SQA Days EU Conference Review

Hi, Habr! My name is Alex, I do quality assurance at FunCorp. At the end of March I traveled to Riga on SQA Days EU. This is the first conference of the SQA Days line, which is held outside the CIS. The program looked promising, and in the list of speakers there were many loud foreign names. Below I will share my experiences and impressions of this trip.

Tickets

As usual, if you plan your trip in advance, you can save. Let's go through the most significant items of expenditure.

The ticket for the conference was bought in January, it cost 35,000 rubles. Pretty standard price. The same is worth participation in good Moscow and St. Petersburg IT conferences.
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Flight with luggage on the route Moscow - Riga - Moscow can be laid in 10,000 rubles.

Accommodation. The organizers agreed with the hotel where the conference was held, about a special price for its participants: 119 euros per day for a single room with breakfast. At the same time on Bucking it was possible to find cheaper offers, and even in the same hotel.

A visa costs 35 euros. Latvians gave only 5 days.

Playground

The Radisson Blu Hotel Latvija was chosen as the site, within walking distance from the historic center of Riga. You can get here from the airport by public transport without transfers, but it will take about an hour. The airport has an open Wi-Fi network, to which you can easily connect and call the car with the help of familiar aggregator applications. The trip will take only 30 minutes and will cost approximately 7 euros.

Organization on site

Surprisingly, there were no advertising stands at the conference. Totally. This is due to the fact that the event simply had no sponsors. On the one hand, this is very cool: the organizers managed to save participants from annoying ads. Fans of collecting stickers, on the other hand, were disappointed. From the merchandise there were only T-shirts (but what kind!) That still needed to be earned: they were given for the best question to the speaker from the audience, while the speaker himself chose him.

The conference was attended by 350 people from 37 countries - an impressive geography! On the registration desk, the badges were sorted alphabetically, the process of obtaining them took seconds.

In general, the entire infrastructure and atmosphere were inherent in the exchange of experience, networking, and discussion of problematic topics. The site had everything you need, and even more:

• discussion areas;
• simultaneous translation from English to Russian and from Russian to English. Of course, I could not help but test this system: I found the quality of the translation to be very good, I did not find any obvious problems with the context or the dictionary. Offhand, this option was used by about 10-15% of the audience in the hall, so we can say that the simultaneous translation service was in demand (although not acutely) and definitely found its target audience;
• stable Internet access via a dedicated Wi-Fi network;
• coffee, light (and not very) snacks. And in the morning of the second day there were even glasses of wine, which, by the way, stood untouched until dinner;
• area with tables where you can eat or work at a laptop;
• sofas and play area with accessories for those who are tired;
• Bar camp is a kind of improvised “open microphone zone”. People left stickers with the names of the topics they wanted to discuss in slots with time. Looking at the schedule, it was possible to come and participate in interesting discussions. They were attended by a moderator who followed the constructive conversations. Here you could try yourself as a speaker with a short speech;
• and even there was “first aid” - specially trained people, ready to answer any questions related to the field of quality assurance. I wonder if this format will take root?

Program

The program itself was very well balanced. Subjects of reports can be divided into the following blocks:

• test management, alignment and optimization of processes, training;
• manual testing;
• automation and load testing;
• “Testing new technologies”, in which testing for the most part IoT products was discussed;
• working with documents.

Each of the four rooms had comfortable furniture, good sound and a sufficient number of screens. Reports were made in 4 sections at the same time, so that everyone could listen to the report from the block that is interesting to him.

I think that as a participant in conferences it is worth attending presentations in areas in which you do not have much experience. That is why I went to reports that cover topics related to building processes and working on their effectiveness. Here is my top 3:
Ilya Fomin (Ilya Fomin)

It is a win ;

Karolina Zmitrowicz (Karolina Zmitrowicz)

How to improve testing organization with TMMI ;

Erik van Veenendaal

Lessons Learned - Beyond the Obvious .

Entertainment

In addition to the game room with consoles and VR, the first evening was a concert of a local cover band and there was a intellectual game in the form of a quiz.

There was also a room with a kicker, but I did not see her enjoying special popularity.

Nutrition

In the buffet area has always been something to eat. On the evening of the first day, the organizers prepared dinner. Meals can not be called Michelin, but it was quite tasty and varied: fish, meat, steaks, sandwiches, vegetables. Of the drinks were red and white wine, soda.

Lunches were held in the hotel's restaurant area. It was a buffet, mainly with European cuisine. Choose, again, from which. So that people did not crowd in queues and all had enough seats, lunch was held in two streams. At first it was necessary to take a ticket at the information desk (for it they even made a special pocket on the badge!) And give it to the restaurant.

All this is very cool. For comparison, read, for example, how things are going with the power on the droidcon SF or droidcon Vienna .

Overall impression

I certainly learned something new. I talked with colleagues from other industries and companies - this is exactly why it is worth going to the conference. Reports, honestly, can be viewed online, the guys have already started to lay them out. A change of location perfectly helps to switch the context, and, in addition to participating in the conference, you could relax and stroll along the streets of old Riga in the evening. Or go at night with new friends in Jurmala. Looking forward to the next SQA days EU. If it works out, I will definitely go.