5 Lessons from the 2008 Google Test Automation Conference

I’m back from Seattle and ready to write some tests. Here is a short list of what I learned (or what was reinforced) at the 2008 Google Test Automation Conference.

1. If your group isn’t building continuously, they are behind the times.
In hearing people talk about how tests are run, it was generally taken for granted that builds are now being continously integrated using a tool such as Hudson or Bamboo. I found this incredibly large spreadsheet comparing CI Tools.

2. Everyone loves a visual representation
Throughout the conference, besides hearing people talk about Selenium, people were absolutely crazy about a visual representation of the Windows Vista source code presented by James Whitaker in his keynote. This link is for a treemap created by The New York Times which shows the change in the financial sector’s market capitalization over the past year. I’ve circulated it at work as an example of how powerful good visualization can be.

3. Unit testing is ubiquitous.
I talked with people about the types of testing that happens at their work, and the consensus is that much more emphasis is being placed on creating automated tests and unit tests. What surprised me is how many shops actually do use unit testing. This is not some crazy new-fangled thing anymore, this is what teams are doing in conjunction with continuous builds.

4. Live blogging isn’t easy at all.
Before I sat down for the first presentation of this conference I thought that live blogging would be a piece of cake. It turned out to be a challenge because I had to balance providing information about what the speakers were talking about with writing about my opinion of their presentation. Take into account that I’m talking with the people next to me about what the speaker is saying and at times, trying to understand the presentation and suddenly, writing about a presentation becomes quite challenging. Blogging all of them got to be too much, but luckily, I wasn’t the only one blogging the conference. David Burns of The Automated Tester was also blogging. Between the two of us, I think we got most, if not all, of the presentations blogged. I’m happy to link to any other GTAC blogs.

5. There is always someone smarter.
It’s always tough to admit that you are not the smartest person in the room (or maybe even close to being the smartest) but in situations like this one, I really don’t mind. This conference put me in such close proximity to so many brilliant testers that I couldn’t help but be inspired. Every conversation that I had was really amazing and helped me grow as a tester. I will always take any opportunity I’m offered to hang out in such great company.

It was great to meet so many smart and amazing people at GTAC. For anyone who has the opportunity to attend this conference, I highly recommend it.