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Category: SauceCon 2019

  • SauceCon Speaker Profile: Phil Wells

    SauceCon Speaker Profile: Phil Wells

    This is the seventh in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    Phil Wells is coming to SauceCon 2019 to talk about the New York Times Crossword.

    No, really, Phil is a software engineer with the web group of the New York Times Games team whose job is to build quality into the online version of the famous puzzle done by thousands of people daily.

    More than anything, Phil cares about mission. During his 12 years of web development experience, he has worked on software that educates parents of kids with autism, software that helps people perform better on standardized tests and now for the New York Times, whose mission is to help people understand the world around them.

    “The puzzle brings so much joy into people’s days,” says Phil. “I’m really proud of my work.”

    When Phil tells people what he does for a living, they want to know what it means. Does he just solve crosswords all day? Is he in web development or game development? Does he know Will Shortz? (The answer to that last one is no, but he is an emoji in their internal Slack instance!) People love the crossword, and they all seem to want to know more about how the sausage is made.

    Phil’s session at SauceCon will be all about “Automating the New York Times Crossword.” He wants to show test practitioners that testing a web application as complex as the crossword involves the same best practices as testing anything else. During his talk, Phil will show attendees some of the tricks his team used to become fast and reliable.

    “The main theme of my talk is about making software development feel better. We don’t want to feel the shame of failed builds or delayed releases,” he said. “So, we built these systems to help us ship the stuff we build quickly and safely.” The first half of his talk covers the things the team did to get cultural wins internally. In the second half, Phil will dive into his particular team’s bag of tricks; the tools they use to make sure the tests are making everyone do their job better.

    When he’s not working on testing the crossword, Phil enjoys improv comedy. He is also an aficionado of “The Big Lebowski,” and has written a book called “Dudesong,” an epic poem adaptation of the movie, featuring 5,500 lines of poetry in rhyming couplets!

    Whether or not you’re a fan of “The Big Lebowski,” you can hear from Phil and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon Speaker Profile: Richard Bradshaw

    SauceCon Speaker Profile: Richard Bradshaw

    This is the sixth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts, to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    Richard Bradshaw is known for running the Ministry of Testing, speaking at events all over the world and for being the “Friendly Tester”—a nickname given to him by a developer.

    However, one thing toward which Richard isn’t 100 percent friendly is the Test Automation Pyramid. He says it can and should bring about conversations, but thinks it lacks too much to function as a solid automation strategy, which is how many people use it. At SauceCon 2019, Richard will present some other options in his talk, “Pyramids Are Ancient – Let’s Talk Automation Strategy.”

    Richard hopes that people will take away the fact that to truly be successful with automation, you need to fit automation into your overall testing strategy. During his talk, he will review the steps that he takes when conducting an automation audit, steps attendees will then be able to immediately take back to work and begin applying. “I also hope that observing me critique existing models will motivate them to do the same to some of the models used in their current workplace, and identify ways to improve their approach,” he said.

    Richard is well-qualified to help testers improve in this area. As the BossBoss (aka CEO) of the Ministry of Testing, his primary role is to ensure they stick to their mission of “co-creating better testers.” Richard and his team offer numerous ways to learn and share testing knowledge. They run the TestBash conference, manage an online learning platform called The Dojo and host meetups all around the world.

    When he is not working or thinking about work (a rarity!), Richard loves cooking up a storm, hiking and traveling.

    You can hear from Richard and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Wim Selles

    SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Wim Selles

    This is the fifth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    SauceCon 2019 speaker Wim Selles is passionate about front-end test automation and his enthusiasm is infectious.

    He started manual testing back in 2007, then began dabbling in web development to challenge himself. He soon fell in love with front-end web development, deciding that if he truly understood how code works, he would become a better tester.

    While employed at Tele2, a large telecom company in the Netherlands, Wim realized the need for an image compare tool for native apps, but he couldn’t find exactly what he needed. So he decided to roll up his sleeves and build an open source module himself.

    Wim’s SauceCon presentation, “Building Your Own Native App Visual Testing Module with Appium,” will focus on exactly how he did this. He will share the things he learned about Appium in the process, as well as how he managed to create a cross-platform solution to answer this need.

    Wim wants to make people as enthusiastic about test automation as he is. As a solutions architect at Sauce Labs, he helps customers successfully implement the Sauce Labs Continuous Testing Cloud. He conducts trainings, shares best practices and travels the world speaking (and learning!) about coding and testing.

    In addition to his passion for test automation, Wim enjoys contributing to the open source community and spending time with his family and two young daughters.

    You can hear from Wim and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon Speaker Profile: Jenny Bramble

    SauceCon Speaker Profile: Jenny Bramble

    This is the fourth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    Jenny Bramble started out her career in test engineering as a waitress. Of course, she didn’t realize it at the time, but the skills she gained from waiting tables have served her well throughout her professional life. Learning how to communicate needs between several wildly different groups turned out to be an especially valuable skill in test engineering.

    Even now, after making the jump from support to DevOps to manual and then automated testing, Jenny believes that the human element is foundational.

    At Willowtree, Jenny works as the test lead on a project team of five to eight developers and three to six test engineers. She leads their testing efforts and works with clients to create products that delight their end users. The concept of delighting users truly guides Jenny’s day-to-day work. “Creating products that make you happy to use them feeds the part of my personality that loves people and wants to make an impact on their lives. It’s a reason I got into testing in the first place,” she said.

