EuroSTAR Conference

This year’s EuroSTAR tutorials feature 10 in-depth sessions from expert speakers. This is your chance to learn new skills through interactive group work, practical examples, and hands-on exercises. Our tutorial trainers will share their triumphs – and mistakes – so that you learn from real experience.

Want to learn more about how biases affect your testing? Improve your critical thinking skills? Learn new concepts and testing tools? This is where it all happens.

Full-day tutorials

1. Shaping testing – A simulation in scrum | Fran O’Hara

It’s reported that approximately 80% of agile organisations are using Scrum and its hybrids. However, the majority of organisations are still at the earlier stages in their evolution. One of the challenges they face is quality and testing. In this simulation at Fran’s tutorial, you’ll work as part of a Scrum team focusing solely on the test and quality-related aspects.

You’ll get insights, knowledge, and skills to help shape your team’s approach to quality and testing throughout the agile lifecycle. You’ll also be faced with a series of challenges/scenarios often faced by testers during the sprint. You’ll walk away with a toolbox of ways to solve the typical problems that impact on test and quality in Scrum.

2. Developing critical thinking skills for testers | Andrew Brown

Critical thinking skills are essential to testing – but rarely taught. We’re also vulnerable to cognitive biases and thinking traps when we test – that can catch out even the most seasoned tester. One of the most common thinking traps we face is that we tend to think in ways that confirm our existing beliefs, rather than challenging those beliefs.

This tutorial will reveal your vulnerability to this bias, then show you how to mitigate it. Throughout you’ll learn exercises to explore your biases, and how reasoning does not use logic – or at least not rational logic. Rather, we use logic based upon social permissions and cheater detection. You will use this to explore how to write better tests by rephrasing testing requirements in terms of social logic. At the end, you’ll have ways to improve your testing by enhancing your critical thinking skills.

3. Test design with data combination testing and classification trees | Rik Marselis

Test case design is one of the core competences of the quality engineering & testing profession. If you want to properly shape your testing, which test design technique(s) do you use? And is it effective and efficient? What coverage can you achieve? Rik explores the Data Combination Test design technique, which uses Classification Trees.

This technique can be combined with 3 different coverage types, so you have a great way to align with the risk level of the application. Join Rik’s tutorial on DCT & CT and start applying his techniques, the very next day you return to work.

4. Automate BDD scenarios with SpecFlow | Gáspar Nagy

SpecFlow is the official Cucumber implementation for .NET, and if you want to speed up automating BDD scenarios with SpecFlow, this workshop is for you. Gáspar will give you a very brief introduction to BDD/ATDD, the most important characteristics of good BDD scenarios, before getting into coding in order to learn about the most important features of SpecFlow.

This is your opportunity to learn about the BDD automation workflow, and see how the test-first approach can help you to get quick feedback about the quality. You’ll also see on what levels you can automate the application with BDD, and how to make a good mix of them to get a sustainable testing strategy.

Half-day tutorials

5. Questions, questions | James Lyndsay

At this interactive workshop, you’ll learn techniques to obtain more useful information quickly, ask the right questions at the right time, and learn where to go next. James will show you how to recognise types of questions, the contexts in which you might use them, and the people you might ask.

The tutorial also looks at ways you can use questions poorly: loaded and leading questions, questions designed to trick or trip, questions which go over the same ground, and other anti-patterns. You’ll know how to ask more purposeful and focused questions, and see the patterns, gaps and opportunities in your own questions.

6. From business workflows to automated tests | Anne Kramer

With the deployment of agile development practices, QA & testing teams are challenged by the acceleration of production releases, and the imperative of test automation. These challenges make test relevance, and the alignment of these tests with business needs, even more crucial. After all, what would be the economic justification of investing in automation and maintenance of tests that do not properly reflect the business needs?

This tutorial introduces you a visual TDD approach (Acceptance Test Driven Development). In this approach, the test requirements are expressed in graphical workflows. You’ll build a graphical test workflow for a simple functional scope proposed as a practical exercise. Learn how to express business needs and test requirements in the form of graphical workflows and appreciate the collaborative contribution of this visual representation.

7.  Exploring context driven testing & exploratory testing | Nancy Kelln

More testers are gravitating towards using exploratory testing and context driven testing techniques in their organizations. However, as testers start to embrace these testing methodologies, they are uncovering questions in their implementation. In this half-day workshop, you’ll explore the various aspects of testing including test planning, test design, test execution, and test reporting, from the exploratory testing mindset.

