OK, so I had good intentions about blogging during StarWest. I was too busy!
I thought the conference was good. The keynotes seemed to hit the right level of interest with people. Rob Sabourin spoke about "Testing Lessons from Springfield—Home of the Simpsons". That was a light note to start on and had some interesting application for testers. You've got to love it when someone in the audience shouts, "Eat my shorts, man!" in the middle of a keynote presentation.
Jon Bach spoke next on "Telling Your Exploratory Testing Story". Jon used the connection between journalism and testing to show how to explain to people the performance and outcome of a test.
I sat in on two of Julie Gardiner's sessions: "Five Things Every Tester Must Do" (track session) and "Branch Out Using Classification Trees" (keynote). Julie did great in both sessions. It was great to see people really get excited about the classification tree technique and tool to help optimize testing.
I wasn't able to make it to Julian Harty's session on "Six Thinking Hats for Testers" but I have heard it before and it's a great presentation.
The best I could tell, most people were having a good time and picking up good ideas. I enjoyed meeting a lot of new people, catching up with friends, and learning new things.
On one of our excursions during the week, Janet and I got to see a taping of the Tonight Show. Then, after the show we saw Jay Leno leaving driving his Ariel Atom. He smiled and waved at us. You can't beat that!