    At SauceCon 2019, Jenny will present, “Creating Automation Engineers from Scratch.” She will share her personal experience in adopting and embracing automated testing. “Automation is an incredible tool, but creating automation engineers from manual testers is hard,” she said. “Even if testers are willing, they have a lot of hurdles to get over to feel like the same kind of subject matter experts in automation as they are in manual testing.”

    When she isn’t working on delighting clients through automation, Jenny has many hobbies that keep her busy. She quilts, crochets, knits, weaves, cooks and even recently took up axe-throwing! Her two cats, Dax and Dante, keep her company through it all.

    You can hear from Jenny and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon Speaker Profile: Titus Fortner

    SauceCon Speaker Profile: Titus Fortner

    This is the third in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    The old adage says, “Third time’s a charm.” When it comes to SauceCon speaker Titus Fortner, the cliche proves true: Testing is his third career. Titus first went to the Naval Academy, studied nuclear engineering and became a submarine officer—traveling the world doing everything from launching ballistic missiles to helping automate and streamline communication among the senior staff of the commanding general in Iraq. When he left the Navy, Titus went back to school for a year to learn computer science, then got a job as a junior developer at a startup. Focusing on test automation was an accident, but the influence testing had on the overall system and process was immediately appealing to him.

    Titus then became a core contributor to the Selenium project and the project lead for Watir, an open source testing library built on top of Selenium, as well as numerous other testing related Ruby gems. He also implemented automated testing solutions at five different companies before joining Sauce Labs as a Senior Solutions Architect. Today, he works closely with customers to help improve their testing practices.

    At SauceCon 2019, Titus will present, “Page Objects: You’re Doing It Wrong.” Although Page Objects enable newer users to write sophisticated tests against an application, Titus has found that the Page Object Pattern is often misused. “There are lots of different ideas on what makes a good implementation, and I’ve actually tried most of them at one point or another and have personal experience that informs my recommendations of certain approaches over others,” he said. “Smart people disagree with me on some of these, and my goal at SauceCon is to present both sides while explaining my reasons for the preferences I have.”

    When he isn’t convincing customers how to better use Page Objects, Titus reads, writes open source code and takes day trips with his blind dog who loves car rides.

    You can hear from Titus and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Melissa Benua

    SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Melissa Benua

    This is the second in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    SauceCon speaker Melissa Benua loves horses and riding dressage. Derived from a French word that means “training,” dressage is all about creating strength, discipline and precision. It’s fitting, because she is also passionate about training and mentoring junior-level engineers and increasing developer efficiency—which she’ll be talking about in her presentation.

    At SauceCon 2019, Melissa will present “Continuous Deployment for ‘Mature’ Codebases.” I asked her why this topic was important to her. “When starting a new project, it’s easy to take advantage of modern agile development practices, because you’re starting from scratch,” she said. “However, the reality is that isn’t the case for most projects. Our challenge then is how we can take code that may be many years old and transform it into a lean, mean, continuously-deploying machine.”

    In her presentation, Melissa plans to deliver just that: a road map for getting to a release cycle that deploys on-demand from a one that may take weeks or months. She will leverage her personal experience in significantly re-architecting the deployment structure and offer practical advice to anyone managing a more mature codebase.

    Melissa has worked in nearly every software development role there is—dev, test, DevOps and program management—at companies big and small and somewhere in-between. She has created and run high-availability, high-quality services for PlayFab, Bing, Cortana and Xbox One, and now at mParticle as a senior technical lead.

    When she’s not poring over code or training newer engineers, Melissa enjoys spending time with her two small children—and of course, riding her horse. She travels extensively and presents at industry conferences worldwide.

    You can hear from Melissa and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Dave Haeffner

    SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Dave Haeffner

    This is the first in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    SauceCon 2019 speaker Dave Haeffner says he dabbles in Selenium—but it might be more accurate to say he eats, sleeps and breathes it. In fact, Dave is the writer of the Elemental Selenium tip newsletter, which is read by thousands of testing professionals, as well as the creator and maintainer of the-internet (an open source web app that’s perfect for writing automated tests against), author of “The Selenium Guidebook,” and an active member of the Selenium project.

    Despite his background, believe it or not Dave stumbled into automated software testing circa 2009 with Selenium IDE. He was a network engineer who didn’t have a background in programming or software testing. He and his new teammates eventually evolved their automation practice into a test harness written in Ruby (in fact, they were Sauce Labs’ first Ruby customer!). Today Dave considers himself fortunate enough to be paid to work full-time on open source software—Selenium IDE in particular.

    The Sauce Labs team is fortunate to have Dave present again at SauceCon 2019. At this year’s event, Dave is on a mission to break the stereotype that record and playback is a bad thing. He used to believe it, too, but wants to help squash the stigma. In this talk, Dave will show examples of how Selenium IDE can reliably augment and level-up your testing practice regardless of your team’s test automation maturity or your level of technical experience. “If people take away just one thing from my talk, it’s that record and playback with Selenium IDE is worth a shot,” he said of his planned presentation.

    Want to give it a try? Download the latest version.

    Outside of work, Dave spends time with his wife and daughter, exploring the new city they call home, Tel Aviv. He also enjoys learning and practicing Hebrew.

    You can hear from Dave and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer