STARWEST 2011

I reached Anaheim around 2a.m on October 2nd from Philadelphia. Downtown Anaheim was lively and bustling with activity. Microsoft Sharepoint conference was happening at the Anaheim Convention Center and Starwest 2011 at Hotel Disneyland. I went to SQE booth the next morning to collect the booth staff badges for me and my colleagues. I was surprised to see the level of professionalism at the conference venue. Clearly written directions helped us to contact the right people for our needs and we were assigned a SQE staff for the duration of the event to help us network with others, setting up our booth etc.

On 3rd morning we went to setup our stall and completed that activity at about 10a.m. James Whittaker and several other leading QA consultants (whose names i have seen only in forums prior to the event ) were giving speeches as part of the industry technical presentations at Starwest 2011. A Test Lab was setup near the entrance area where visitors were asked to solve testing puzzles etc. James and Jonathan Bach, Michael Bolton were present close to the Test Lab showcasing Rapid and Exploratory Testing approaches.

One of the eye catching aspect for visitors was the book stall which was strategically located in the visitors area. The book stall had each author per day sitting there and signing books purchased by the visitors. I happened to see Erik Van Veenendaal on one of the days. As a strategic move in line with out corporate theme, we had a violinist from LA who played in our stall for 2 days that attracted lot of visitors. Dorothy Graham was one of the prominent QA personalities to visit our stall and appreciate the music. I connected with Dorothy during her visit to our stall and mentioned that i am a big fan of her thought inspiring articles in Stickyminds and other forums.

The organizers(SQE) had done so much of planning that everything was so flawless. Breakfast, Lunch and Tea were provided in the location where booths were present and the booth staff had priority access to everything. A bar counter was opened during the evenings and was available for the visitors as well. Wipro, Infosys, Mindtree, Applabs and Aspire were some of the companies from India. Ranorex, SOASTA, HP, Microsoft(showcasing Visual Studio Test Edition) were some of the renowned Global companies at the event. Though i had been part of conferences like STC in India before Starwest 2011 was my first international conference and i should say it helped me broaden my QA perspective. My session on "Test Maturity - Tweens, Teens and Twenties" attracted about 23 attendees and most of them had come for the Amazon Kindle and iPad raffle offer that we had. :-)). I will try to post some snaps soon.