The Un-Conf is a common event type these days; no scheduled speakers, just a bunch of smart people and a space to facilitate conversation. The success of these is entirely dependent on who is there. And there is the classic Testing Conf where speakers are selected, assigned slots and talk about things directly related to Testing.
But what I think I want a Un-Testing Conf. This would would be the same format of a classic conference but without topics about Testing.
Well.
Obviously about testing.
Irony Alert
I am sick of going to Testing conferences and hearing the same sort of stuff over and over. Or something that I could quickly pick up from any number of industry related books or blogs. I want to learn new, mind blowing things. And do you know where those things hide out? Hint: its not in the testing world!
Tangent. Have a single track conference; 5 or 6 concurrent tracks is too much.
So what would my Un-Testing Conf look like? Well, it would likely be expensive since you can’t just comp the speakers a ticket and expect them to graciously accept the invitation. Currently the line-up would be something like…
- Mike Monteiro – Design Is A Job
- Hugh MacLeod – Social Objects
- Austin Kleon – Steal Like an Artist
- Dirk Hayhurst – Something baseball-y
- Mary Robinette Kowal – Puppetry
- Someone who has been in the International Space Station
- Thomas Mahon – Customer Service (or something)
- Sian Beilock – Choking (or how not to)
- Mark Cuban – (Don’t know what I’d like to hear him talk about, but he is usually pretty fun and has interesting stuff to say)
- Chris Blais – Dakar, and now
- Roz Savage – Ocean Rowing
I can, without even trying, explain how each and every one of the above people have important things to say that would make testers better at their job.
That is a full two days of speakers already. Who else would you like to see? The only ‘rule’ is they cannot self-identify as a Tester.
We are trying to achieve some of this gradually with the TestBash. I think if the majority of talks were not testing related then testers would find it hard to get the support of their companies to go.
So our thinking was to introduce a little bit of something different. We had a non testing talk on the topic of Lean Startups and it was the one with the most amount of questions and challenges. It wasn’t necessarily the best talk, but I do believe it helped open some testers minds to other things.
I’ve said it often, but probably not enough online, the testing community needs to connect more with the other communities. I personally love going to web and design conferences/events but I’m yet to meet another tester at these events. And I do get strange looks when I tell them what I do.
Warning if you read this before clicking on links in this post: The Mike Monteiro work might not be safe for work. (Lucky I was alone when I clicked on it…) There may be others too but I won’t know until I’m not at work.
What Ron is referring to is Mike’s twitter background is John Currin’s painting of Bea Arthur topless. Art may or may not be safe for work is a sad statement about people’s place of employment personally.