Will somebody send me a postcard from Portland?

The Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) is happening in Portland, Oregon this week.  I can’t be there, so I decided to have a  PNSQC party on my blog and you’re invited.

Before we get to the conference there are a few stops which must be made if you travel to Portland:

1. Voodoo Doughnuts is the home of the bacon maple bar and other doughnut-y delights.
2. Portland is a goth mecca of the United States as it has 1 of the only 3 Dr. Martens stores in the whole of the U.S.  Aside from a plentiful supply of the only plaid Mary-Janes a grown woman can wear with respect, their free Dr. Martens guitar picks are m favorite Portland souvenir.
3. Powell’s bookstore puts used books next to the new ones and has that awesome earthy, intelligent real-and-not-a-frakking-chain bookstore feel.

So now that our appetites are sated and our shopping is done, what do we want to see at PNSQC this year?  This conference has really stacked its deck with technical testing type presentations.  The ones that pop out at me are Test Environment Configuration in a Complex World, Testing Concurrency Runtime via a Stochastic (that means random, mostly) Stress Framework, Code Coverage Case Study: Covering the Last 9% and Large-Scale Integration Testing at Microsoft.

The centerpiece of the technical testing track, for me, is Harry Robinson’s keynote Using Simple Automation to Test Complex Software. Those who are lucky will have the opportunity to attend his workshop after the conference.  I met Harry at CAST and regret that I only got to talk to him at the end of the conference by which time my brain was processing at 56k speed.  He’s got his slides up from CAST and I can’t wait to work with his ideas more for WTANZ and my own testing.

I’ve got some friends presenting so we’ll stop by and see Liz Marley’s poster Exploring Touch Testing: A Hands On Experience. I’m so envious that she does her job with an iPad, among other gadgets.  We’ll also be front and center at Alan Page’s prezo, Peering into the White Box: A Testers Approach to Code Reviews. This is just about the only pie I haven’t stuck my QA finger into at Atlassian and I’m sure the devs on my team will be very excited and overjoyed for me to give it a go.

Of course, we have to go to Mark Fink’s talk Visualize Software Quality.  I suspect Mark and I have a lot of complementary ideas when it comes to this topic and I hope he’s even been able to take it further than I have.  He describes a tool he’s made for the purpose of visualizing tests and those who get to see him show it off are surely in for a treat.  I’m glad that I’m not the only person doing work in this area.

There’s also another session in the visualization of test area.  Last year, I met the marvelous and awesome Melinda Minch.  At the time, Melinda was working at Microsoft for the group involved in the Pivot project (which has recently been moved into Bing).  She took some excitement for visualizing tests back with her to Microsoft and I get the feeling whoever goes to the presentation Using Live Labs Pivot to Make Sense of the Chaos will get to see the results of the enthusiasm she spread amongst her team.  I am expecting Awesomeness and can’t wait to read the paper.  Hopefully there are some screenshots and maybe a movie involved.   This is not the last I expect to write about this presentation and this topic on my blog.  Tests are only part of what makes this project so interesting to me.  Here’s a Ted talk that might partly explain why I find Pivot intriguing.  Make special note of what’s said about the web at minute 4.

If you are fortunate enough to attend PNSQC this year, please drop me a comment about your favorite experience especially if maple bacon bars are involved.

(Additional shout-outs to Gabe Newcomb, Ken Doran, Matt Dressman and Lanette Creamer…I had so much fun talking with you guys last year!)