You’ll also learn how to prepare your organization for the shift from more traditional methods to exploratory testing methods. You’ll leave with an understanding of how to implement exploratory testing concepts through all the phases of test planning, design, execution, and reporting.

8. Automatic accessibility testing for all | Cecilie Haugstvedt

In this workshop you’ll learn how to set up and write your own automatic accessibility tests using Axe and Cypress. You’ll write both unit tests and integration tests, and will look at what to test at each level. Cecilie will also cover some of the most common accessibility errors that can be discovered automatically, and learn how to fix them.

This workshop will be done in ensemble style – mob testing with small groups where the whole group works on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer. You’ll leave understanding how to implement exploratory testing concepts through all the phases of test planning, design, execution and reporting.

9. Simplicity: distilling and refining test communication | Rick Tracy

This workshop, which uses the idea of simplifying how we communicate among ourselves and others, aims to distil the core results of testing into a much easier to understand message. Often we end up using too much industry jargon and test language, and this ends up diluting our message and the value of our communication. Once we’ve distilled the message to someone direct and valuable to all, we can much better target specific audiences with a refined message.

You’ll leave the workshop with a good understanding of why your valuable messages don’t always come across, what you can do about it, and how you can apply these skills regularly to your everyday work. You’ll explore several techniques to make a clear overall message, and to make refined valuable messages, no matter who the stakeholder is.

10. The good, the bad, and the biased | Emma Lilliestam & Hanna Schlander

How does the brain work? Why do biases exist, and what are the pros and cons of biases? In the workshop you’ll learn about two thinking systems in the brain, and four categories of biases. We are all biased. Biases affect our everyday lives, both at work and at home. By learning more about them we can expand our view, shape our minds, and improve our testing abilities!

You’ll get the chance to deep dive into biases in groups, and discuss a selection of our favorite biases, before presenting your findings to the group.

Excited to start learning? It’s our first in-person event in 2 years – and it’s going to be a massive celebration of testing! Soak up knowledge from 70 testing experts, and connect with your peers at Europe’s best testing event. Get your ticket now – book by April 22nd and save 10% on individual tickets; up to 35% on group bundles.

A EuroSTAR Committee member looks back at the 2021 software testing conference.

It has been two weeks since the action packed conference has ended but I am still full of thoughts from the amazingly memorable event it has been this year. I have been associated with EuroSTAR for many years now as a reporter and a volunteer but this year was all the more special, with an opportunity to be a part of the programme committee. It was a huge honour and I enjoyed every moment of playing the role, working alongside some of the biggest names in the testing world Fran O’Hara, Janet Gregory, Derk-Jan De Grood and Szilard Szell. This has been a exhilarating experience to say the least! Right from going through the significant number of submissions, to making decisions on sessions for the three days it was incredibly fulfilling and enlightening to witness the programme come together. The collaboration with fellow committee members was brilliant as we went through an incredibly difficult decision of choosing sessions from submissions of very high quality! The programme always feels incredibly impressive but this year, there was a personal connection.  To witness the final form of it get unraveled to hundreds of participants is one of the most unforgettable experiences! This being a second online edition of the conference, there were a number of aspects to be considered but I must say none of that felt like an unsurmountable challenge, thanks to the unwavering support provided by the fantastic conference team. As the event got underway, there was so much energy and knowledge in the virtual environment that I felt transported into a world of unlimited inspiration! So much to learn and rejoice! As always, I want to list the top 10 things from this year’s conference for me. In no particularly order these aspects stood out for me this year: 

1. Engage theme: I felt this year’s theme was a winner in attracting a huge variety of submissions. It was awe inspiring experience to see the various interpretations of it! I found it to have created a welcoming spirit amongst the conference participants as the theme could have multiple interpretations which helped spur creativity and imagination. Many congratulations to conference chair Fran to have come up with this motivational theme – it was a joy to work as a programme committee member on this theme 
   
   
2. Tutorials – I always enjoy this format of the programme as you get to focus and absorb information on one specific topic. This year, once again I have to say the tutorial experience was an absolute delight, being a part of the award winning team of Anne Colder- Jantien van de Meer, who effortlessly delivered  a highly coordinated, superbly crafted session. A stellar line up of speakers including maestros Michael Bolton, Rik Marselis delivered these phenomenal sessions, giving the participants an opportunity to deep dive into topics of interest – a great feature of the conference! 
   
