Suzanne Meade

Exploring Stockholm’s Station Art

May 21, 2024 by Suzanne Meade

Stockholm, the vibrant capital of Sweden, is renowned for its rich cultural heritage, stunning architecture, and progressive urban design. When you are catching the train to Stockholmsmässan for the EuroSTAR Conference, check out the remarkable station art spread throughout the city’s metro system. These underground stations serve as canvases for artists to showcase their creativity, reflecting Sweden’s commitment to art accessibility and public engagement.

The Stockholm metro, also known as the Tunnelbana, is more than just a means of transportation. It’s a journey through time and artistry. With over 100 stations, each with its unique aesthetic, the metro system doubles as a sprawling art gallery. From colourful murals to intricate sculptures, every station offers something distinct, providing passengers with a visual feast.

The Origins of Station Art

The tradition of adorning metro stations with art dates back to the 1950s when Stockholm’s local government decided to invest in making public spaces more appealing. What began as an initiative to combat vandalism quickly evolved into a celebration of cultural expression. Today, the Stockholm metro boasts one of the most extensive and impressive collections of underground art worldwide.

The station art reflects a diverse range of themes and motifs, drawing inspiration from history, nature, mythology, and contemporary issues. Some stations pay homage to Sweden’s rural landscapes with depictions of forests, lakes, and wildlife, while others showcase abstract designs and avant-garde sculptures, pushing the boundaries of traditional art forms.

Notable Stations to Explore

T-Centralen: Serving as the central hub of Stockholm’s metro network, T-Centralen features mesmerizing blue-and-white artwork created by Swedish artist Per Olof Ultvedt. The ceiling resembles a starry night sky, with intricate patterns evoking constellations, offering commuters a celestial experience as they traverse the station’s bustling corridors.
Stadion: Designed by the celebrated artist Siri Derkert, Stadion station is a visual ode to the Olympic Games. Bold geometric shapes and vibrant colours adorn the walls, symbolizing athleticism, unity, and human achievement. The station’s dynamic energy captures the spirit of sport and camaraderie.
Kungsträdgården: Translating to “King’s Garden,” this station is a subterranean oasis adorned with relics of Stockholm’s past. Visitors are greeted by ancient sculptures, remnants of historical buildings, and fossilized tree stumps, reminiscent of an archaeological site. Kungsträdgården station serves as a time capsule, bridging the gap between the city’s past and present.

Station art in Stockholm transcends mere decoration; it serves as a catalyst for social engagement and dialogue. By integrating art into everyday spaces, the city fosters a sense of community ownership and pride. Whether commuting to the EuroSTAR Conference or exploring the city’s hidden gems during conference week, every journey through the Stockholm metro is a voyage through art and imagination.

The Art of Fika in Stockholm

May 16, 2024 by Suzanne Meade

As you gear up for the EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference in the vibrant city of Stockholm, there’s one local tradition you simply can’t afford to miss – Fika. Pronounced “fee-ka,” this Swedish coffee break ritual embodies the essence of social connection, relaxation, and indulgence in the midst of a busy day.

More than Coffee and Cake

In Sweden, Fika isn’t merely about grabbing a quick caffeine fix or satisfying your sweet tooth. It’s a cherished tradition deeply ingrained in the fabric of Swedish culture. Picture this: it’s 10 a.m. or 3 p.m., and you find yourself sitting with colleagues, friends, or even newfound connections from the conference. You’re sipping on a steaming cup of coffee or tea, accompanied by delectable pastries like cinnamon buns or a variety of other baked goods. Fika offers more than just a culinary experience – it’s a moment of respite, rejuvenation, and meaningful connection.

Popular Fika Spots in Stockholm

During your time in Stockholm, you’ll find ample opportunities to partake in Fika. Here are some recommended spots in the city center – just 10 minutes by train from Stockholmsmässan:

Café Pascal: Nestled in the heart of Stockholm, Café Pascal is a cozy haven for Fika enthusiasts. Indulge in their freshly brewed coffee and mouthwatering pastries while soaking in the charming ambiance.
Fabrique Bakery: With multiple locations across Stockholm, Fabrique Bakery is renowned for its artisanal bread, pastries, and, of course, Fika offerings. Treat yourself to their signature cinnamon buns or cardamom rolls for a truly authentic Swedish experience.
Drop Coffee: For coffee connoisseurs seeking a premium Fika experience, Drop Coffee is the place to be. This specialty coffee roastery and café boasts a carefully curated selection of beans and a cozy atmosphere perfect for savoring your coffee break.
Vete-Katten: Step back in time at Vete-Katten, a historic café dating back to 1928. Located in the heart of Stockholm, this iconic establishment exudes old-world charm and serves up a delectable array of traditional Swedish pastries and cakes.

