There are already a plenty of testing conferences conducted every year and theme conferences scheduled every month, in India. So, why should there be a new conference?

Every conference has its own flavour and focus, governed by the minds behind the idea. Off late, some conferences are slowly turning out to be vendor marketing programmes rather than a place for discussing new testing ideas. A similar concern is about the repetitiveness of papers being presented every year.

Majority of the attendees in such conferences are sponsored by corresponding employers. After attending a conference, an attendee is expected to bring back new ideas and implement the same in his or her team. Because of the aforesaid reasons, at times, the “take away” from testing conferences is very less. This impacts the attendance for testing conferences, as companies are becoming more and more skeptical for sponsoring candidates for testing conferences. The attendees who spend on their own, to participate in the conferences are mostly governed by their passion to learn certain areas of software testing. They attend the programs with a lot of expectations as well.

There are definitely certain existing conference programs doing very well. TEST2008 – Test Excellence through Speed and Technology is an upcoming conference and looks promising. With the theme Agility in Testing and participation from international speakers and testers, it is the first conference to be held by PureConferences. Following is what the Test2008 website says about the conference and its theme:

Test2008 is the first conference being organized by PureConferences in India. Our conference will provide a platform for international and national test professionals to interact and participate. Speakers from around 10 countries, such as USA, UK, France, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, including India will deliver keynotes, tutorials, and papers during the conference. We intend to involve academia and institutions of learning with our conference. We also intend to make Test2008 a ‘green’ conference as far as possible. Additionally, we will institute two test scholarships for educating promising students unable to finance their studies.

Agility represents nimbleness, resourcefulness, and adaptability. In the world of testing, agility is synonymous with the testing team’s resourcefulness and ability to respond quickly to changing contexts. Organizations need to catch the ‘window of opportunity’ when releasing a product to remain profitable. At the same time, we, as customers only want to use ‘quality’ products.

We are hoping to have intense discussions around the theme to make it a learning experience for all participants. The theme is broad enough and will cover diverse topics. Keynotes, Tutorials, and Paper presentations by renowned speakers known internationally and in our country will be the highlight of the conference.

Being a part of the Technical Committee of this conference, I have seen a good number of papers being submitted about fresh themes and investigations of the exisiting ideas. Following is the schedule of the conference: 

Event	Dates	Duration (days)
Pre conference Tutorials	Oct. 13 & 14, 2008	2 (Monday-Tuesday)
Conference and Exhibition	Oct. 15 & 16, 2008	2 (Wednesday-Thursday)

KeyNote Speakers: Geoff Thompson   Director, Experimentus Ltd., UK William (Bj) Rollison   Test Architect, Microsoft, USA

Visit the Test2008 website for more details regarding the conference. Bookmark the site and track for updated information. You can choose to sponsor the conference or register as a participant. You can send any queries regarding the conference to info@test2008.in .

See you all at the conference!

Rahul Verma

Site Admin, Testing Perspective