Question

I've heard good things about some conferences but I'm sure there is a lot more to know about the testing conferences. Please share your experience.

You can also list the conferences you know by the best you enjoyed!

Thanks,

-Konstantin

Answer 1

I suspect it depends on what you're looking for:

If you want a brainy atmosphere, with experienced, pragmatic, automation-focused testing expertise, GTAC (Google Test Automation Conference) is hard to beat. Numbers are limited; you need to apply to attend; they make selections based on who they think would be able to contribute interesting personal experiences and professional perspectives as an attendee at the conference.

If you want lively discussions, highly-engaged attendees, a Context-Driven Testing and Exploratory Testing focus, CAST could well be the conference for you. It has many seriously smart and passionate testing experts attend; if you're looking for a conference with a very high percentage of attendees who you could learn a lot from as a percentage of total attendees at the conference, CAST would have to be at or near the very top of testing conferences world-wide.

If you want tangible proof that you are not alone in the world as a tester (and be surrounded by as many testers as possible, lots of vendors, and well known speakers), StarEast and StarWest would be right up your alley.

I also attended the Software Test & Performance Collaborative (STP) Conference in Boston this year and found it useful and interesting.

Answer 2

Any peer (LAWST-inspired) conference brings tremendous value, the only problem is that they are often invitation only. I have been involved with the workshop on performance and reliability (WOPR) for the last 6 years. http://www.performance-workshop.org and we already had 13 workshops and the momentum is still there.

Answer 3

I would recommend the CAST conference, which is hosted by AST. I really like that conference because it is held by other QA professionals.

Answer 4

+1 for Justin's depiction of GTAC, CAST and Star.
I've never been to CAST, but I heard very good feedback from it.

I don't get much chance of attending these cool international conferences :). Here in Israel I attend the Israeli SIGiST conference, which has a mix of interesting subjects+speakers and boring/wrong subjects+speakers.
Disclosure: I am usually a speaker at this conference (and many people would put me in the second group... :D).