PNSQC 2024 - experience report

This post was published on October 17, 2024

While most of the clients I work with are based in Europe, over the last couple of years my client base on the North American side of the Atlantic has slowly but surely started to grow, mainly in the United States. As someone who really enjoys working with and learning from individuals and companies across the globe, this something that I’m really happy with.

However, until this week, it had been 18 years since my last in-person visit to the US. Way back in 2006, I, along with about 20 fellow software testing trainees, were sent onto a three week business course in Athens, Ohio.

Since then, I’ve been to Canada a couple of times, once for work and two times on holiday, but I’ve not managed to return to the US. Again, until this week, when I had the pleasure of being part of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, or PNSQC in short.

I’d been in touch with some of the people who run this volunteer-led conference for a while now, and this year they were kind enough to invite me to do both a keynote and a half-day workshop. I didn’t have to think very long before I accepted their invitation, because it meant both an opportunity to visit a part of the world I’ve never been to before and a chance to meet some of the people in the software testing community I’ve been in touch with online in person.

As for the travel part, I flew in a day early and used that extra day to go on a tour of the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood. I don’t always have time to explore when I’m visiting some place new, but especially when traveling outside of Europe I’ll try and do just that, and this tour was a very convenient way to see some of the natural beauty of the area around Portland.

If you ever find yourself in Portland with an extra day to spend, this tour comes highly recommended. I even had the chance to see and walk on the Pacific Crest Trail for a bit, something I’d really been looking forward to. Who knows one day we’ll get the opportunity to walk that trail in its entirety.

But of course, the PNSQC conference was the main reason for my trip to Oregon. On Monday morning, I attended a workshop on UI automation and different ways to write Page Objects, facilitated by Sophia McKeever, who did a great job of showing us a different approach to Page Objects.

In the afternoon, it was my turn to facilitate a workshop on contract testing with Pact. I’ve run this workshop many, many times over the last couple of years, so it was mostly smooth sailing. The 10 or so people who attended the workshop seemed to have a good time, too, going by their questions and the conversations we had, but I’ll have to wait for the official feedback for that to be confirmed.

On Tuesday, I was scheduled to do the opening keynote with a talk called Do we really need a test automation engineer? (note: the recording in the link is from a different event). This was an updated version of a talk I’ve done a couple of times in recent years. In the talk, I shared some of the things I have learned over the 18 years I’ve been working in software testing and automation, and how I prefer ‘test automation as an activity’ rather than ‘test automation as a role’.

After my talk was done, I could wind down a little and put my attention to conversations with fellow testers and people in other roles with an interest in testing. For me, this is often the most important and most valuable part of a conference, and especially so in this case, as I don’t get to go to the other side of the Atlantic very often. PNSQC for me was a great opportunity to finally meet people in person who I’ve been in touch with online for a while, sometimes for years.

The conference organizers also made sure that around the ‘official’ part of the conference there were plenty of opportunities to meet, have conversations and share a meal, something that is always highly appreciated, too. Unfortunately, I had to leave for the airport and the journey back home after the opening keynote by Michael Larsen and Matt Heusser on Wednesday.

Nonetheless, I’m looking back on a wonderful PNSQC conference, run by an awesome group of volunteers, and I really hope I’ll get another opportunity to come back to Portland and another edition of the conference some day.

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