   
3. New terminologies – I learnt a few excellent terms from this year as part of many conversations ‘Critical incident’ is the top one from this year which was shared by Testing Guru Dawn Hayes. As Dawn puts it, critical incident is an experience after which you never return to operating like before. To me, all of this year’s experience has been one such critical experience! Another term is ‘happiness engineer’ – I derived it from an amazing key note delivered by Michiel Boreel who  referred to testers as the guardians of digital happiness and in fact went on to suggest we should consider the above new title for testing professionals! These interesting terms have been duly added to my everyday vocabulary! 
   
   
4. Implementable knowledge: All through the three days the sessions I attended delivered not just the theory behind an idea but gave an excellent focus on practical implementation of those approaches. Be it the concept of Building relationships by Lukasz Pietrucha, Automation pitfalls and possibilities by Sune Engsig, Quality and human factors by Andrew Brown, Dealing with conflict by Marielle Roozemond – I can list possibly every single session I attended which gave me new insight on how differently testers can approach real life challenges. As I am catching up on recordings from the event, my learning is continuing! 
   
   
5. Riveting Keynotes: Each and every keynote session in this year’s conference was a gem, I went on being amazed at how fantastically these topics were presented by the skillful speakers. As one of the participants said “how many times can mind be blown in three days!”. I found all keynotes to be outstanding and to have delivered key messages that are highly relevant to our area of work. Rob Lambert, Aprajitha Mathur, Micheil Boreel,  Maaret Pyhäjärvi and Janet Gregory – a huge round of applause to have made incredibly impactful deliveries.
   
   
6. Lightening talks: This has been my favourite format of talk, ever since I witnessed it back in 2018 with none other than Fran O’Hara on the stage! I was delighted to not only see this format again on EuroSTAR platform but also get the privilege of being a part of it! I was one of the eight speakers who delivered a brief 5 minute talk on a topic of their choice, which delivered great nuggets of thoughts for audience to consider. It was a high energy, fast and interesting session. I personally enjoyed preparing and delivering my short piece, felt honoured to have shared the virtual stage with amazing speakers like Dawn Hayes, Tariq King, Elise Carmichael, Rob Meaney, Sanne Visser,  Chris Armstrong and Raj Subrameyer. Thrilled to have been a part of this fantastic ensemble!
   
    
   
   
7. Huddle sessions: This is an aspect of  the conference I hold close, as my predominant involvement as a reporter / volunteer has been in this space. As always, this was action packed this year with a variety of conversations and activities. Inspirational AMA sessions with Michael Bolton, Rob Lambert, Jyothi Bhatt and Sune Engsig, career advise from Raj Subrameyer, Ensemble testing by Maaret Pyhajaravi,  exploratory bug hunt with Marek Lof and so much more! The breaks from sessions had many engaging activities to relax and to network with fellow participants. The feedback sessions were great in hearing from the members of community. Always a hugely uplifting huddle of people! 
   
   
8. Award winners: It was an absolute delight to learn of the most deserving winners of the award which was actually a top secret and not known till announced at the ceremony! Hearty congratulations Kari Kakkonen on the Software Testing Excellent award! I had the privilege of attending Kari’s session last year’s conference and I have since been in awe of his dedication, enthusiasm for testing, particularly about educating younger generation. The winner of best paper Adonis Celeste is again someone I have seen on EuroSTAR platform back in 2018. His white paper has deep insight and excellent pointers for tester role, a highly recommended read. We are fortunate as a community to have such brilliant thought leaders! 
   
   
9. Conference team:  I have known this team for a few years now and I guess I have run out of superlatives to express how much I admire them! It was yet another extraordinary experience to see the event being brought together skillfully and coordinated to perfection. What was an additional aspect was how experienced the team has in running the conference and how deftly they apply it in real time. The process was smooth flowing in spite of how complex the three day long event can be in terms of logistics and planning. Their tireless efforts, commitment and professionalism is simply top notch. Truly a wow team! 
   
   
10. Testing community spirit: This entry has stayed in my top 10 list ever since I started attending EuroSTAR conference. This is an aspect I am so proud of and so very much enjoy during this event. The enthusiasm and community spirit just shines through on every occasion. This year too the participants proved that the format is secondary and the spirit of being in company of fellow testing professionals is much more! The conversations during the talks and the engagement with Q&A sessions from this year’s talks was outstanding! It was really nice to get to meet many participants from near and far, covering a big spectrum of career experience. The celebration of diversity in this community is exemplary and I feel really lucky to be a part of it!

As this year’s conference comes to an end, the new one is already looking hugely exciting! To be held in the beautiful city of Copenhagen, the conference is going to be first in-person event after 2 years of being virtual. It will be headed by none other than testing Guru Graham Freeburn,  accompanied by the team of experts Sue Atkins, Morten Hougaard, Bart Knaack, and Tone Molyneux. I am sure this fabulous team will come up with a brilliant programme that we all look forward to! 