So, if you are attending the EuroSTAR 2024 Software Testing Conference in Stockholm this June, don’t forget to pause, take a deep breath, and indulge in the art of Fika.

How to get a Talk Accepted

August 25, 2023 by Suzanne Meade

The EuroSTAR 2024 Call for Submissions is open until 17^th September, and our Programme Committee, Michael Bolton (Chair), Ru Cindrea, Bas Dijkstra, Baldvin Gislason Bern, and Tanja Vos. are calling for testers, developers and quality professionals to submit their talk proposals for the 2024 programme.

In this blog post, Michael shares tips on what style of talks he’s keen to add to the line-up.

Greetings friends,

Here are a couple of things that you might want to consider for EuroSTAR 2024 that could help your submission to fit the theme, or otherwise to be successful.

People are hungry for stories, so that’s what we’re looking for. The theme is a question “What are we doing here?” and that isn’t quite the same as “What have we done?” Consider stories about the testing that you’re doing at the moment, even if it’s work in progress.

Either way, your story need not be about successes. Your presentation can be failures you’ve experienced and problems you’ve encountered, whether you managed to resolve them or not. Some of the most interesting and compelling conference talks I’ve attended have involved trouble and getting around it. Others have ended with “to be continued”. You may even have attendees coming to you with suggestions afterwards!

“What are we doing here?” could be about something that’s happening, at the conference, in the room where we’re gathering. Whether you’re doing a tutorial, a workshop, or a track talk, consider something experiential: a quick exercise, a role play a game, or a puzzle to work through. Give people a chance to meet, chat, and collaborate.

Moreover, the EuroSTAR community is an enormous resource. Hundreds of people with diverse skills and rich experience are eager to share their ideas with you, and to offer help with puzzles and problems that you may be trying to work through. During the discussions, after your story of what we’re doing here, you may get terrific insights on what they’re doing there.

Before you submit, it can help to ask a colleague or friend to read your abstract and learnings, so you get immediate feedback on whether it engages them and captures their attention. Below you’ll hear from the EuroSTAR team as they give you insights on the overall programme selection process.

Until next time,

Michael

EuroSTAR 2024 Programme Chair

Start Submission

How are talks selected?

The EuroSTAR programme process is as transparent as possible. Once all the submissions are in, they are independently reviewed by a team of 40-50 community reviewers. Reviewers are members of the testing community that volunteer their time to help read a selection of talks and then score them for:

Engagement – Does the talk appeal to you? Will the attendees engage with it?
Original Ideas – Has it all been heard before or are there new ideas that will excite and energise the listeners?
Scope & Relevance to the theme – is it in keeping with the 2024 theme “What Are We Doing Here?”

Reviewers see only the talk details (not the speaker) so every submitter has an equal opportunity. If you are unsure of how to write a good submission, get in touch and we’ll help guide you.

Each talk has 5 reviews and then the scores are averaged. The top scoring talks will be the main basis for the programme. There will be some invited speakers (like all conferences) but the majority of talks come from the above blind review process.

If you’d like to be part of the review panel, please contact our Programme Manager, Siobhán.

If you are thinking of submitting a talk proposal, check out the full Call for Speakers detailing potential topics and what the EuroSTAR 2024 Committee are looking for.

Over 55% of the speakers at EuroSTAR 2023 were speaking for the first or second time, that’s in 31 years of EuroSTAR Conferences so there is always a mix of voices on the EuroSTAR stage. If you’ve submitted before and didn’t make the programme, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help.

Tips for Preparing an Online Talk

June 16, 2021 by Suzanne Meade

Speaking in front of an audience can be daunting and thrilling at the same time. There are many ways to become a better speaker or perhaps you are a great speaker and looking to fine tune your skills. Over the past year, speakers all over the world came to grips with virtual talks and began adjusting their approach to online. In November we hosted the very first EuroSTAR Online and it was awesome! Everyone learnt so much, both the attendees that joined us and the speakers who were giving virtual talks, a new experience for many!

This year, EuroSTAR Online is back and taking place 28-30 September. We are welcoming 57 speakers from 14 different countries and will be organising community sessions throughout the conference which will bring even more speakers to the virtual EuroSTAR stage.

A number of experienced EuroSTAR speakers have come together to share their top tips for preparing for your talk. We hope these help you!

Keep it short, keep it focused.

