Free ticket for finding us participants

Here's an experiment we want to try out - using power of the community to sell tickets and target the benefit from the work to the person doing the work. Perhaps that is you?

Let's talk about this a little more! 

European Testing Conference 2020 takes place Feb 6-7th  in Amsterdam and as we pay our speakers, we have quite a relevant ticket price. We try to make profit, to share profit. And this enables us great contents.

You'd want to participate, but the ticket price blocks you? Ask us for a code you share to people to recommend joining the conference, and when four (4) people have used your code, you get a free ticket for yourself.

To make it a little easier, we will add a 50 euro discount into the code your contacts get. So they get their tickets a little cheaper, and you get a free ticket.

We'd much rather give the benefits to the community than pay a faceless advertising company. Thus the experiment. 

So what to do if you're willing to try this out?

Let us know at contact@europeantestingconference.eu  and we respond with your personalized code.

We could use some helping hands, the conference is all organized by volunteers and we would love to reach all the relevant people who might be interested in our conference. We think we have built quite a unique learning and networking experience where the diversity of formats of sessions will ensure you don't need to be a social butterfly to get to know people.

How The Volunteering Organizers Do it?

Finding people who would want to participate is kind of big thing for a conference. We try these ideas, and they could also work for you:

• LinkedIn contacts - we browse through our personal connections who could be interested in hearing that we have a conference and learning about its contents. This is a very personal way, and we try to know who of our connections would be ok hearing us, and how they would be ok hearing it. Respecting your style, your voice and your connections is key. 
• LinkedIn timeline - seems to reach quite a number of people, and is less in-you-face than messaging your contacts. Sharing your code is key here. You don't want people to have to do extra to take action. 
• Twitter - works only if you have a following. 
• Facebook groups - sharing in groups of professionals in the style they consider ok. We are often uncomfortable just advertising, and put a bit of effort in for example taking our favorite speaker in the conference, and discussing something they say, combining it with a message there's a conference and we've got a discount. Your personality shining is usually a positive thing. 
• Talk to friends, acquintances, strangers and especially colleagues - tell the folks you have access to that they could join. Tell them it benefits you personally. If their interest aligns, things move for your benefit.  
• Share in your community - you may be a community organizer yourself. Get a ticket by them joining. And if you are not the person to use it, pass it on as a freebie in your communities. 

 If you have ideas, please share! And, we hope to see *you* at the conference. 

Announcing Keynotes for 2020 edition

European Testing Conference 2020 proudly presents our four keynotes:

Ulrika Malmgren (Sweden) is an international speaker, and a tester turned developer. With significant portion of her 15 year career in testing positions, she is no stranger to exploratory testing and team work, and uses that platform to build software in the .Net world. Her talks are insightful and challenging, and we welcome her perspectives as a foundation for a conference bridging testing as testers as developers know it.

Patricia Aas (Norway) is a programmer experiences in C++ as well as many other languages. Some of the specialties we know her for are building secure applications and not shying away from discussions around diversity. As our perspective in building this conference is that testing is about breaking illusions, Patricia shines on looking at phenomena around us critically and summarizing it into brilliant talks.

Mirjam Bauerlein (Germany) is known for her work with making conferences less intimidating through creating Conference Buddy. As someone joining software after a career outside software industry, she is a test-driven development practitioner from the start. As programmer, she comes from the JavaScript side of things, and for us in many ways represent the wonderful new generation of programmers who have always tested and cared for testing.

Maaike Brinkhof (the Netherlands) is an established testing expert and an international conference speaker. We know her best for her work with exploratory testing and biases, and her attention to detail on how teams collaborate and work together to test systems. While she works in team under the title "tester", you may notice that the things she contributes and shares on stretch the limits of tester role in  positive way.

You may notice we put special care in selecting a set of all European keynotes for the 2020 edition. Our keynote selection matches the vision we have on where testing is going: having a strong, local presence and breaking the role walls if they still exist. We all work together, and have versatile views into what the future and practice of testing could be.

Welcome to European Testing Conference 2020 in Amsterdam, February 6-7th. Super Early Bird Tickets are available until end of September, when the full program is announced. People buying their tickets by Sept 20th will be asked to participate in voting for talks to select into the conference from the results of Call for Collaboration that finished Sept 15th.

Call for Collaboration for 2020 Edition, Amsterdam Feb 6-7th

Other conferences call for papers or proposals. We call for collaboration.

TL;DR: Propose an idea or outline for a session. We are selecting based on discussions via Skype/Hangouts.
Event: European Testing Conference 2020 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands 6.-7.2.2020 (5th edition) Compensation: Speaker travel expenses guaranteed by the conference.
Deadline: Schedule your call before September 15th 2019.

SUBMIT

Our conference 

European Testing Conference 2020 takes place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands February 6-7th. 2020. The conference travels annually to different locations in Europe.

We are setting up the best practical testing conference that represents testing as different people know it: testers, developers, business analysts and managers. We recognize that testing is continuous, and we want to learn to do its different flavors better through sharing ideas and experiences in the spirit of dialog. We seek to understand.

Looking for sessions

To find the right people to share in this conference, we want to collaborate with the existing and emerging speaker communities. We find our professional home communities to be those of agile and context-driven testing, and software craftsmanship, but actively seek to break the walls between them.

We want a good balance of European and non-European speakers and a good balance of software craft and (exploratory) testing backgrounds.

We ask you to collaborate on two types of sessions:

• Talks of ideas with practical applicability / Demos of ideas in use (30 minutes) 
• Workshops of hands-on experiences for participants (90 minutes)

We ask you to collaborate, because we believe the best results come out of working together. We want you to share your topic and excitement, and collaborate before you invest heavily in making the session final as a proposal.

We acknowledge we can’t fit all the great sessions there are. So we want to make it mutually efficient while enabling great content we as organizers would be unaware of. We believe there’s more value out of the collaboration than just our conference talk selection through getting to know one another. 


When you respond to the call and we’re considering you, we’ll have a 15-minute Skype/Hangouts session with you to talk about your idea. If you get cut from consideration just for not having space in our talk budget for your type of idea, we’ll let you know by email. We expect the finalized abstract from those who we choose, not as criteria of entry. Timeframe for the discussions is August and September, and this call closes on September 15th.

If the call intimidates you, allow us a prioritization without the call (we contact you if you’re idea seems like a MUST have) through this: https://forms.gle/YXB91G5QYn1CdD9B7 - we prefer the chance to meet, so this is a secondary choice.

What we have to offer:

• entry to participate and present at a great conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands 6-7.2.2020 
• travel expenses (coach) and hotel 3 nights reimbursed 
• profit sharing – we share ½ of the profits with the speakers. You get part of the honorarium pot that translates to money, based on the conference’s financial success and the length of your session 

What we expect:

• Speakers who can stay and participate for the duration of the conference. This is very important to having a great learning environment. 

 Come. Learn. Do. Teach. Test.

Launching the 2020 Edition!

European Testing Conference 2020 will take place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Yes, we are revisiting Amsterdam. What draws us there is the central location which so conveniently brings together us organizers from all around Europe, and the fact that working with the venue there was particularly straightforward. And Amsterdam is a lovely city, with lovely people.

European Testing Conference 2020 happens at Johan Cruijff ArenA on February 6-7th.

This announcement starts the usual cycle:

• We are calling for collaboration, to figure out together what is the great content we want to showcase this year
• We are soon opening ticket sales, offering best discounts to returning participants and early birds

We look forward to learning with you in this 5th edition of European Testing Conference. 

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.