The success of the Dutch Testing Conference
Apr26
This post is a little evaluation of the Dutch Testing Conference, that took place at the 21st April. I’ll share you some lessons learned of the use of a twitter during the conference and what the old heroes can learn from these developments.
Why should I write something about the DTC? Nathalie already wrote a post about this at her blog.
With 380 visitors the first time it was quite a success. The photo below give an impression of the audience during the second keynote.
Photo by Rik Marselis.
Use of Twitter
A couple of weeks before the conference I suggested to SwissQ to use Twitter before and during the conference. Because I know there are a lot of software testing Tweeps in the Netherlands (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) we can use this successfully. The only thing I need therefore was a free ticket to be there during the conference day. We started with a Twitter account DutchTestingC (because the name DutchTestingConference was to long we made a shorter one). The first week the amount of followers was growing but not fast enough to reach a lot of people with our account.
A couple of days before the conference we send out a newsletter to all registered visitors and sponsors, from that moment the amount of followers grew. At this moment we have 71 active Twitterers that are following us. The graph below shows you how the growth took place.
Some Twitter lessons
The second keynote was from Jurgen Appelo. He speaks a lot of national and international conferences. I thought these kind of people aren’t nervous anymore. But what did he say: “Tension is rising”.
This is just one of his tweets, check his other tweets about the conference. What you’ll see is that he is not a tester, but he has learned us a lot of lessons. The feedback at his keynote was positive.
Twitter is a very useful medium to get feedback from the audience. Here are two tweets of the same person about the two different key note speakers. As you can see are his feelings about the presentation different.
The first keynote was from Google, about testing and clouds. A lot of people from the audience wondering what the link with testing was for the software testers in the Netherlands. They expect a more flashy presentation.
As opposite the second keynote was a real success. Jurgen Appelo his presentation was very successful. A lot of interaction with the audience, some humor, funny slides and last but not least good content, I think everybody can use this in his daily business.
There are also a lot of spam tweets, and funny tweets for example of people that choose for the wrong presentation during the day. Unfortunatly for Pascal Dufour he missed the good presentations. Hopefully you get a new chance next year.
To see all the responses you have to check the thread at twitter #DTC10.
The last remarkable lesson I will share with you is a statement I have heard several times during the day. I wrote already a post about this, because I do not agree with this statement.
Are we the leader in software testing?
Some people have made the statement that we in the Netherlands are the top of structured software testing in the world? Is that the truth? Are we really thoughtleader? Do we develop the standards and methods that are used all over the world for software testing?
In my opinion there is a lot of development in the Netherlands about software testing. I’ve seen a lot of good presentations at the Dutch Testing Conference, but is this enough to be thoughtleader? Is sharing this information to the same testing audience as you always do enough to be thoughtleader? Or are these people only known testing guru´s in the Netherlands for Dutch structured testing crowd?
Last week Steven Machtelinckx made a top 100 of blogs about software testing. Only at place 39 and 82 are testing blogs from the Netherlands. If the amount of blogs is leading for the amount of development in a certain country, we are far away from the top.
A possible reason is: we in the Netherlands have a lot of old heroes that aren’t using the new and modern media like twitter and blogs. They are not visible for the new generation, they are even not connected to the development, discussion and interaction that takes place at the internet right now. If we do not change we´ll get a generation gap. Knowledge and experience about structured software testing will be lost.
Conclusion of the DTC.
If a new conference has >380 visitors, a dozen exhibitors, so much different presentations it was a real success. If you see all the comments that are given via Twitter with the hashtag #DTC10 I think we must organise it again for next year #DTC11.
But we must change in the Netherlands, we have to step out of our familiar group of people to share the thoughts an knowledge we have with the rest of the world.
The goal of this event was to share the knowledge with our customers, this is a point of attention for the next year, because I think we have to invite more customers, instead of only our Dutch test crowd.
The last graph comes from a very useful twitter statistic site TweetReach. This site gives an overview of the amount of people you reach with the last 50 tweets. As you can see is this very effective, the last 50 tweets reach 5337 people. This is free publicity, and done with little effort.
I’ll try to realise two improvements for the next year #DTC11:
- a Twitter Fountain in the exhibitors hall
- the possibility to ask questions at the speakers via Twitter at the end of the presentation
See you next year at the Dutch Testing Conference.
Post Scriptum,
There are some defects found during the day. Not every demo went well. But some ladies found also a defect at the toilets:
Photo by Rik Marselis.
April 26th, 2010 at 23:25
I agree that DTC10 was a success. I enjoyed the presentations, the food and the way twitter was used during the conference.
It was also fun to meet new people, some of them I already met on twitter.
I believe that using twitter on this conference was fun in a few ways. First of all, it was great to see the interaction on #dtc10 during the presentations. It seemed that visitors ‘found’ each other using the hash tag.
Furthermore, you could get an idea on how much the visitors appreciated a presentation. It was kind of frustrating for myself, as I found out I was at the wrong presentation once. (Visitors where very enthusiastic about a presentation, while the one that I was at was pretty boring).
And not only people at DTC10 enjoyed the tweets. I received some comments from fellow testers that enjoyed following #dtc10 during the day. I hope they will be joining us on DTC11.
For next year, I hope a larger number of people will be using twitter during the conference. I also hope the organization/exhibitors will look into the possibilities that twitter and other social media offer us. We can learn a lot of people like Timo Elliot, who uses twitter extensively in his presentations.
Ow. For me, being an old or a new hero is mainly defined by the message/vision/ideas of a person, not the channel he or she uses to bring his message to the audience. But that’s just my humble opinion.
April 27th, 2010 at 07:49
Bart,
Thanks for your response, I agree that this type of communication must grow at that need some time.
Your last humble opinion is an interesting one for me. Can you tell me more about this? Because the old heroes have good visions/messages but there is no connection with the new generation. So are they still heroes… When is somebody a new or old heroes? Or do they not exist?! Is there no difference?
February 5th, 2012 at 23:09