I know that all your ideas are totally brilliant, but you really do only have 20 minutes to get one idea across and embedded into your audience’s minds. With a typically tight schedule and an abundance of interesting information, you will need to be tactical about this.

Try this: Put each point you have onto a separate, rough slide, then practice talking through each slide. You will run over the 20 minutes. Now, think about your one central message, that one idea you need inside people’s minds at the end. Ask yourself – is the point on this slide absolutely necessary to that message? If not, ruthlessly cut that slide out. Also, cut it out, don’t trim it down, hoping that you can briefly cover this plus a myriad of other points. You most likely can’t.

If you think it tough to get your idea over in only 20 minutes, have a look at a few of the totally brilliant TED talks for inspiration; none of which are longer than this time.

The above tips are provided by Andrew Brown of Expleo. Check out Andrew’s talk on Software Quality and Human Factors – our next challenge at EuroSTAR 2021

Your talk is a distillation of your knowledge.

In general for presenting: Your presentation is a distillation of what you know. Remember you have a story to tell, which needs to be gripping. But to tell your story – to make the distillation – you need to know the back-story. In other words, you have more material in your mind and your notes than you will present, because you won’t have time. Having that background will help you tell your story. Writing a paper can give you the chance to expand on your ideas. Think how J K Rowling built up a whole world: her notebooks have details that didn’t make it into the books, and the books have details that didn’t get to the films.

Take time to set up your recording location.

For speaking on-line on zoom: Take a few minutes to get set up, as people are going to have to look at you and your backdrop for the duration of the talk. Check your camera angle, background, appearance before you start – for example if this is a zoom meeting, you can check your set up before the meeting by having a zoom meeting by yourself to see what you look and sound like. Plain background, and check there is nothing that shouldn’t be visible in the broadcast. Raise your laptop/device up so it is level with your face (I put my laptop on a shoe box) – then you won’t be filming the inside of your nose. Lighting from the side and front, not from the back, gives a good light to your face.

Isabel Evans provided the above tips and you can check out Isabel’s talk on Who are we? What are we doing? How are we doing it? at EuroSTAR 2021.

Imagine your talk is a Q&A.

Many speakers are much better in Q&A than presenting their topic from prepared slides, so turn this to your benefit: Imagine your talk is a Q&A and think about what questions your audience would ask. Structure your talk in a way like you would answer these assumed questions. You can even show or say out loud the question you are going to address as a kind of section intro. This way you can ensure that your talk will be more relevant. When you record/present the talk, imagine a person behind the camera as one who was asking the questions – it will appear more natural both for you, and also your audience.

Gáspár Nagy is a coach and trainer with Spec Solutions. Check out Gáspár’s talk on Living Documentation with BDD: Structure, Consistency, Traceability at EuroSTAR 2021.

Keep it Simple

Don’t try to squeeze too much in! I was really challenged with the shorter 20-minute time that works best for online talks compared with the usual longer 40 minute in-person track session. I created a shorter presentation focused on fewer key points, took some notes, and did a dry-run or two on my own to ensure that I did not run over.

Practice

Do a couple of dry runs so that you are certain about what you want to say, how you are going to get your message through. The better prepared you are, the less focused on your notes during the presentation.

Stand Up!

If at all possible, stand up during your presentation 🙂 I found that I got more energy when I was standing up, and using my gestures as I would normally do in a physical presentation.

Gitte Ottosen (Key2Quality) won the EuroSTAR 2020 Best Paper Award. Check out Gitte’s talk on Quality is not about testing… It’s about value! at EuroSTAR 2021.

Everyone has their own approach to speaking and these are just a few helpful tips for giving an online talk. If you are attending EuroSTAR and wish to get involved in hosting a Community session then keep an eye on your emails this summer. We will release all details of how to get involved and would love to welcome you. We will also be hosting a free community event Testing Voices on 29th June if you’d like to attend.

In the meantime, check out the full EuroSTAR Programme and get in touch if you have any questions.

Understanding the DevTestOps Journey

March 24, 2021 by Suzanne Meade

Understanding the DevTestOps Journey

For the last two years, our team has hosted the Testing in DevOps Landscape Survey to take the pulse on how quality testing is evolving as adoption of DevOps grows. We turn to our dedicated community and the software development industry at large to understand how quality engineering is shaping the adoption of DevOps practices, how they champion the customer experience in a rapid development framework, and what obstacles remain in the way.

Last year, an incredible 1,030 people with experience in QA management, testing, and development shared their insights. Their expertise resulted in an in-depth look into how test automation is elevating the voice of quality in a DevOps world. We hope you will help us again this year to collect the data we need to understand the current state and what’s changed over the past year. We are especially looking forward to learning about how teams are adapting to the global pandemic and the impact it’s had on their digital transformation objectives.

