European Testing Conference 2016 was a blast, and we'll get back to sharing the feedback, the financial report and video content as those come together. But we already have a new year in the making as our thoughts are on European Testing Conference 2017 in Helsinki, Finland.
As before, we will be looking for you to join in various roles: we'd love to see you become a participant and create the wonderful atmosphere we could enjoy in 2016. We welcome you as an organizer joining our ranks and taking the conference to new heights. If organizing is a little too much, become an advisor and have discussions with us on what the content should be and how we should approach the conference in general. And we're right about now starting the search for speakers. There will be a call for co-creation to ask for you to get in touch, but co-creation is really an ongoing process. Get in touch so that we know of you.
There was a great blog post in synch with this conferences values today. We picked up a few ideas from it:
- We need to do Lift Pitch Online - the 5 minute pitch for your practical sessions to make selection more interactive. And true to Maaret's Speak Easy appreciation, this is not a one-off, but should you feel you want to improve on feedback, you'll get to try again. Skype is great for this.
- We need to assess if we could introduce a model of free tickets for upcoming year for conference speakers, at least ones that identify as new to sharing in public. I know I hear nothing until I've delivered my talk, and would love to enable the year of full participation.
We also know better than before how we'd describe what we seek in sessions:
- We seek focused ideas that inspire to action
- We seek practical sessions that show how things are done. A demo or an experience over a talk.
- We seek people who speak to meet people and want to be around the whole conference.
There was one particular discussion I had with many of our 2016 speakers on the conference working towards not paying to speak. When I shared the news that we will be paying honorariums already this year, every speaker said they don't do this for money. They are happy with the expenses covered. Sometimes they even feel they would pay to meet the other speakers and get in the in-circle, and to get the stage to meet all the wonderful participants. My point is only: this is work, even if it is fun work. Opportunity cost matters: with all time you could be doing something else. If you can be paid, wouldn't that be great even if not a must-have? If you would choose over two otherwise similar audiences but one pays and the other doesn't, wouldn't that matter to you in your selection?
