My first EAST meetup

Yesterday I attended my first EAST meetup here in Linköping, Sweden. I met some amazing people and left with loads of inspiration.

But first things first: What is EAST?
EAST is an open network for software testers in the Linköping area, focused on Context Driven Testing. The group's main forum is a LinkedIn group but they also have a Twitter account in case only knowing about the actual events is enough. Apart from the online presence the group arranges meetups roughly once a month with about 15-20 participants. The group consists of well known testers like Johan Jonasson and Johan Åtting as well as newly graduates.

Anyway, this post was about my own experiences so here we go. As soon as I entered I was warmly welcomed and discussions regarding what I and others did started. When everyone finally had arrived we ate together (ordered pizza, not more glamorous than that) and the discussions continued with subjects like values in testing, skills/education and how to spread the knowledge of what we do.

After the food Hanna Germundsson presented her master thesis (or rather results so far) on testing in an agile environment, with a long interesting discussion as the result. Both the presentation and discussion gave me lots of valuable insights and thoughts on subjects like how to educate testers, if it's possible to measure test progress in a useful way and if it's possible to estimate required test time/effort. I also signed up to participate in an open discussion Hanna would arrange to use for her master thesis, something I'm really looking forward to.

Finally the participants who attended Let's Test 2012 talked a bit about their experiences, memories and learned lessons from the conference. If I weren't enticed enough to attend Let's Test 2013 I definitely am now. Just keeping my fingers crossed that the education budget will allow it (not looking too promising, especially not if I, as I've already requested, get to attend RST with James Bach i November, but I'm sure it's possible to solve). Morgan also provided us with a great two minute summary of Rob Sabourin's  Just in time testning presentation on Let's Test.

To summarize; this was a great evening and today I felt really inspired when I left for work. I will definitely attend the next meetup if it doesn't conflict with something really important (with no more kids on the way I doubt that will happen). Hopefully I'll be able to bring a couple of curious colleagues with me as well.