In case you missed it, the 2020 DevTestOps Landscape Survey found that most participants were making good progress in their DevOps adoption journey, with 31% saying they were agile and 35% saying they had made strides towards DevOps. Almost one-fifth described themselves as “so DevOps it hurts.” What’s more, the 2020 survey revealed the close connection between DevOps adoption and customer satisfaction:

This year, we are increasing the focus on solving the real-world challenges of DevOps implementation, especially in a virtual world. With the customer experience front-and-center post-2020, we want to understand how DevOps practitioners are rethinking long-term quality and testing strategies, where testing takes place in the DevOps pipeline, and what the overall QA impact is on the customer. We also want to dig deeper into what challenges remain and what’s top of mind as we head into 2021.

Your experience is valuable to us! Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey today. With your help, we look forward to learning and sharing these important benchmarks and insights early this summer.

mabl are Gold Sponsors at the 2021 EuroSTAR Software Testing conference, which takes place 28-30 September this year. The programme will be launched soon, so stay tuned!

Author: Izzy Azeri

Izzy Azeri is the co-founder of mabl, the leading test automation tool built for DevOps. He co-founded mabl in 2017 with Dan Belcher after realizing that existing software testing tools were unable to support the needs of high-velocity development teams. Mabl is now the leading intelligent test automation tool for quality-centric brands like Ritual, Charles Schwab, and Arch Insurance. The company has raised over $36 million from prominent VC firms such as GV (formerly Google Ventures), Amplify Partners, CRV, and Presidio Ventures.

EuroSTAR Programme Review Process

March 1, 2021 by Suzanne Meade

Ever wonder how conference submissions are reviewed or how the overall review process works? Well we can tell you that the EuroSTAR Conference Programme is the culmination of a community wide collaboration.

Led and crafted by the EuroSTAR Committee, who first call for submissions in line with a theme chosen by the Programme Chair. In 2021, this is Fran O’Hara. Testers far and wide then submit their suggested talks. Each year, there are hundreds of submissions to be reviewed, and, in order to create a balanced and varied programme, each submission is reviewed by up to 5 people (anonymously i.e. talk details viewed, not the submitters’ name).

This is where the community get involved and each year, the EuroSTAR team welcome reviewers from the testing community. Some are past speakers, some have been involved with shaping EuroSTAR since the beginning and all are valued members of the EuroSTAR family.

This is time intensive and we are very grateful to each of our reviewers for their time and dedication. Following the community review, the Programme Committee will then come together to start crafting this year’s programme of talks.

This blog is a behind the scenes introduction to a first time reviewers experience, written by Sérgio Freire of Xray, and details how he approached his reviews.

EuroSTAR Behind the Scenes – Sérgio’s Experience

I was invited to review some submissions for EuroSTAR 2021 testing conference. I had never done it before, and even if time is scarce I understand that this is important for many who submit during the Call For Speakers; it’s also a learning experience for me. But how have I tackled this task? How can I make sure I’m fair enough to everyone? Can I test my review process somehow? This is the story of how I tested my review process. Let’s check it out.

Background

Before starting, it’s important to understand the conference context. EuroSTAR 2021 theme is “Engage”. Engagement is a broad topic. It’s about involvement, commitment, challenging, seeking understanding. We deep dive problems and challenges, we embrace them and we overcome them, no matter if they live within us or in our teams. Engaging is, in my perspective, about giving a step forward.

Infrastructure and supporting assets

The review was done using an online tool where we can easily jump between submissions. The tool itself has an interesting and scary bug that may mislead you to think that your already reviewed submissions/scores are lost… however, I found out that it is just a UI glitch 🙂 a forced browser refresh solved the issue.

EuroSTAR Programme Submission tool

To assist me as a reviewer, I had scoring instructions that I read before starting reviewing the submissions. These instructions were always open in one of my screens.

Criteria

There were 5 main criteria for me to score:

engaging
new ideas
scope
relevant to theme
overall feeling

I felt a bit of doubts on “engaging” vs “relevant to theme”, as the theme is “engaging” and thus some overlap exists. I used the scoring instructions several times, to decide how to score each one of them. Nevertheless, I would prefer a more clear separation between them as they’re not independent variables. The “scope” criterion also left me some doubts, as we’ll see ahead. Finally, there was an open text field “comments” where we could leave a qualitative assessment.

How I did it?

