Recap Agile Testing Days USA 2022

Recap Agile Testing Days USA 2022

Tutorial Days at AgileTDUSA

Two days filled with hard work, new learnings, and skills lie behind our tutorial attendees. The tutorial attendees have been challenged with various tasks and thought-provoking questions. Thank you to Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory, Jan Jaap Cannegieter, Alexandra Schladebeck, Huib Schoots, Rahul Verma, and Tariq King for sharing their expertise in these hands-on sessions!

Screenshot of a tweet from Lisa Crispin

Tweet from AgileTDUSA - Conference room, attendees and speakers

Tweet from AgileTDUSA - Video of Jan Jaap

Tweet from AgileTDUSA - Video of Tariq King tutorial

Tweet from AgileTDUSA - Conference talk

In the evening, we invited our incredible & hard-working speakers to the #AgileTDUSA Speakers Dinner. 70+ international speakers will share their knowledge during the 3rd Edition of #AgileTDUSA. One way to thank our speakers is by hosting a special dinner accompanied by delicious food.

Tweet from AgileTDUSA - Networking event

Our attendees had the chance to get to know each other in an informal way with games during the Meet & Greet Networking Night!

Agile Networking Night

Conference Day I

Wow! Conference Day I at AgileTDUSA started really strong with keynotes by Vernon Richards, Melissa Boggs, and Linda Rising! And many people would agree that seeing Linda presenting is "honestly a bucket list tech speaker moment. She’s a speaker’s speaker." (quote by Jenna Charlton).

Tweet from Hub Schools - Keynote speaker on the stage

Melissa on stage during her keynote at AgileTDUSA

Rising Linda's Keynote

All the speakers during this day shared so many insights and ideas! It was phenomenal! Our attendees learned so much about security in DevOps from Nancy Gariché (you should check out the OWASP DevSlop Youtube Channel). According to Erin Hess, truer words have never been spoken than when Jenny Bramble said "Create context!! Tests and Automation passing or failing means nothing if it’s not in context.” in her talk "Setting Your Tests to Fail". Also, 11/10 would recommend our Open Space bonus session because they enjoyed insightful conversations happening there!

Nancy Gariché Talk

Jenny during her talk at AgileTDUSA

Tweet from Lisa Crispin

In the evening, our sponsors welcomed the attendees at the Sponsor Reception with food and drinks to introduce themselves and have informal chats and get to know each other, and build connections. But the highlight of this evening was our notorious costume party, this time in Flower Power and Hippie Style. We danced the night away to legendary songs from this era and let the evening end with some pretty groovy dance moves.

Flower Power Costume Party at AgileTDUSA

Conference Day II

Our conferences are open to you to tell your stories, to help you in your career, and give you the space you need to be safe and talk. Therefore, we're starting off with the highlight of this day. The panel keynote on diversity and inclusion with Raj Subrameyer, Deena McKay, Tolu Adegbite, and Nancy Gariché! They talked about creating a diverse and inclusive world in the digital age focusing on women and people of color and shared personal stories.

Diversity Panel Keynote at AgileTDUSA

Dr. Melissa Sassi gave her keynote full of positive energy. She is so inspiring! And kudos go to Jan Jaap Cannegieter who delivered a keynote at #AgileTDUSA for the very first time and did an amazing job!

Speakers giving a talk at AgileTDUSA

Jan Jaap session at AgileTDUSA

The day was again filled with highly insightful and very personal sessions. Maryam Umar was so brave, transparent, and honest in sharing her mental health journey in her talk "How I became Agile when it came to mental health”. Jenna Charlton shared their testing love story and how putting the users first!

Speaker Maryamumar session at AgileTDUSA

Speaker Jenna Charlton talking at AgileTDUSA

And don't forget our interactive workshops by Lisi Hocke, and Larissa Rosochansky and Rafael Cintra! Attendees were so inspired and motivated!

Tweet from Lisi Hocke

Design Thinking workshop attendees

In the evening, all attendees and speakers could refill their batteries before our AgileTDUSA Night Activities and have food and drinks at the Sponsor Reception. Here also the winners of the AgileTDUSA Passport Game have been announced! Congratulations to all of them! Have fun with your great prizes! At 'The Friends & Allies - Human Space', attendees could talk about uncomfortable subjects but also find support and solutions to help themselves and others in the community. The Agile Games Night is usually loud, full of laughter and giggles and fun because here the attendees and speakers can relax and join fun games.

Games Night at AgileTDUSA

Conference Day III

Yesterday was the day many organizers and attendees dread to see coming: the last day of a great conference. The last conference day is usually accompanied by mixed feelings: happiness that the event took place, full hearts, and minds after 5 intense days of learning, socializing and connecting, and sentimentality that soon the event is coming to a close.

Our last keynote of the day with the fitting title "The Last Keynote on Software Testing" by Rahul Verma showed great vulnerability as he shared beautiful stories about topics that are important to him. It was also a real pleasure to have Tariq King talking on the AgileTDUSA keynote stage. Tariq gave great examples of why testing is useful along the way of developing and guided us in "Towards a Future of Self-Testing Systems".

Rahul German giving a talk at AgileTDUSA

Tariq King session at AgileTDUSA

And Doc Norton shared important lessons with the AgileTDUSA attendees in his keynote "The Experimentation Mindset". He also illustrated the importance of making new team members feel welcome and experimenting to find what works for a particular team.

DocOnDev session at AgileTDUSA

Lisa Crispin and Bertold Kolics challenged their workshop attendees in their combo session "Risk-based testing for the whole team". There was a lot of intense learning going on. Janet Gregory and Brandon Jason Valle Tamayo talked about their special developer-tester relationship and gave an honest insight into their story. And Ashley Hunsberger presented her talk “The Ethics of Data Collection” and gave great suggestions to deal with ethics in data collection (and the use of that data).

Combo session at AgileTD

Janet Gregory and Brandon while giving their talk

Speakers at AgileTDUSA

Although the last night of AgileTDUSA 2022 has come, it was not all over yet. Our speakers, attendees, and the AgileTDUSA team took a moment for some self-reflection & recollection of these past few exciting days at the "Agile Community Evening - Windy City Wrap-Up" with Paul Holland.

Thank YOU

At last but not least, we want to thank each and everyone who attended, presented, laughed, shared, and spread positivity at our 3rd edition of AgileTDUSA. Thank you to our volunteers, who did an amazing job, thank you to our speakers and sponsors, and to our attendees.

Volunteers AgileTDUSA

We can't describe how much this conference means to us and that you all believed in us is such a great honor. We will leave Chicago with one laughing eye and one crying eye. We will be back in May 2023. Until we meet again, please stay safe, healthy, and as amazing as you all are! XOXO

AgileTDUSA team