My Take: TCQAA Meeting and presentation: Speaker Alex Dietz

Twin City Quality Assurance Association is a local non-profit organization and is the networking place for software testers in the Twin Cities (Minnesota). To know more about the organization visit TCQAA website. I and my colleague recently decided to drop in at their monthly meeting. I looked up their website to see the presentation topic.

Speaker: Alex Dietz
Topic: Principles of Software Verification and Validation for Medical Imaging.

I went to the meeting thinking there is nothing I learn about Medical Imaging that I would be able to use for testing in the financial industry. I am glad I was proved wrong. I went in to learn about an industry that I was curious about and have never been involved in. The speaker was very engaging, humorous and lively. Though his focus was on testing software-heavy medical imaging system, his approach for verification and validation can be applied to any industry. He talked about risk based testing and involving end users (doctors or medical specialist) to test. He also focused on reducing errors that are caused due to human errors to compensate for errors caused during the creation of the image.
I learnt a new word too: phantom. No, not the comic we read years ago. These are medical images that are used for testing. Look them up and you will find a lot of interesting information.

There were some good discussion in the end during the Q&A on the trends and problems medical industry faces. He talked about issues related to storing millions of images, sharing information between hospitals and doctors and network issues that this industry depends on for storing and sharing information.

You can find the abstract of his presentation at TCQAA events page.

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Few other benefits:
If you are looking to network or are looking for job openings, TCQAA meetings are a good place to start. There were several recruiters there at the meeting who talked about Software testing jobs in and around the twin cities.

I also met an ex-colleague of mine after several years. This is also a place where you meet other software testers and can learn/share information.

Who can say no to coffee and cookies right. So do drop in when you can to attend their meeting.