Day 1

I had a setup a quiet room (i.e. my office), so I could read and think carefully. I went over each one of the submissions and scored them; I skipped the “comments” section on purpose so I could not loose much time with them in the first iteration but also to try avoid a bit of bias. Whenever scoring, I regularly looked the scoring instructions if some criteria was not clear to me. I noticed that I was probably assigning “scope” not the meaning it should, as the scoring values were almost identical. Even so, I decided to look at it more carefully on a second iteration. Besides leaving the scores on the online tool, I also took notes in a spreadsheet; thus, I would have a backup 🙂 and I could use it for analysis.

EuroSTAR Programme Review Process

After scoring all submissions, I decided to go over the submissions once again to leave qualitative comments, that I structured in these bullets:

First impressions: Mostly based on the title and takeaways.
Takeaways & The Day After: Is it clear what to learn in the end of this session?
Final assessment: My overall feeling, i.e. a brief summary.
Would I attend: A yes or no, or eventually a perhaps.
Cliffhanger/invite to discover: Was there any mystery left? Any invite to learn something intesting during the session?
Suitable for: beginner, intermediate, advanced.

I was curious to understand if I had some bias that would be reflected more towards time. Thus, I traced a chart with the average scored and a trend line. The result was not shocking. I also made a column with the max score I add assigned in a specific criterion… and I didn’t see any relevant change with time.

Sergio's review process

I slept over and I was curious to see what would happen whenever I iterated on this.

Day 2

I went over the submissions once again, but in reversed order. Why? To avoid some possible bias related with time and exhaustion.

In terms of criteria, I also did a subtle change. While in the first day I considered “scope” as the criterion for being adequate for the time slot, in the second day I considered more the message clarity because it would be a factor that would help the fit for the available time slot.

Even though overall scoring is a bit lower, the results are not very different from the 1st iteration, where the chart shows also a similar trend line.

EuroSTAR Programme Review

In the spreadsheet, I calculated the absolute difference on the average and on the total score.

Sergio's blog

I flagged in red suspicious cases, that would affect my confidence:

absolute average scoring difference >= 0.5
absolute difference in individual scores > 1
absolute total scoring difference > 2

Gladly, only a few reviews appear that I need to have a look at once again. After going over them (i.e. scoring) in this localized 3rd iteration, I seem to be in my confidence interval except for one submission that remains flagged. Why? Well, because in the total score it had 3 points of difference. I read that submission all over and scored it once again. In the end, it was once again in my confidence interval.

sergio review process chart

Remember the “Comments” section? Well, I decided to go over it and look at “would I attend” bullet and compare it with the “overall feeling” criterion, that implictly should have that reflected. I notice that my decision to attend was correlated with the “overall feeling” criterion but it was not a consequence of it.

Conclusions and final thoughts

On the review process

I had quite a few doubts at start, especially this one: am I going to be fair? But also, I had doubts about how I would perform in this task, my biases, etc.

After looking at the results, my first iteration was trustworthy. I scored the submissions a bit lower during the second day, when I performed the 2nd, 3rd and 4th iterations. However, my first iteration was balanced and scores should reflect that.

I don’t assign 5 or 0 easily. I need to be quite impressed or reject something completely, which for me was not the case.

Scoring talks can be relatively fast but if you want to implement a process such as this one or your own, you’ll spend a lot more time. Even if you don’t, if you consider all the points that can affect a single criterion then it will consume more time indeed.

This whole process of revieweing submissions is also a discovery process about how each one of us works and is able of handling tasks. What works for someone, may not work for someone else.

On submitting a talk

Talks touch us in subtle different ways, so we value them differently. It makes sense, from a quality perspective: we assign value accordingly with our own definition of quality.

There are some generic rules that apply though in most cases and questions that you can think of:

Having a clear message, not that long not that short is crucial; if we get lost, we tend do discard it rightaway.
Why should we attend? What can we expect from it?
How will that talk help the attendee?
How does that talk align with conference?
Is it presenting something new, or your own learnings and challenges?

I’ve done a few submissions on the past and I have been unlucky most times. Yes, true. Therefore, I still have much to learn in this matter. I remember when I did a scientific submission for a Usenix conference few years ago, and even though it was a different audience, I had to iterate on the paper a couple of times before it was accepted and I was invited to present. Therefore, as everything, we need to iterate and learn.

Going over this review process, being on the other side of the fence, made even more clear some points mentioned above. By understanding the challenges a reviewer faces, when looking at dozens of submissions, I am a bit more aware of the things I need to have in mind for any submissions I may perform in the future.

