organized by Sarajevo QA Crew, in cooperation with company Mistral Technologies. The Sarajevo QA Crew started in August 2018 with an aim to gather all QA professionals and enthusiasts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The goal is to provide meeting points for the QA lovers, to come together to meet, socialise and learn together.

During August, we read an email from the EuroSTAR about the TeamSTAR competition. We realized that it would be great to participate. The award is truly amazing – tickets for this year’s conference which will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, from 11th to 14th of November in 2019. “What a motivation” – we thought 🙂 The opportunity to participate in such a big and famous conference will be awesome especially because of the long EuroSTAR history, because of the networking, knowledge, and because of that golden city – Prague! This time we were supported by the company Mistral Technologies.  Once again, we tried to be brave, and we tried to get out of the comfort zone, to be innovative. Our country has got a real QA community and we realize that we should keep up with doing great things to make our community better.

Preparations of the event

We made an amazing boom in our society when we started with this story. Our events became events that you should not miss. We have got a lot of amazing impressions for our work, and the companies started to be interested in collaboration with us. Big and famous companies in our country contacted us with the desire to be the host of our event. They all recognize how important QA community is and how we need something like that in the country. We chose Mistral Technologies as the host company because it is a company with great business culture. They are also working hard on developing the business, design, QA and DEV communities. After confirming the location, we started looking for the speakers. We have our base with a lot of submissions, and it was very hard to choose speakers/presentations because all submissions were very interesting and with the great content. The interviews with the potential speakers were one of the most important periods in our preparations. We decided to be a little flexible and to choose topics with various level of seniority. Talking more
about:
● Business Intelligence and ETL/Data Warehouse testing;
● Performance Testing – best practices;
● Challenges between QAs and Devs in the agile sprint seem to us as an excellent choice for our next meetup.

19th of September perfectly fits all speakers and hosts, so we marked that date in our calendar for the next QA meetup “Let’s Test Together”. And, our event needs to be published online. Is there a better day for that than the Tester’s Day? Of course, not. We celebrated our day by creating and sharing the event on Eventbrite and Facebook. We selected 3 presentation and after applying to the TeamSTAR competition, we started with the promotion of the meetup on social media networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

We decided to work smart and to use the event concept which already gave excellent feedback. So, we realized that’s best to use the concept of the event where the presentations of professionals are incorporated with Q&A sessions as well as with networking before and after the sessions.

The live meeting with speakers and the host company members was almost once a week before the event. We spoke about the agenda and concept of the event. We agreed to have a relaxing and motivating atmosphere since we planned to have an open space discussion with all participants. The plan was to host 70-80 attendees, and on the day of publishing the Eventbrite event, we got a waitlist after three hours! That was a shock! Huge interest was amazing!  The whole promotion was successful. People from Bosnia and Herzegovina found out more about Sarajevo QA Crew meetups and about the great EuroSTAR conference which is supporting this QA event “Let’s test together”.

Beginning of the event

On the day of the event, we prepared the space. Posters were hanging around the event space and at the entrance of the building as well.

We used the website Sli.do for the questions throughout the whole duration of the event. Participants were supposed to write their questions and comments there and in that way, we centralized the whole process.

As we said earlier, we planned to organize the meetup for 70-80 people. All seats were reserved very quickly, so we made a waiting list which counted 73 persons. All 70 people from the official list and some of them from the waiting list visited us. Counting us (SQAC team) and colleagues from the company Mistral Technologies, there were more than 100 persons, so full house, as on the two previous events!

