Future Test notes

Futuretest wrapped up today. I thought my talk went well - it was a bit of a challenge for me to take a huge topic and whittle it down to a 45 minute presentation, but I did it and managed to make all of the points I had planned.

Joel Spolsky spoke immediately before me and did a fantastic job. His topic was software quality, but it didn't matter. He could have talked about the price of Tonka toys. He had the audience laughing constantly and linked his points together flawlessly. There were, however, two minor drawbacks to his presentation (none having anything to do with his content). The first is that he was engaging and entertaining enough that I knew following him would be hard. The second is that his sense of humor is close to mine, so I had to consciously change my approach a bit.

Despite Joel, I received a lot of complements on the talk and was happy to see it made a mark on on the participants.

Perhaps a more important statement to make is that this was one of the best conferences I have attended. I enjoyed every single talk, and it was refreshing to see a test audience who saw the value in a holistic approach to testing and quality assurance. I think I may spend too much time trying to play in a part of the testing community that I ultimately don't end up agreeing with very often.

I had a conference call to attend to and missed the final session, but apparently the dates for the 2009 conference were announced. I'm going to see if I can weasel my way back in next year.

Btw - if you found my blog from the futuretest conf (i.e. you were there and saw the link on my final slide), feel free to ask any follow up questions here, or drop me an email.