"Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright"- Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption. This blog is from one such bird who couldn't be caged by organizations who mandate scripted software testing. Pradeep Soundararajan welcomes you to this blog and wishes you a good time here and even otherwise.

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Bangalore Workshop on Software Testing - 3 on 6th August, 2011

This year, BWST 3 (#bwst3) is delayed by a couple of months and for all good reasons. We were busy with personal and professional stuff. So, here comes the details.

Personal excellence & skill development

We have been noticing over the last few years that those who can change things for the world are those who have been changing things for themselves. As people say revolution starts from within, our experience has been similar to agree with that.

In this year BWST 3,  we are focusing on interacting more on personal excellence and skill development. We want to hear stories (from all participants, not just the speakers) on how they have been working on their personal excellence. Are they being pushed to that? What is their motivation to do it? What is causing them to fail? What support they need and from whom? What kind of skills are they working on? What are the black swan skills that the world should know about? What kind of books they read and how has it helped them? What kind of changes are they making to themselves? What do they plan to change about testing in future?

Does this topic connect with you well? Would you like to present or participate in this? We have very limited seating of 25 this year and this is an invite only conference. You don't need to send us a Salsa dance video to get an invite but you could write down your story of how you built or have been building your skills to us at parimala hut moolya.com titled "BWST 3 speaker" / "BWST 3 participant".


For those who don't know what I am talking about: Please read thisthisthis and this. Last year, we had Selim Mia from Bangladesh, Yeshwantrao from Madurai and Vasu from Chennai come all over to Bangalore to attend BWST 2. So, indirectly, I am telling, its open to the world.

Venue:

The venue is at a hotel located in Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore. We shall send the details of reaching the venue to all selected participants and speakers via email.

Time: 
  • 8 30 AM to 6 PM - BWST 3 (Late comers will not get Red K card. That's unfair. They will get it but be on time)
  • 6 PM till cops ask you to go home - Social gathering with testers



How do discussions happen in BWST?

We will be using K-cards and everybody gets to talk. As an organizer and a talkative person, I hate K-cards, so you can imagine that it gives all an equal chance. As it isn't rocket science to figure out how to use them, we will explain to you over there before we start.

For those who have attended BWST 1 or 1 and 2 or just 2 :) - This year, we have modified the 3 color K-card to just 2. We will have a Red card (High Priority Request - Limited use) and Green card ( Put me on the deck, I have something to say or ask - (Unlimited use)


Cost

As you all know this is a "pay for yourself" style conference and you'd need to pay 550 INR to cover your own expenses of food and refreshments during the day. At the hotel, we will have a complimentary wi-fi facility and power adaptors. So, bring on your tweeting machines and use #bwst3

It is a practice [ :) ] that we hang out in a pub after the conference and hence if you'd like to just join the evening pub meeting with all the testers of BWST 3, write to us separately with your mobile number. We shall SMS and tweet the location of the pub you need to come to. Of course, "pay for yourself".

This year, we have decided to provide T-shirts to all participants and speakers and we are looking forward to wearing one of our own sponsored by oh who else - Moolya

Hurry up! If you are too late, you get to wait list and you will have to pray someone drops out. Spread the word, use the #bwst3

9 comments:

Vipul Kocher said...

and Vipul from Delhi too had come over for BWST2 :-) So it is open even to people from Delhi (which is outside this world ;-))

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

Oh God! You are great. To get Vipul to comment, I had to almost forget that he came from Delhi for BWST 2 :)

Chaithra Thimmappa said...

Hi Pradeep/Vipul,

I work for MNC and my manager wanted know benefits out of this workshop.
our team basically test GUI tools.Can you please explain me on
BWST2 what was the discussion .

Thanks,
Chaithra

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

Hi Chaitra,

Please read about BWST 2 experience reports here: http://testertested.blogspot.com/2010/04/experience-report-bwst-2.html

BTW, why do you need your manager's approval for this?

Chaithra Thimmappa said...

Pradeep,

Can you tell us what benefit for any tester who attend this workshop.

Thanks,
Chaithra

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Chaitra,

I want to help you. Here are the details:

First of all, this is not a three day event. It is one day and on a Saturday, so your team being away on a work day is not in picture.

Second, I see you appear to have started a blog to collect feedback. I appreciate that but if you had spent some time searching for BWST you would have found details and what people have posted about it.

Third, on what benefit a tester would get? You appear to be spending way too much time researching on it. This is an invite only type peer conference. We are already full for this year so that should tell you what benefit people have got in the past.

The one benefit we can guarantee is, we get to invite the top testing minds of India (if you wish, you may exclude me from that list) and your testers could interact with them and gain insights to do better testing. They could also teach us their tricks.

However, see you next year.

Anonymous said...

Am new to software testing but would like to attend this workshop.can i?
Shaik.tayibha

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Tayib,

You could have but we are running full now and we have 8 people in the waiting list.

Anonymous said...

Hi Pradeep,
That conference sounds interesting. Do you guys arrange such conference in some other city. Actually i am from Ahmedabad but we dont have any such conference here and cant attend also. Or else you can give details of conference