June is the start of a new conference season, I’m glad to be part of EuroSTAR Conference 2022 in Copenhagen and this is actually my first conference in 2022 and also my first EuroSTAR !

I wanted to highlight some of the unforgettable (personal) moments that make this conference even more special.

Disclaimer: this blog isn’t about what I learnt but mostly about the experience, stay tuned I’ll publish another blog with takeaways, new learnings and an interview with participants (contact me if you want to be part of the interview)

About EuroSTAR Conference

#EuroSTARConf is the largest international software testing event in Europe +1200 test professionals coming from 76 different countries 🌍 from 07-10 June 2022. One special thing about it, is that the event location isn’t the same over the years, they change even the country every year (next year it will be in Belgium) also the theme.

This edition was even more special as EuroSTAR Conference celebrated their 30 years and this year theme is “Shaping Testing”.

Before the conference

Few days before the conference, we received a link to join the whova app where we can find all the community (speakers, participants, organizers) everyone can break the ice and initiate discussions about the conference or anything that come to mind.

The application is super funny, we started experiencing the conference vibes in early phases, from traveling checklist, to Copenhagen tourist questions, to quality coaching and testing related questions. Also active polls, meetups.. And there is even a thread that allow participants to learn danish alphabet with local danish tips to whom we are very thankful for all the advice they gave us to easily navigate in Copenhagen.

Luckily monday is a day off in both France and Copenhagen so I decided to go there since sunday, the marathon started with heavy rain in Lille and finished by spending 9h in paris CDG airport due to flight delay.

Luckily I have my pens and papers with me, I tried to use that waiting time to prepare some sketchnotes frames to talks that I wanted to attend.

Finally landed in Copenhagen sunday evening, I registred to the conference monday afternoon, I got very nice swags and the best conference badge ever which you can customize with stickers during coffee break while talking with other testers searching for their flags and extra stickers to put.

During the conference, special moments

This is my second time ever I see wellness activities in the program of a conference (yoga, running, swimming) very early in the morning 6:45AM before the start of the conference.

Respect to those conferences who allow participants to connect their mind, body and spirit and prepare the best version of themselves to start receiving new content.

I personally felt more focused after the morning yoga class, and ready to the whole days.

Started my first day with Rik Marselis tutorial

The second day is a combination between keynotes and talks, the choice of talks is not easy (1 between 5) but the good thing is that I tried to make my choice in advance to avoid making wrong fast decision (like choosing the nearest room to me when the conference is about to start :p). There are also threads in the whova application where you can synchronize with other attendees which talk you want to get takeaways from you just have to find an attendee to sessions that you couldn’t attend.

The venue is incredible from all corners !! you find volunteers everywhere they guide you easily to find the room you are looking for or anything else.

My most special moments:

I volunteered as a track chair to host 2 sessions

Tip: I used TIQTS (link) to properly intrduce the speaker which refer to (topic, Important, Qualification, Time, Speaker) if you have other tips, please let me know 🙂

The third day

The evening of Day 3, is one of my best moments, I’m very proud to pair with Sophie Küster and announcing the EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award 2022 winner Anne-Marie Charrett during the fabulous DinnerParty at CIRKUSBYGNINGEN.

The forth day,

Having great interactions with participants during our workshop about the 21st Century Skills for a Tester with Ard Kramer, as we promised we are planning to publish an appendix to our book “21stskills4testers” with all the gathered tips from the conference. The goal is how we can improve the use of the 4C’s in our daily testing as a team and how those softskills could improve testing.

Ended the day with an appreciation as I’m the most active member of Eurostar community during these days which means had great engaging testing related conversations with others like Chris Armstrong, Jane Møller Nash and everyone in the Whova application which makes the event experience even more special …

The prise was supposed to be given just few minutes before the start of my workshop, I didn’t want to join to stay on my focus zone before the start of my workshop and to be intime in my room as well, luckily my friends Sanne Visser and René van Veldhuijzen coordinated together to bring it to my room after the end of our workshop ! I’m very thankful to you both 🙂

I also want to thank all 10 top leaderboard not because of the rank itself but mostly about all the engaging discussions they created and all the fun while using the whova application. I’m sure this event would never be the same without those unique participants including Jane Nash who is the first person I met in the app then I discovered she is my colleague from Denmark 🙂 !

My Sogeti colleagues from other countries

I had the chance to meeting +15 likeminded colleagues for the first time in person from Capgemini and Sogeti of 4 different countries and we had great moments together.

Sogeti colleagues Denmark, Netherlands, France, Sweden

Thank you for reading this blog post, stay tuned for coming blog posts and contact me if you want to be part of future interviews!

To be continued

I truly enjoyed every single moment during the conference, happy that I had the chance to meet many old friends (inluding the ones I met for the first time in person) and also make new ones !

and I can’t wait to join another edition of EuroSTAR, the next one will be in Belgium !