In conclusion, I must mention, this year has been particularly emotional for me as EuroSTAR has been on my mind for the last 8 months. I am immensely happy for the conference Chair Fran, fellow committee members and the conference team on the success of this year’s event. My hearty congratulations to everyone involved  – the speakers, the audience, the sponsors – what a festive experience that was from start to finish! I also feel a bit philosophical about the year that has been to us in the larger sense. We have all been through strange times and this event made reflect on how we have managed to stay connected as a community in spite of multiple challenges. Human resilience and adaptability will hopefully see us through as society as we transition back to the ‘original normal’. Here’s to the new sprouts of hope that have started to appear and here’s to good health, well being for everyone! 

About the Author

Sowmya Ramesh is a testing professional with over 18 years of IT industry experience currently working as a consultant with 2i Testing. She has a deep interest in the area of non-functional testing, in particular, accessibility testing which she has promoted for a number of years in the testing community. Sowmya writes blogs on topics of professional interest and has been a speaker at events for MOT Edinburgh, DevTest Summit. Sowmya was awarded a reporter role on Eurostar Conferences in 2017 and 2018 and in 2021 was part of the EuroSTAR Conference Committee.

Woohoo, finally it’s that time of the year again – the EuroSTAR Conference is on. This year it took place as an online edition which gave people from all around the world the opportunity to take part in this amazing conference without needing to travel during the pandemic times.

Although it is an online edition, there was plenty of space to meet other attendees. You could do a speed meet sessions and talk to someone randomly for 3 minutes. You could join a lean coffee session and discuss interesting topics. You could get solutions to your problems from the Test Clinic. Or you could check out the demos of the sponsors and stroll through the Expo area.

The Programme Committee around the Programme Chair Fran O’Hara made an amazing job when choosing the speakers for this year’s edition and you could listen to talks from different areas of testing, speakers with different backgrounds and from different cultures. Let me summarize my first day at the EuroSTAR Conference 2021 by using my sketchnotes.

Moving to frequent releases. The 10 Communication Principles that support rapid change.

Rob Lambert
The first keynote of the day was held by Rob Lambert. Rob started by explaining the 5 step thinking model. First, you paint a picture of the bright future (like a vision). Then you lean into the problem and ask if the team is the right one to get it done. Afterwards it’s all about routines, habits, disciplines and processes, and finally there is a lot of learning.

He then talked about the 10 (+1) Communication Principles to support rapid change. These are:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Purpose, audience, context
3. Communication is something the listener does
4. Use stories
5. Don’t waste people’s time
6. Practice is preparation
7. People remember how you make them feel
8. Non-verbal is a superpower
9. People resonate with those who sound like them
10. You can hack your body
11. Listening is the greatest compliment

Quality is not about testing … it’s about value!

Gitte Ottosen
Gitte thinks that is not that easy to define what quality is, as it doesn’t mean the same to everybody. It is the value to some person, at some time, who matters. So you have to find out who the people that matter are.

More important, you have to think about what value means to you and get a common understanding throughout the whole team. You can do so by using the VOICE Model: Value, Objectives, Indicators, Confidence, Experience. As value is time dependent, you have to think about what you want to get out of the things you do right now – this will change over time.

5 myths and anti-patterns to refactor out with continuous performance

Paul Bruce
Nowadays, organizations want to deliver things quickly. They run into a more continuous future where they do smaller releases more often and share knowledge along the way. This only works if continuous performance feedback is given.

Paul used 5 myths/anti-patterns to explain how to get to having a continuous performance mindset:

1. Prohibite Ubiquity
2. Expedited Gridlock
3. Mandated Ignorance
4. Escape Philosophy
5. Predictable Unreliability

Have a look at my sketchnote to learn more about the mantra and possible actions for each anti-pattern.

CSI testing – investigate like a pro

Adam Matlacz & Elzbieta Sikora
Adam and Elzbieta think that exploratory testing brings many opportunities for testers, especially when the sessions are held with people with different roles. While being a tester, you can behave like a detective when you are on a bug hunt. That’s how they came up with CSI Testing.

The CSI Principles are: Concentration, System thinking and Impartiality (+ break the rules). Focus on a goal, use a holistic approach and treat all fair without prejudices. A CSI Tester should build skills around different types of thinking, tools and gadgets and approaches and techniques.