It was an interesting thing to do and I’ve learned a bit more on the overall process of submitting (and reviewing) talks for testing conferences. I also appreciate the effort reviewers and program committees have to make, no matter what conference we’re talking about, because this is a process that requires considerable effort if you want to do it right and make it fair.

Note: the 2021 EuroSTAR Conference is taking place 28-30 September this year instead of November and the programme is usually launched at the end of April.

RECEIVE EUROSTAR PROGRAMME NEWS

Sérgio Freire – Xpand IT – Portugal

Sérgio Freire is a solution architect and testing advocate, working closely with many teams worldwide from distinct yet highly demanding sectors (Automotive, Health, and Telco among others) to help them achieve great, high-quality, testable products. By understanding how organizations work, their needs, context and background, processes and quality can be improved, while development and testing can “merge” towards a common goal: provide the best product that stakeholders need.

Sérgio spoke at EuroSTAR 2020 and you can check out his personal blog at www.sergiofreire.com

Why Speak at the EuroSTAR Conference

January 21, 2021 by Suzanne Meade

An experience talk from EuroSTAR 2020 speaker, Jorgen Lund:

Speaking at a conference is a daunting task for most people. There are so many inner voices telling you why you can’t or shouldn’t do it. I want to be that outer voice, telling you why you CAN and why you SHOULD!

My name is Jørgen. I’m a two-time, moderately successful speaker at EuroSTAR. I’m also suffering from some undiagnosed stage fright/anxiety.

Being anxious about doing public presentations is a common phobia – but we all experience it in different ways. I’ll tell you my story, and hopefully you can relate.

In school, I was a really obnoxious child. Sitting in the front row, raising my hand every time the teacher asked a question, and never being shy about pointing out others’ mistakes. I was also the smallest boy in the class, had a funny voice and some front teeth that were eager to see the world, until I had dental correction done in the 8^th grade – making me an easy victim for kids to get back at me. Being good at school stuff was my one thing to hang my hat on.

But answering questions is one matter – you can pop your head up when you have something to say. Attending oral exams – when you’re in front of people who don’t know you, but judge you based on your knowledge and ability to present it, is another. I worried for days ahead. And in the moment, I couldn’t think clearly, my heart was racing, my speech stumbled, and my mouth dried up in seconds. In high school for an oral exam, I got so nervous that I vomited in a trash bin when I had to pick the exam question (fun fact: a friend told me, when I told this story, she had done the same thing – you’re not alone out there!).

I’m 40 now – and while school and high school are a long time ago, those traits are still part of me today. Every public speaking engagement is a new exam. The good news is that it hasn’t stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. When I’ve opened up about my anxiety, I have found nothing but empathy and understanding – and I may have finally started realizing that many of the small mistakes that pile up in my head, are sometimes imperceptible to those listening.

I hope that by sharing my story and offering a few hints about my own EuroSTAR presentation, I can encourage you to quiet your inner critic for a short while and submit your story – big or small!

Why you CAN

First, a few words on psychology that has helped me see the world in a different way. I’m no expert – I only hold a YouTube degree in basic psychology. It helps me to understand my responses to certain situations – which is a good way for me to ‘hack’ my anxiety. I also have the attention span of a TED talk, so instead of recommending some books to collect dust on the shelf, I’ve included a few inspirational videos.

At EuroSTAR 2019, I was introduced to Carol Dweck’s theory on growth mindset vs. fixed mindset and the impact of a growth mindset’s ability for kids to thrive and succeed in school. A central part of a growth mindset is understanding that you’re always on a journey towards something. I think in many ways EuroSTAR embodies a growth mindset. Nobody attends to test if you know your stuff. People come to the conference to learn, connect, share, inspire and be inspired. I’ve met nothing but curious, helpful, friendly and compassionate people – from the delegates to the speakers, and the whole EuroSTAR staff. If you’re selected to speak, you are among friends all the way, who only want to help you succeed.

https://youtu.be/hiiEeMN7vbQ

The second part is about Imposter Syndrome. If you feel like you’re not skilled enough, not eloquent enough, or your ideas are not interesting to others to stand on that stage – there’s an above average chance that you’re doing just fine, and you’re just suffering from this common condition. Don’t let that nagging doubt convince you that you shouldn’t give it a go. Mike Cannon-Brookes, who’s the CEO of a ‘small’ Aussie tech company called Atlassian made a TED talk on the subject here:

https://youtu.be/ZkwqZfvbdFw

Why you SHOULD

Are you passionate about testing or other aspects of your work life? Then I’m sure there is someone out there who wants to hear about your passion!

