So, CITCON Auckland (http://www.citconf.com/) is over and what a blast it was!

What I really like about this conference is, that there is such a diversity of people coming to it. It is not the usual siloed Dev/Test/BA/… type conference but attendees come from all over. That means the know-how is totally diverse, as are the topics. And these were the topics (click on the pic to get the full res version):

As you can see there was heaps of stuff to talk about and the 120+ attendees looked like they were enjoying every second of it.

ASB sponsored the venue in Auckland and it was absolutely fantastic! It suited the whole Open Spaces conference set-up very well, and the main room with a big balcony to the outside was just cool (see above). While on the topic of organisation, the food was excellent too. Good idea having ice cream at a conference! 😉

The stuff I learned about most was elastic search and the issues that projects have with non-functionals in a CI/CD environment. I had a swell time running the dice game with attendees. People seem to like it even if it drives them to utter despair. 🙂

I also note that testers and devs are on the same page a lot more than when they are not. That is actually something I have noted before. All those stories of Devs vs Testers are actually not really an everyday occurrence in my book. If you have any doubts, why not come along to the next CITCON in 2015 in Perth or the one in Hong Kong on 7 & 8 November this year (link)!

Big thanks to the sponsors ASB, IBM, Assurity and Orion Health,
Paul, Jeff, OIF and the volunteers
and of course all the attendees for making it such a great conference!

By Oliver Erlewein