Got invited as a speaker at the recent STC 2008 in Bangalore. One of the only premier Software Testing conferences happening in India. Was happy to see a lot of enthusiastic delegates attend the conference. Got to know what the Indian testing scene is buzzing with at present. Some of the things i noticed.
1. Everyone seems to be charged up about Agile and doing things the agile way. Met a lot of guys who are interested in the philosophy (no speakers though). Attended 3 sessions about agile out of curiosity and found that the hall witnessed a mutiny cos the speaker didn’t know jack of what they were talking about. ( oo yea incidentally one of them won the testing leadership award for 2008).
2. Found a lot of young guns in the industry today, open to adopt new methodologies, test differently and experiment. The enthusiasm definitely looks positive.
3. The people holding positions like “Senior testing managers”, “Test Gurus”, “Senior testing leadership director of services and processes and…. blah blah” are still talking about the same things they were talking about 20 yrs ago (get a life…..) and they still have no clue what its all about. Yes had to sit through their sessions filled with an obscene amount of jargon and bulls*$%^ like “differential defect variance of compliant metrics ratio” (yea to all my global readers… they are really honing their English language skills & thats about all Indian managers are honing right now).
4. Had a senior manager from accenture telling us that (quote) “nowadays people are often found talking about prioritizing process automation v/s webservices” (unquote). To anyone who holds a engineering degree please dont fall off your chair laughing….. webservices……. yea….. like bus service…. right….. no ?? ooohh….. And someone tol’ me shes some “thought leader” at accenture in software testing…… ( Now that explain a lot of things like…. why that company is so screwed up”.)
5. Food/ drinks was a meagre fare…… 
6. They invited speakers for a comptetion for the coveted title of “Testing leadership award 2008″ and hey guess what…… They’d already chosen the winner even before we’d spoken…… The first runner up was a dear lady who was supposed to speak the following day…… (Mind you they are the premier guru’s of process consulting in India…… eheheheheehehehe).
Well so all in all I met some really wonderfull people and sat through a lot of bullcrap sessions and ill say that i’ve sort of had it with “corporate conferences”….. Decided to attend foss.in to regain some lost sanity and listen to some decent ideas…. Looks like the “unconference” movement like barcamps are the places to be…….
Will put up a post on FOSS experiences after friday…..
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