Tuesday 20 August 2013

Tis the Season for Conferencing

It will soon be the start of the main software testing conference season and there are many people who will not be able to attend for lots of reasons.  So if you cannot attend in person then why not use social media to follow what is happening at the conference.  The best way I have found to do this is to use twitter and a hash tag designated for the conference.  I personally use twitter a great deal when attending conferences even going so far to automate my tweets when presenting at Lets test.   So I have gathered together as many hash tags I can think of for upcoming testing conferences so you can be virtually there.

If there are any I have missed please add them as comments and I will add them to this article giving credit of course.

For those who are attending a testing conference can I ask that you use twitter to keep others informed about the conference and some of the key points being said it helps the whole of the testing community.

For those organising a testing conference please make sure you have a hash tag for your conference and make it widely known.  There are some conferences organisers that do not have this in place and it is shame since it is way of drawing attention to your conference and for sharing knowledge beyond the confines of a physical location. It is also good to keep it the same each year instead of adding the year on that way it can be used all the time over a year and keep conversations going.

The following is a list of hash tags for upcoming testing conferences for which I could locate a hash tag for.

  • #CAST2013 - CAST –  - 26-28th August 2013 - Madison, WI, USA
  • #STARWESTSTARWEST -   29 Sept – 4 Oct 2013 Anaheim, California, USA
  • #testbash Test Bash - / 28th March 2014 – Brighton, UK
  • #letstest Lets Test OZ - 15-17th September 2014, Gold Coast Australia

Also there are testing events being organised that do not require you to pay.


If there is not one near you, why not organise one?

For those attending a testing conference I would recommending reading the excellent guide to attending a conference written by Rob Lambert (@Rob_Lambert)

3 comments:

  1. Great list there John - thank you! SIGiST uses #sigist quarterly and the UK Test Management Forum uses #UKTMF. I tweet from both.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a great list John :)

    Hashtags are so useful for sharing knowledge, updates about the conference & even organising meetings with people for example at a bar in the venue!
    We will be using the #esconfs hashtag on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram this year :)

    We're looking forward to seeing you again at EuroSTAR this year!

    Emma (EuroSTAR Conference Team)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad you mentioned meet ups. Just participated in the Sheffield Test Gathering via the #shefftest hash tag last week.

    ReplyDelete