GTAC 2008

A few weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to attend the Google Test Automation Conference here in Seattle. While the name of the conference implies that it’s all about Test Automation, I found it to actually be a little broader than that, aiming at testing in general. Certainly it was one of the first technical conferences I’ve been to where you didn’t have to explain to other people what a tester is or what we do.

Many of the talks had great impressive titles that it seemed the 2 days would be awesome. In actuality some of them fell a little short of the lofty goals of the title and abstract of the talk, but all in all, a great conference.

As a software tester, some of my takeaways from the conference:

- Move away from large system tests towards smaller, focused, modular tests.

- Stop writing your own tools, the ones you need are likely already out there

- Start thinking outside the box as it relates to Virtualization - It's more than just getting more machines.

I'll probably post on these more in the future.

All of the talks are posted on YouTube.

You should also check out the Google Testing Blog.