An Introduction to 2019 Organizers

We find ourselves well into the work towards the European Testing Conference 2019 edition, that will take place in Valencia, Spain on Feb 14-15th. Our Call for Collaboration is open until Aug 19th (give us a chance to get to know *you*), Early Bird Tickets are for sale and all sorts of usual conference buzz is going on.

Who are we then? Who are the people bringing you European Testing Conference 2019? We are all practitioners of software development and testing, running the conference for you as our side project to advance the state of art in testing!

Maaret Pyhäjärvi is a tester and polyglot programmer who recently moved into an Engineering Manager position. No matter the title or activity she works on, it's always about testing in some way. With 25 years of experience in testing and a deep drive to learn more about it, she is the co-founder of European Testing Conference with Adi Bolboaca. She continues to experiment with the conference organizing process with the team. She is in this for improving the world of conferences, and to build practical bridges to testing as we see it - from the perspective of different organizations and roles. She speaks at conferences and scouts for content that need sharing - as a way of connecting with new awesome people.

Franziska (Franzi) Sauerwein is a software crafter working as an Engineering Manager. They're the leading developer in the organizing group, holding up the flag of the areas of testing developers find fascinating. And we've learned so much of those! In addition to being an awesome developer, their focus on collaboration as crafter and understanding of the finer details of how people are included and made feel comfortable makes them a perfect bridge builder. They're active in the SoCraTes community and on the Software Crafters Slack. On top of being all around awesome, Franzi is also sharing lessons as a conference speaker.

Alina Ionescu has been organizing European Testing Conference since it's start and is the heart and mind behind all things visual. In addition to being a brilliant tester who lives and teaches technical testing back and forth, she has a special eye for making everything beautiful. The visuals she creates are wonderful and insightful, and the same happens when collaborating with her. Alina facilitates sessions with the local testing community in her home country Romania, and isn't afraid to step up and share as a speaker / facilitator.

Julia Duran is a second year organizer with a local presence in the country we're visiting in 2019, Spain. She's a test manager with a great vision of what testing is about, keen to always learn more. With this year's conference, it also turns out she is a superb organizer shining our way forward with all the local arrangements we need to learn on as we enter a new country.  With her help, we've learned to sort through new kinds of practices around inclusiveness.

Miroslava Nikolova volunteered for earlier conferences and made an impression as a thoughtful tester and test lead. Her ideas about what makes sense and what people can pick up are invaluable in the process of choosing the right talks for the 2019 edition. She actively brings in the voice of the community, reminds the rest of us on what people say would be of interest and elevates the conference organizing to a new level.

Abigail (Abby) Bangser is a quality consultant turning into a superb observability expert. Her enthusiasm of deep lessons we can share is infectious and she connects pieces of agile, testing and technology is an insightful way. We should have her return as a speaker, as she is awesome at that. But like others amongst the organizers, she has many sides to her and has a superpower of figuring out others and jumping into any task like a fish in the sea.

Marit van Dijk is a software developer with experience in test automation. Her drive for the craft is infectious, and she is making sure it gets distributed well. She's working with open source projects, Cucumber in particular. We are lucky to have her join the organizers team this year, and she's turned out to be the heart and brains of social media communications. While we're happy to organize a conference of our own, we love so much the stuff that others are creating and believe that everyone should have a chance of going to a good conference. Marit delivers that message brilliantly being one of the most connected people and sharing great content online.

We hope to see you at European Testing Conference 2019 in February. We're always up for a good discussion about testing and all things software. This conference comes from a team of practitioners to you - the practitioners. We hope you'll enjoy it as much as we enjoy making it shape.

**any mistakes in the above are sole responsibility of Maaret who decided to write the introductions of people she's delighted to work with on the conference.  

What's special about European Testing Conference

One of the mission statements for ETC is to change the way that conferences are done by leading by example. Here are some of things we do that are different and that we hope to see more conferences adapting as well.

• Both testers & programmers
  ETC is one of the few conference that looks at testing as both testers and programmers see it. This brings together two communities that often are working on the same team yet see themselves as opposing each other.

• Diverse and inclusive speakers
  ETC has a very different approach to speakers than most conferences. Having skype calls with *every* potential speaker allows us to find hidden gems and avoid false promising talks. Maaret wrote a blog about it here if you want more info. Also, not only do pay all travel and hotel but we setup a system to pay back immediately, so speakers that are tight on money don't have to go a few months short. This opens us up to many speakers that otherwise wouldn't get to come.

• Inclusion at the conference
  One of the best parts of a conference is meeting and talking to new people. But this can be hard and intimidating for many of us. We do 3 events at the conference to enable this. (A speed meet, a lean coffee and open space). All of these are full sessions, in the middle of the conference. So that we don't just get the already extroverted people. The timing is also deliberate. Speed Meet right before the 1st lunch so you can find a friend for lunch. Lean coffee (small tables lead by speakers) midway thru the conference so you can discuss what you are learning. Finally open space right near the end, to insure you get that 'one special thing' you really needed from ETC.

Tickets are available for the 2019 edition!

You don’t want to miss out on the 4th edition of European Testing Conference. The edition is packed with great practical lessons on how we do testing in today’s organizations, and its founded on the deep learning on conference organizing we have from these years. We’ve grown to learn that we are different in how we look at collaboration - we work together in new innovative ways to bring you the best program.

We are delighted to announce that tickets for the 2019 conference in Valencia Spain on February 14-15 are now available.

The ticket categories have both a timeframe and a quota on their availability.

• Super Early Bird Tickets (749 Euros) is available until Mid-September or until 30 people have used the opportunity.
• Early Bird Tickets (849 Euros) is available until Mid-November or until 40 people have used the opportunity.
• Regular Tickets (1049 Euros) are available until the conference or until we are full with 200 people.

You may be thinking that our ticket prices are on the higher end, and you are right. That is by design, coming from the fact that we not only pay the speakers travel and hotel, but also share profits with them. This enables us access to very high quality speakers - and you access to high quality learning.

The conference organizers are a group of speakers and practitioning professionals. We take your learning seriously - with a twist of fun to reinforce what we’re learning.

See you at European Testing Conference 2019!

In the spirit of transparency to help you make your choices, here’s a summary of our whole ticket pricing idea. We will have 7 European Diversity Tickets available for free through Travis Foundation. Two of them come with a travel scholarship. We use discount codes available for old speakers to encourage their return, speakers we could not fit into the program this year to encourage them joining, and to particular South-European markets to bring down ticket prices they find preventive. Feel free to get in touch if our communications have not reached you and you are on these groups.