CITCON 2012, Budapest, Hungary

A couple of weeks ago I was at CITCON Europe 2012 in Budapest. I think about 100 people were there, just enough.

Early in the morning of the second day I gave a longer version of my usual Test automation at HomeSwap.com talk. If my talk was later in the day I would be nervous most of the day. This way I gave my talk after breakfast and then I had the whole day to enjoy the conference.

A few things surprised me there.

Well, the first thing did not really surprise me, since I was expecting an unconference, but this was probably the most unconferency (if that is a real word) unconference that I have attended so far. And I do not mean it in a bad way. Unconferences feed on chaos, and this one turned out really interesting. Schedules were changing all the time, people were using the Law of Two Feet liberally. I really prefer this type of conference over more traditional ones.

Another pleasant surprise was that the number of women was way higher than usual, about 25%. I was in a few sessions where there were more women. I am glad to see that software is becoming more women friendly.

Also, I was surprised to se a lot of people from Romania, and even a few people from all around Europe, Finland, Serbia, Croatia...

Another thing that I did not notice at Croatian conferences are recruiters. After the first day of the conference a friend and I wanted to get some food, but at the exit there were a few recruiters that literally did not let us go until we accepted their credit cards and talked to them for a few minutes. I am not looking for work at the moment, but it was nice to see that companies are actively looking for testers.

In short, it was a good conference. I have heard a lot about how other people do continuous integration and testing, the tools that they use and the problems that they face.