My Take: Weekend Testing Americas - Session 1

I was part of the first Weekend Testing American Session on Saturday Nov 13, 2010 from 2 - 4 pm CST. Michael Larsen was the session coordinator and he helped moderate the session and also presented the objective and mission.

You can find more information @ WTA01 - Let's Dance

There were 21 people from all over the world including India, Canada, Israel, etc. It was nice to see so many people from different locations, different experience, different testing ideas come together to try to work on one goal - making Weekend Testing American a success.

Mission was to test StepMania 4 (open source clone version of Dance Dance revolution) with a partner. We had to choose a partner within the first few minutes and then test it for an hour. We regrouped after that to discuss what went well and what didn't.

I learnt couple of things

1. Don't forget the mission. I jumped into trying to test the application. The goal was to work with your partner.
2. Testing is learning - Michale Bolton brought up a good point of how learning really is part of testing and not separate.
3. Rapid Reporter - A cool tool to take test notes especially during exploratory testing. Thanks to Shmuel Gershon I now have a tool that I can use everyday.
4. Skype has a share option where you can share screen. Another great tool that I will be using a lot. I used to use MSN Messenger sharing but it has its glitches and live meeting takes time to setup and is one way.
5. There are some good testers out there who love to share knowledge and are good mentors. I met a very enthusiastic group during this weekend testing session.