Also, some persons were standing because they wanted to attend the event despite what we were saying to them that the persons from the waitlist will not have a chair. During the intro speech, we highlighted that EuroSTAR supported the event, the second time, so in 2019, for the third meetup, as well as in 2018 for our first meetup. We shared our experiences from the EuroSTAR conference 2018 in Hague and spoke about its amazing atmosphere, networking, useful talks, workshops, expos and the parties. Also, we spoke about the EuroSTAR 2019 and its speakers for this year, and also, we emphasize the importance of teamwork during software testing. We match the name of our event (QA meetup “Let’s Test Together“) with it, and also with the idea of the EuroSTAR, TeamSTAR Competition. According to impressions, the audience was amazed by the EuroSTAR. We discussed many topics. The first presentation was all about the terminology used in the Data Warehouse, as well as the basic flows of data and testing that are typical on an ETL project, and Business Intelligence reports that have become a standard component of modern business infrastructure. The second presentation taught us how speed, responsiveness, and stability of software products could have an impact on the final product. In the third presentation, we could hear how important is a clean communication between QAs and Devs in the agile sprint.

Presentations of the speakers & networking

Representing the home team, and proudly so, Anesa Džano (Mistral Technologies) confidently cracked the ice with her presentation. She spoke about her favourite fields of interest – Business Intelligence & ETL/Data Warehouse testing. After a simplified, yet perfectly detailed presentation, Anesa showed us what it all boils down to; Creating interactive, data-rich reports and charts that if used wisely, can save millions to business.

The next presentation was about performance testing. Lejla Kulo and Nedim Korjenic (Authority Partners) introduced us to Web Performance and Load testing capabilities provided in Visual Studio. A brief walk through the steps of web performance tests creation, and running load tests using Visual Studio Web Performance Tests and Visual Studio Load tests solution, and finally the analysis of the load test results. They discussed with us, through their examples, how they determine the speed, responsiveness, and stability of software products, evaluating them relentlessly until perfection (or close to it). It wasn’t hard to see how much they enjoy the work they do and that performance testing is their dominant
field.

Last but not least presentation was prepared by Aida Mackovic and Deniz Kesten (Softray Solutions). They shed a light on more psychological aspects of QA. In a very amusing way, they spoke about team dynamics and highlighted the importance of clear communication channels between QAs and Devs. The topic of this charming duo was “Share the pain and
find the solution together”.

The audience got inspired by the content and the Q&A session lasted for 30 minutes. After Q&A session, we awarded two audience members, who published the best photos of the Meetup and used the right hashtags on social media, with 100 BAM credit card and a limited edition of Mistral goodies. A great way to finish the official part of the event and move on to networking with snacks and drinks.

Big room wrap up

At the end of the event, we had the so-called “Big room wrap up” during which our speakers summed up everything that was happening in open space discussions and concluded what we all learned together during the QA meetup “Let’s test together.”

Social media, Testimonials, Survey Results

The whole story about the meetup “Let’s test together” were shared on our social media
channels:

Tweets by SarajevoQA_Crew

Follow on Facebook 

Follow on Instagram

Follow on LinkedIn

With 100 persons in attendance, there was a high positive atmosphere, new handshakes and hugs, laughs, and new cognitions. What makes us, as organizers also happy is the fact that we beautified the evening and that they left the meetup inspired.

After the event, we sent a satisfaction survey to all the participants. About 80% of them responded and we collected the data. The event an incredible score of 4.6 of 5.

The participants liked the overall idea very much thus the presentations and discussions were enjoyable and along with the meetup. They also told us that they really need such events which are about the QA since cities in our country are offering mostly events for developers.

They told us that the next time the meeting place should be bigger and we-organizers also realized that because the QA lovers are numerous in Sarajevo as well as in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The participants also said that the whole content of the meetup was interesting, with the opportunity to ask questions during the whole event. The length of the event was optimal for the majority of the participants, but some of them gave us the recommendation to make the one QA event that would last all day.

Host company also leave their feedback. They said that it was wonderful to work with us, that we met all their expectations, and that they are open for future collaborations with us.

Once again the event is a great example of how a vision, persistence and support in the team can together get a value for the whole community. Now our Bosnia and Herzegovina have an official QA crew – Sarajevo QA Crew.