EuroSTAR is a very diverse crowd. Some attendees have been around since the beginning – others are attending their first conference. Their projects and organizations are diverse as well. What’s trivial to some, will be a real eye-opener to others. Each year, the programme committee put together a program that has something for everybody – which means that what is near to your heart, is likely to appeal to somebody else as well.

Another reason why you should apply is, it’s good for you! You get to practice a lot of useful skills – writing a good abstract, creating a video to present your idea and showcase your speaking style (unless you’re part of the Tik Tok generation who grew up recording yourself) – and if you get selected, putting together a good presentation, and getting some experience under your belt in front of a crowd of wonderful people. And if you don’t get selected, maybe your idea will mature for another year and you’ll be clearer on your message, or you’ll get a new and even better idea that might not have come if you didn’t submit the first one!

It is likely to put you out of your comfort zone – but you’re never in too deep, and you’re always among friends. You don’t grow as a person if you don’t occasionally push the boundaries a bit!

My EuroSTAR Experience

By some miracle, I got selected to speak at EuroSTAR back in 2014. It wasn’t a great performance by any means, and the feedback reflected as much. It’s been nagging at the back of my head for a while. After some years of shying away, I applied again in 2019 where I didn’t get selected. I did attend the conference in 2019 as a delegate and really got hit by the EuroSTAR bug again. I wanted to go back! When the theme for 2020 was announced at the end of the conference, I was all in. Testing in the Wild. My biggest passion, making software that works for our military customers in the wild, was right in line with the theme.

I put all my energy into making a good abstract. I solicited help from some colleagues to zoom in on the key points of my presentation. I’ve shared my ideas with testers in my own department, testers in other departments, and colleagues in other job functions as well. It helped me get a better grasp of what was important, and whether it would be relevant to others as well.

The EuroSTAR team highly recommends submitting a video along with your abstract. This was another one of those mental barriers for me, but I enlisted the help of some colleagues in our marketing department to help me record it. Being comfortable in front of a camera and a crowd of one was a good, first step for me. I also sent the final result to my parents to see – for some reason it’s less scary for me to get up in front of a crowd of strangers than to present it to the people close to me.

I went into the registration system early to learn what information was required. At first, it was a bit overwhelming for me, so taking the time to letting the sections materialize really helped. I maintained an offline copy of the registration formular until I was ready to submit. The system does allow you to save a draft online, but I found it more accessible in a separate document – and easier to get feedback from my colleagues. There’s also some bits in there, like writing a bio and summarizing your speaking experience that takes a little time – don’t let it linger till the last minute.

It was a nerve-racking period for me, trying to put together the best possible presentation, and then enduring the excruciating waiting period until the speakers were announced. I had poured my heart and soul into it, and if it wasn’t gonna happen this year I would have been at a loss of what I could have done better. But in the end, it was all worth it, and getting accepted was a great confidence booster.

Since this post is already getting very long, I’ll spare you the details of how the preparation and presentation itself went – but in the end it turned out alright. I got a very respectable grade for my presentation. As a true imposter, I of course don’t trust any of the nice things people say to me – but anonymous reviews is a small window of truth!

After EuroSTAR, my colleagues in the marketing department were kind enough to put together a small video spot (shameless self/company promo alert). I can tell that I’m nervous in the video, but I feel that I’ve managed to not sound like a complete idiot – which is a major milestone for me! So even if it was a long and stressful journey, I can see the progress I’ve made

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/systematic_walk-a-mile-in-your-users-boots-activity-6737715389016375296-vGZ_

To sum it all up in the immortal words of the British speed metal band Dragonforce:

We all face our fears in the world,

We all hold our place in the (EuroSTAR) universe,

For eternity…

Check out the EuroSTAR Call for Speakers and consider submitting for this year. Submissions close on November 15th.

Author

Jørgen Lund, Systematic A/S, Denmark

After graduating with a master’s degree in Computer Science, I found my way into testing. Over the past 12 years, I have been part of building, testing, training, deploying and supporting software for our users – and I have used all of the knowledge gathered to become a better tester. Today, I work as a Senior Test Manager where I coach other Test Managers and Testers, implement strategic initiatives and train new employees in testing.

