Verify 2006 Conference : Review

There was a good turnout for the Verify 2006 Conference especially since it is the very first year of the conference.  The attendees were typically software testers or software development managers.  There weren’t many developers so the Thycotic crew was a little out of our comfort zone but they were a great bunch to pitch on our Secret Server product.

One of the hardest parts when building an ‘off the shelf’ product is understanding the customers needs – because there is usually not one person you can call on to clarify a requirement (as is often the case in custom development for a client).  This conference was our first customer engagement opportunity to see what people think of our products face to face and understand how we can tailor our products to solve their daily pains.  The Thycotic booth was positioned right by the registration desk in the hallway which meant that all the attendees walked past us at some point!

(Shiva is featured in the picture working away on some new functionality for thycotic.com)

Unfortunately we didn’t get much direction for new features in the product but we did get to vindicate our decisions on current features - most attendees found the system useful and easy to understand.  It was also a good testing ground for understanding which aspects of the system were most appealing to users which should help in tuning our current online marketing efforts.

I spoke this morning at 11am on “Pair Programming” – a mainstay practice for the Thycotic team.  The session walked through the benefits, then a hands-on demo with Math problems and wraps up with best practices and practical issues such as configuration and setup of your team workspace.  The turnout for my session was small but I was speaking to a new crowd (non .NET) and “Pair Programming” might be a stretch for the typical Quality Assurance person to bite off on.

Jonathan Cogley is the CEO and founder of Thycotic Software, a .NET consulting company and ISV in Washington DC.  Thycotic Secret Server is a secure web-based solution to both "Where is my Hotmail password?" and "Who has the password for our domain name?".  Secret Server is the leader in secret management and sharing within companies and teams.