We realized that the TeamSTAR competition was a trigger once more for the young creative minds to show that they can make inspiring things for the city as well as for the country. We are proud of all of us and happy that the meetup attendees really got engaged and interested in EuroSTAR conference since they asked Google about it during the event and they shared

Author: Nina Mučibabić

Kudos to The Sarajevo QA Crew! The we love seeing the community come together and this meetup group is the definition of community! Well done to all involved!

Here at EuroSTAR, we love seeing the testing community come together to celebrate testing, to network, to learn and to have fun! WrotQA held a very successful TeamSTAR meet-up. Well done to the team involved! Keep reading to discover what was discussed at this meet-up.

Author: Lukasz Pietrucha, WrotQA

EuroSTAR TeamStar competition is all about community. We grew strong with that here in Wroclaw, keeping the community together for over 5 consecutive years up till now! When we’ve heard about the competition we simply just couldn’t resist to participate :). 

At WrotQA in Wroclaw, Poland we meet to share knowledge, gain insights, discuss difficult situations but all of that obviously around testing. Our goal is not only to hear the talk but actively engage participants into discussions and networking, thus each event has some extra activities included just to make sure people do not rush back home but rather stay with us to enjoy the evening. It was no different in September when we were hosted by NOKIA. 

Topic one: scaling Agile with SAFe. Where do you fit with your testing there? 

We live in demanding times where IT speeded up, even more, end-users are requesting a lot of customisation and self-service and we need to be able to deliver quickly and efficiently at the same time, without having to bargain the quality. How can tester found himself or herself in such a difficult setup? A well-established delivery framework could help for a start. Now NOKIA is dealing with huge and complex solutions, hiring over 4000 people in total in its engineering department. Simple agile just wasn’t enough – they needed to figure out the way to scale and so they started experimenting with SAFe. We’ve got some really interesting insights on how it works out for them, presented by Kamil Musiał. Check out some cherry-picked slides out of his presentation

Topic two: selecting the coding language for your solutions. Is it already affecting your quality?

Are you affecting your quality even before you start writing a single line of code? Well, you wouldn’t expect but you might already, even with as simple task as selecting a proper language for the proposed solution. 

During the second presentation of the evening we were going through some statistical analysis of major code flaws bound to specific language groups  – a lot of numbers for sure in this presentation but also an eye-opener towards “simplicity is a key”. The author himself is a huge fan of GO language, so his final thoughts were encouraging the audience to try it out (especially that according to presented data this particular language is in fact less error-prone!). 

To sum up: it was a really interesting evening, mostly around case studies and exchanging ideas. What we really like about our audience is that these are people that are eager to talk, sharing their perspectives, which eventually opens up some new interesting paths to try out in our organisations.

After all, it’s all about bringing the community together. 

Author: Lukasz Pietrucha

A HUGE well done to the WrotQA team on a great meet-up, it looks like everyone had a fantastic evening!

Join WrotQA on Facebook

Follow WrotQA on Twitter

EuroSTAR is all about connections, so we love seeing local testing communities come together to celebrate testing. SmartBear hosted a meet-up as part of the TeamSTAR Competition and it looked awesome (scroll down and have a look at the pictures and videos)! The event was a DOOM Hackathon and it was a great success.

Here’s what Patrick Caroll, (SmartBear) had to say about the event..

SmartBear DOOM Hackathon TeamSTAR Meet-up 2019

For our 2019 entry into the TeamStar meet-up competition, we wanted to create a software testing meet-up with a difference. Our goal was to host an event,  which was unique and fun, that brought the local testing community together.  With this in mind, our first priority was to setup an internal team. It was important for us to have a strong team that consisted of members across different departments, after all, we were entering a competition called TeamSTAR! So it made perfect sense to put teamwork at the front and centre of all aspects of our meet-up!

