Infinum Talks, Zagreb, Croatia

Estimated reading time is 5-7 minutes.

Introduction

I was at a local software testing meetup. It’s one of the rare testing events not organized by the Testival community. This one was organized by a local company, Infinum. I wish they would collaborate with Testival, but I guess they have other priorities.

I came to the event not really knowing what to expect. Infinum talks are a competition to Testival, after all. I decided to come with an open mind.

More than forty people were at the event. I have noticed several Testival community members.

I vaguely remember being at the Infinum office before. I have checked my blog and I was a speaker at a meetup in 2017.

The event title was Love, test cases + robots. It was interesting. There were two talks and a moderated panel discussion. The talks are a regular part of such events. A panel discussion is rare. This might be the first event I have visited that had both.

The talks were in English and the discussion was in Croatian. I didn’t understand why.

Questions were handled via Slido.

Speakers didn’t take questions during or immediately after their talks. Some submitted questions were answered in the discussion part. That’s not a bad way. (Sometimes it’s hard to hear the question from the audience.) It also allows the audience to vote on submitted questions. ( I don’t think anybody voted, but that was an option.) There were a nice number of questions coming in during the talks and the discussion.

One of the nice parts of the event was a beautiful bike ride to the venue and back. On my way back, I even had company, at least for part of the way. The weather was almost too hot for a bike ride, but it was still very nice.

I have noticed that speakers have small devices attached to shirts. Like a microphone, but I didn’t see or hear any loudspeakers. My guess is that it was for recording the talk. I forgot to ask.

Think test cases are enough? Think again

The first speaker was Teodor Petrovski with “Think test cases are enough? Think again”.

He gave an overview of various types of testing, from scripted to exploratory.

It was Teodor’s first public talk, so he was understandably nervous. He was a bit confused in the first half of the talk. He got into the groove as the time passed. The audience was very friendly. That was very nice to see. I’m glad that first-time speakers have a chance. We should make events more beginner-speaker friendly.

It might be just me, but I think most speakers make the mistake of putting too much text on the slides. I think it is perfectly understandable when a novice speaker makes such a mistake.

How to train your robot

The second speaker was Irja Straus with “How to train your robot”.

She talked about testing a fleet of autonomous forklifts in a warehouse. There was a story about a sunbeam on the floor during a portion of the day that broke the forklifts, a wooden bar they used to reset the forklift (because the reset button was hard to reach) and a photo of her in a reflective vest next to a forklift. She’s a veteran speaker. That’s how you do it.

Keeping up with modern QA challenges

I have been to a few panel discussions and I was rarely impressed. This one was surprisingly good. The topics were interesting, the moderator was doing a good job. Well done. I’m not sure why they gave the discussion a fancy name, but it was good marketing. They mostly answered questions submitted during the talks. They also took live questions from the audience.

I like the format. We should do a panel discussion sometime at the Testival meetup or conference. The moderator is important to keep the conversation going and to keep it focused.

Considering the first speaker came from North Macedonia, he spoke both English and Croatian well.

The topics were varied.

• Will robots replace us?
• Testers are not only testing but also doing other things.
• Onboarding and learning. A few people mentioned communities, like Testival. Nobody mentioned learning from books.
• Is a tester the only person that knows the entire project? Irja had a few good comments on that one.
  • That’s a trap. It’s not respected or recognized.
  • Tester is the glue of the team.
• Difference between QA and testers. A few panelists thought it’s not important.
• Shift left. Panelists agreed it’s important.
• Burnout.
• What do you love the most about testing? Panelists and the audience had interesting responses.
  • Recognized as the expert of the system.
  • Diversity of the work.
  • Intrinsic motivation seeing your impact on the project.
  • Aha moments.
  • Digging around bugs.
  • Solving the puzzle.
  • Reporting bugs.
  • Bugs are the core of a tester.
  • Closing bugs. This one was controversial.

It was pretty good and engaged discussion between the moderator, panelists and the audience.

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