Recap of the mobiledevtest conference
There are test conferences, there are mobile conferences and of course there are many technology or software conferences but this is the first conference that has a primary focus on mobile testing and some development.
I am very glad that I made the decision to be here, not only I learned few new things but I also got confidence that my knowledge of industry is not out of touch. Many of the speakers rehashed (in their own unique flavors) challenges of mobile testing, how it is different and similar solutions.
Keynotes are of very high quality, techwell was able to bring in big names and they didn’t disappoint. There was a thought controlled drone demo, a love letter to apple and perfect quality storm.
Quick summaries
Josh started off the talks with a humble and inspiring session. He gave run down of his business and why automation was necessary for them. Not only for testing but for building and deployment. He gave some practical tips and solutions that should help any new efforts. Jenkins is his primary recommendations.
Steven gave an eloquent session on continuous testing. He seemed like a great QA manager who have won hard battles in big companies. If you are using an app from a bank that is not too popular, it must have been passed through his (companies) hands.
Tarun’s talk about using data to support automation efforts inspired me. His main idea is to get to production as quickly as possible with heavy instrumentation and then drive your test strategy based off that data. It will help you get device coverage, test coverage and frequent problem areas. Also turns out he was a colleaguecolleage of couple of new folks on my team here at onedrive team in Microsoft.
Mellissa was very interactive in her session about trends in mobile testing. She seemed keen to share her knowledge and also get data from attendees.
If there is a concept that I learned completely new at this conference its from Wayne from Parasoft, he spoke at length about service virtualization and how it could help in testing. Idea is that instead of using stubs to handle external dependencies, you use these services that not only isolate your SUT(system under test) but add in controlled variance (like network). My colleague from Godaddy Manoj found it very relevant to his current testing challenges.
Jason Arbon, while being humorous and self deprecating made everyone in the audience contemplate the future of testing and mobile, with his 2025 talk. With few graphs and data he made few predictions — testing industry will outlive developers and software agents will become autonomous.
A rapid whirlwind of many performance tools and how they can be used by Dustin finished up the conference for me. I thought I was a tool freak but I only knew about 40% of the tools he went through and he is nice enough to put it up on speakerdeck already.
Vendors
Vendors in expo are a diverse breed, there are companies which claim to ‘solve’ everything in mobile testing, performance tool vendors, many device clouds and even some consulting companies that will help you setup with these vendors. There is a machine rack that is $72,000/pa to a cloud service that costs $100k/pa. Most of the companies that keep filling up inbox Smartbear, perfecto, testdroid etc are there, I am waiting to get more spam now.
Conclusion
The hotel, organization and food were top class. They are soliciting surveys, asking for talk feedbacks and seem motivated to continue the conference for future years. Though soft drinks would have been appreciated. Attendance for the conference is pretty mild though, at max a 100. The chatter on twitter — #mobiledevtest is not very high but that made it more comprehendible. At the very least I found a lot of material for upcoming techfest talk. Food was execellent but sometimes it was hardpressed to find a snack/drink. But to make up for it they had ice-cream at the end :)