EuroSTAR 2020 – A Sketchnoter’s Summary Part I

November 20, 2020 by Suzanne Meade

The year 2020 brings a lot of challenges to everybody. To the EuroSTAR Conference team as well. They were having the challenge of finding a solution of how to let the 2020 conference edition take place. The team came up with an online version which made it possible to attend the conference from all over the world. More than 800 attendees joined the conference. But a conference doesn’t only mean great speakers, informative talks and useful tutorials – it also means networking with attendees and speakers, visiting the Test Clinic, doing a softbox testing, join product demos of the sponsors at the expo and much more. The conference team managed to bring all those parts online. So apart from the tutorials and the conference talks, there were also Ask Me Anything sessions with the speakers, Lean Coffee sessions, informative sessions about topics like diversity, wellbeing and career advance, Yoga sessions and product demos. It was possible to visit the expo during the whole conference to meet the sponsors and learn about their products. And what was another highlight to meet fellow testers: there was the possibility to do SpeedMeets.

Nevertheless, of course the tutorials and the talks are very important for making a conference a success. And I wouldn’t be the official sketchnotes reporter of the EuroSTAR Conference 2020 if I wouldn’t share my sketchnotes with you. So I will tell you more about the tutorials and the talks I have attended by sharing my sketchnotes with you.

Day 1 – Tutorial Day

For the tutorial day, 7 half-day tutorials have been chosen by the program committee. When I heard that the tutorials will still take place, although the conference takes place online, I was really happy. For me, as an introvert, it is not very easy to join a tutorial on-site. Being in the comfort of my own home, it was an amazing chance for me to take part in two tutorials, which I would have to mentally prepare for a lot if they would take place offline.

So the first tutorial that I have attended was “Think like a tester” by Rikard Edgren (who by the way won the award for the best tutorial). The attendees learned a lot about different types of thinking and how that can help us testers in our daily life.

The second tutorial that I’ve attended was “Answering hard questions: A tester’s communication clinic” by Michael Bolton. In this tutorial the attendees have learned a lot about what makes questions hard to answer and tips on how to answer them/deal with them anyway.

Day 2

The second day has started with the Keynote “Develop a quality narrative that communicates the true value of quality” held by Ronald Cummings-John. Ronald was talking about how to create a culture of quality that supports growth, how to increase your level of influence and how to show the value of your work.

The next talk was “Testing SAFely – Finding your way in the Scaled Agile Framework” held by Gitte Ottosen. It posed a number of questions such as what is the Agile release train? What are the challenges that might occur? And how to overcome these challenges.

Following Gitte’s talk was the session “The power of diversity in cross-functional mob programming” by Cindy Duflot. Mob programming is a way of collaboration that gets more and more common. Look at the sketchnote to find out about benefits, caveats and learnings.

Then it was already time for the mid-day keynote. Abby Bangser‘s topic was “Unlock the power of testing in production with observability“. Abby had three wishes:

having confidence about validating success and supporting users post-deployment
safely receiving feedback from data and scale
validate production configurations with targeted users

And that’s how testing in production and observability have helped her:

The (testing) world is rapidly changing and that was also the topic of Ryan Volker‘s talk: “Your testing habitat is rapidly changing. Are you?” There are a lot of threats nowadays which can affect the job of a tester. So Ryan had 5 ideas on how to deal with those threats: inaction or action, evolving ecosystem, rise above, promote new voices and reasons for optimism.

Mobile test automation can be really challenging. Niranjani Manoharan gave a talk about “Turning your mobile test automation into a Cinderella story” in which she was talking about the challenges you might encounter on your journey and how to tackle them.

Sanne Visser is the RisingSTAR Winner 2018. This year she was talking about blockchain and “Why bug classifications matter“. Find out more about the relevant taxonomies and how to test them by having a look at the sketchnote:

“Let’s talk about problems” is a very fitting title for the last talk of the first day was a keynote by Michael Bolton, which was more or less a conversation between him and Zeger van Hese. What is a problem? And why are testers good at finding them? When they find them – what will they do with these findings? And how can testers find problems better?

At the end of the day there was a Trivia Night in which the attendees could attend and show their knowledge about different topics, not just testing-related topics. I didn’t stay until the end but from the chat messages it seems that it has been a fun evening.

About The Author

Katja Budnikov is a software tester and sketch noter from Northern Germany. Katja is passionate about software testing and sketch noting! She loves attending events like EuroSTAR and sharing her experience and learnings with others on her blog Katjasays.com. Katja first started sketchnoting in 2016. First analogue with pen and paper and now digitally with an iPad and Apple Pencil.

In her work life Katja started out in online marketing, then specialized in search engine optimisation and is now a quality assurance specialist in both manual and automated software testing. Away from work Katja loves photography, especially taking photos of nature, including many of her dog Auri, a young Australian Shepherd, who is super cute and fun to take photos of. She loves to spend time with her dog and partner, going out for walks, traveling and eating cake at a nearby coffee shop with a beautiful garden.