The CSI Procedure would look like that:

1. Approach the scene: Find out what you deal with
2. Start investigation: Narrow down
3. Release crime scene: Team work
4. Conduct the trial: Confront suspects, call witnesses, judgement
5. Debriefing: Retrospect

Lightning Strikes

Lightning Strikes are short talks of 5 minutes in which 2 slides are allowed. This year there were 8 speakers who were giving a lightning talk.

Lightning Strikes 1

Tariq King, Sanne Visser, Rob Meaney & Elise Carmichael
Tariq thinks that the world is full of bad software and by filling AI & ML systems with bad data and biases, the problem is being made even worse. By testing your software and using a holisitic approach, you can unlock a revolution and make a difference.

The essence of Sanne’s talk is, that you should always remember that there are different ways to get to where you want to get and that you should take a look around and think outside the box to not get stuck on the way things should be.

Rob shared two philosophies with us: Seek problems, solve problems share lessons, which is basically about sharing what you’ve learned with everyone and working in a holistic matter to enhance quality. The other one is: Fewer, smaller things together – which means fewer as in the variety/volume of work, smaller as in slicing things down more and together as in cross-functional teams that start and finish together.

Elise thinks that next to maintaining, analyzing and creating tests there is a huge portion of test debt, a backlog of work not done. She thinks that flipping the test pyramid upside-down helps you to refocus on the customer’s experience and therefore also reducing some of this debt.

Lightning Strikes 2

Raj Subrameyer, Dawn Haynes, Chris Armstrong & Sowmya Ramesh
Raj compared pre- and during covid work to each other and found that from having onsite interviews, working from home as a luxury, limited virtual meetings and mandatory travel it all transfered to no onsite interviews, work from home as a necessity, virtual meetings as a normality and travel not existing any more. This leads to a huge change in the future of work in which a social media footprint, personal branding, remote working, going the extra mile and re-tooling your skillset become crucial.

Dawn’s approach to finding and hiring awesome testers is usins these attributes of a CRACK tester:

• Curious
• Resourceful
• Adaptable
• Creative
• Knightly

In short, Chris’ talk is about not overlooking any rules when doing test automation. A small mistake as letting someone and not the whole team decide on which tool to use might turn into a huge problem.

Experimentation is pivotal to success. Sowmya encourages us to be open to changes, so that we don’t lose any opportunities. But while experimenting, you should not forget to do extensive research, monitor and measure, improvise as required, document the lessons learned and implement with confidence.

The seeds of toxicity we’ve been trained to overlook at work

Raj Subrameyer
Raj has been dealing a lot with stereotyping and racism himself – mostly microagressions (actions/words that can be offending). He discovered that those often appear at work places and should definitely be fought. He has 5 proposals on how to curb microagressions:

• Diversity & inclusion training
• Having open conversations
• Own your mistakes
• Anonymous help hotline
• No tolerance policy

Continuous performance testing in DevOps

Lee Barnes
Traditional performance testing, which often comes too late and takes too long, is dead. Continuous performance, which means evaluation at each stage and more frequent feedback, is uprising. But you have to think about performance factors early on in your development process. Incorporate the requirements as contraints or/and as acceptance criteria for existing user stories.

Lee advises us to start small and expand to move from a centralized to an integrated performance team. Gather feedback and continuously improve.

Testing and monitoring in production is important, but don’t forget to consider to:

• eliminate requests to 3rd parties
• ensure system “knows” that it’s being tested
• identify an ideal test window
• coordinate with infrastructure providers
• solicit broad IT input

The journey of testing software for DNA analysis

Aprajita Mathur
The last keynote of the day was held by Aprajita Mathur. She was talking about testing software for DNY analysis. The standard workflow for analysis of genome sequence data is:

1. Alignment
2. Reference Genome
3. A) Somatic or B) Germline variant calling
4. Variant filtering & annotation
5. Data visualization & reporting

Machine learning applications help testing and can be supervised, unsupervised or predictive. While testing – also called Bioinformatics Analysis Pipelines – keep in mind:

• Statistical models are used
• The models are trained on data sets
• The model is as good as the data or worse
• You aren’t testing the exact output, but expected behaviour
• You have to test in different situations
• There are lot of changes, which lead to complexity, but also exploration and fun

Between testing software for DNA analysis and “normal” software testing there are a lot of common grounds. But to DNA analysis, there are also some challenges as Gold Standards, domain knowledge, population genomics and that nature always has its way.

As you can see, on the first day of EuroSTAR 2021 there were a lot of different topics already. From communication principles over performance testing and racism at work to testing software for DNA analysis – that’s what I call a huge variety. And there are so many talks that I haven’t attended and might re-watch after the conference.

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.

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.