A Software Testing Meet-Up with a Twist

Our team consisted of members from our Marketing, Solutions Engineering and Development departments. With our team in place, next it was time for some good old fashioned brainstorming! During our brainstorming sessions it was decided to focus on five key objectives:

Our meet-up must be:

1. Informative
2. Fun & competitive
3. Involve teamwork
4. Desirable to software testers and developers
5. Help build relationships within the testing community in our local area

A Testing Challenge for Software Testers & Developers

After some more brainstorming sessions and discussions we had our idea, our team decided to host hackathon! But not just any old run of the mill hackathon. Our hackathon would have a testing twist, to test our testers! Our attendees/hackers were challenged to create an automatic speed run through the first level of the classic 90’s game DOOM, using only RESTful API calls.

What if John Romero was Involved?

We knew we wanted to hold a DOOM Hackathon, our next thought was imagining how crazy it would be if John Romero (the co-creator of DOOM) knew what we were planning on doing with his creation. So we decided to find out! After reaching out to John Romero, and discussing the event with him, he was more than happy to be involved and confirmed his support for the event.  John was also kind enough to visit our office, where he spent time discussing all things DOOM and of course our hackathon. He also kindly gave us some cool signed DOOM merchandise as prizes. But wait there’s more! The winning team would also get a tour of Romero Games and have a Q&A session with John himself.

Location, Location!

For our location we only had one place in mind – The PorterShed. The Portershed is the local innovation centre in Galway. They have always been more than supportive of our events in the past and as usual they were more than happy to accommodate our DOOM Hackathon.

Open Call for the DOOM Hackathon

We utilised many different digital channels to help promote the event to the testing community. To register for the event, attendees were required to register on a purpose built signup page on our website. We were amazed with the response! The demand for places was so great, we had to close registration after only a few days. To help attendees prepare, we created a series of emails, with instructions and videos to help them get ready for the hackathon. In total, we had 50 attendees, from 10 different companies based in Galway.

Pizza, Beer, Hacking & DOOM, Yes Please!

Before attendees arrived on the night, our team got to work setting up a reception area, where pizza and beer was served. With the food and small talk out of the way, it was time for the main course! Each team was shown to their team tables, were they would find a sign-in sheet, name tags (thanks for the name tags EuroSTAR!) and some cool SmartBear & EuroSTAR swag. After a brief presentation on the Hackathon rules, the upcoming EuroSTAR Conference and the TeamSTAR competition, we just had enough time for a couple of DOOM trivia questions before the hacking started!

A Night to Test the Testers

Our hackers used both SwaggerHub and SoapUI Pro during the competition.  SwaggerHub was used for the API documentation that allowed users to hack the game. While SoapUI Pro was used to send RESTful API requests to control the in-game character (DOOM Guy). Our very own Ole Lensmar (Creator of SoapUI) and Wes, couldn’t resist getting involved!  On the night we had a team of SmartBear experts on hand to help any teams who needed a little help or support. After two hours of furious hacking, eating and some drinking, we had a winner, Team EssentialSkillZ. They managed to hack the first level of DOOM, using only RESTful API calls in thirty eight seconds, amazing work guys! John would be proud of your automated speed run. We hope you enjoy your tour at Romero Games.

Closing Thoughts & Why We Love Working with EuroSTAR

At SmartBear, we pride ourselves on having a strong relationship with the software testing community. Nights like the DOOM Hackathon are a great way to promote the sharing of new and exciting ideas. The feedback from all participants was amazing, with many asking  “when is your next hackathon?”  We must also take this opportunity to extend a special thank you to all involved, this meet-up would not have been possible without all of your hard work and support. Our team would also like to acknowledge the pivotal role EuroSTAR play in supporting these local meet-ups. We would highly recommend organisations to get involved in the TeamSTAR Meet-Up Competition, as the experience and sense of community it provides is priceless! We are now looking forward to see you all at EuroSTAR in Prague, make sure you pop by the SmartBear booth, and ask Dermot about his DOOM experience!

Author; Patrick Carroll, SmartBear. View their blog post on the event.