TestBash Philly 2017: The Pre-Test Bash Meetup

It took me seven hours, heading into Boston to catch the train to Philadelphia, then another train to get across the city to Penn's Landing to where TestBash Philly 2017 is being held, but I finally made it!

Today, I volunteered to help out the speakers putting on the two day software testing conference for the Ministry of Testing. Tonight I went to the Pre-TestBash Meetup. But before that, I was on a quest to find an authentic Philly Cheesesteak sandwich. Luckily for me, I found Campo's Deli right off the train station and devoured one whole.

Campo's Deli

It was just a short ten minute walk to the train to the FringeArts theater, where people were setting up for Day One of tomorrow's TestBash. I made the rounds, saying hello to people, when I bumped into Kate Paulk, who will be giving the talk, But I'm Not a Security Tester, and Christine McGarry from Canada, who will be giving the talk, The Fellowship of the Test: Building a Community Across Agile Teams, and Christine's husband.

The FringeArts Theater

After hanging out a bit, we all headed to the Pre-TestBash Meetup at the Positano Coast, where I chatted with Ken Riley, the @agile_QA evangelist and Meetup co-organizer of the Atlanta Quality Assurance Association and Dave Harrison ( @davadora ), Directory of Software Testing at CardConnect.

Not only were they both familiar with the correct pronunciation of the city of Quincy, MA (QUIN-ZEE), Dave, I found out, is a regular reader of this blog, followed me on Twitter, knew the hiring manager back when I interviewed at Harvard University for an automation development position a few years ago, and knew one of my favorite recruiters. (Hi, Dave! Hi, Leo!).

I also bumped into two QA recruiters for Willowtree Apps in Virginia. Lee, a Software Test Engineer, enlightened me on the difficulty of testing on a Roku device. She knew so much, and was able to talk about everything in such detail, she could write a paper on it!

As a conversation starter, to break the ice, I wore my Rick & Morty T-Shirt. It was enough to start a conversation with Jack, one of the inventors of Mailinator, a TestBash sponsor. Mailinator one of the best web application I have ever used to mock up email addresses. He told me, briefly, about how Mailinator came to be, a fun story!

That was a lot of fun, and what was just what I needed to make myself comfortable dealing with the teaming crowds tomorrow.

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
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// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"