Selenium Conference

[hugs]

Okay, so in my usual enthusiasm, I got ahead of myself and said "ohai,
@seleniumconf" Wednesday on Twitter. In so doing, I did this in
backwards order and inadvertently telegraphed an inaccurate picture.
What Sauce Labs should have done and what I intended to do, is first
discuss this on the Selenium Developers mailing list. Just as the
dozen or so San Francisco Selenium Meetup events we’ve sponsored over
the past 18 months have clearly been community events, so will the
Selenium Conference clearly be a community event. From the start, we
plan and want the voice of the community to be heard and embraced by
this conference.

As we’re fond of saying at Sauce, it’s okay to be wrong, not okay to
stay wrong. So here we go: Let's chat...

The origins of the idea for a Selenium Conference:

Though the project is now over 6 years old, we've yet to do a proper
in-person community event to talk just about Selenium for an extended
period of time. When I've met up with fellow Selenium committers, the
idea of doing a real conference has come up often. The one-evening
meetups we have sponsored at LinkedIn, Mozilla, Google and Trulia
among others are great fun, but it's time we do more. Up to now,
planning a Selenium conference has just been idle beer banter. But now
is the time to put down the beers and do this for real. As part of the
communication issue described by Patrick, I believe face to face would
encourage better and more transparent communication amongst everyone
in the community.

First steps towards planning a Selenium conference:
* Pick a date
* Pick a city
* Pick a venue
* Register a domain name and create a twitter account. <-- DONE!
* Talk about it with the world.
* Get more people involved.

As you can see, we're just getting started. The folks I work with at
Sauce (Ashley Wilson, Jeff Goldsmith, and Adam Christian) have done
some of the initial work on the first four items. So far, we've
narrowed down some candidate dates: April 1-3, March 4-6, March 18-20.
The initial idea is for official festivities to be a Saturday through
1/2 day Sunday, with an unofficial kick-off mixer Friday night. We
have found two venues for April 1-3 in San Francisco, that don't seem
to conflict with other conferences.

Crunching the numbers, there are three great candidate cities for
hosting the conference:
* San Francisco
* London
* New York City

Not coincidentally, that is the ranking of cities by "highest
concentrations of people talking about and doing things with
Selenium". (My personal favorite would be Chicago, the birthplace of
Selenium, but as Chicago Cubs fans say, "there's always next year".)

I'd like to clear some things up:
* Anyone who wants to sponsor can, anyone who wants to help can.
* Sauce Labs is putting in the legwork to make this conference happen,
but it's not “the Sauce Labs Conference,” it’s “The Selenium
Conference” and it will look and feel like that. It's _your_
conference.

There will be two groups to make a Selenium conference happen. The
"Workhorse Committee" and the "Advisory Committee". The Workhorse
Committee is an apt name, they will do the stuff that needs doing and
ensure it gets done. This is not a glamorous post; it will be a grind,
but there's a bouquet of roses waiting for them at the end. (I'll pay
for the roses.) The other committee is the Advisory Committee, anyone
who has a stake in how this thing should be run, should be on this
list. We'll probably set up two mailing lists, one for each group, and
it'll be up to the groups to figure out how they operate between now
and the conference.

Workhorse Committee:
* Jason Huggins (Sauce Labs)
* Jeff Goldsmith (Sauce Labs)
* Ashley Wilson (Sauce Labs)
* Adam Christian (Sauce Labs)

Advisory Committee:
* Jason Huggins (Sauce Labs)
* Patrick Lightbody (BrowserMob)
* Simon Stewart (Google)
* Adam Goucher (Element 34, and occasional Sauce Labs covert ops)
* Adam Christian (Sauce Labs)
* Kevin Menard (Mogotest)
* Dave Hunt (Mozilla)
* David Burns (Mozilla)


These are my suggestions for Workhorse and Advisory committees. If
you're on the list, and don't want to be, speak up. Or, if your name
is *not* on this list, and you want it added, again, speak up.
Committees are great, but in the interest of ensuring this conference
is a success, we also need a single point of responsibility.
Delegation fails sometimes. So I'm listing a single name as the "if
you want stuff fixed/done/ideaified, go to" person. I'm that person.
I'm _not_ the Benevolent Dictator For Life for Selenium, but I am the
Benevolent Dictator For This Conference. Send me your input. I’m
listening.

Again, this is a community event. Sauce Labs and I are facilitating
this to ensure the event happens for the benefit of the community in
the most awesomest way it can. We can make the financial commitment to
make this real - sponsorships and tickets will fund the venue and
other logistics, and any extra proceeds will go back to the Selenium
project.

So chime in everyone.

Cheers,

\ hugs /
(aka "Jason Huggins")
email: hu...@saucelabs.com
twitter: @hugs

[David Burns]

YAY! A selenium conference!

Having been to London Selenium User Group and helping with it, not really since Dave did a good job of organising, I really glad to be helping out on this!

I hope that we can make this a conference for the people by the people! Remember Selenium has a phenomenal community and we should definitely have them involved from submitting talks to being volunteers!

My only suggestion for this conference is : Can we have only one track for this conference, like GTAC, so people don't have to choose between talks.

David

David Burns
URL: http://www.theautomatedtester.co.uk/

twitter: @AutomatedTester

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Selenium Developers" group.
To post to this group, send email to selenium-...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to selenium-develo...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/selenium-developers?hl=en.

[Jason Huggins]

I like how JSConf did it... 2 tracks: A and B... Track A was the official track with vetted talks. Track B was an open-space style where anyone can propose a talk.. first come first served. So it felt like a single-track conf (most stayed in the Track A main room the whole day), but Track B was there to offer a nice alternative.

- hugs

[Patrick Lightbody]

+1 to that

--

Patrick Lightbody

+1 (415) 830-5488

On Nov 12, 2010, at 12:33 PM, Jason Huggins wrote:

I like how JSConf did it... 2 tracks: A and B... Track A was the official track with vetted talks. Track B was an open-space style where anyone can propose a talk.. first come first served. So it felt like a single-track conf (most stayed in the Track A main room the whole day), but Track B was there to offer a nice alternative.

- hugs

[David Burns]

I have never been to a conference like that. I really like that idea too!

David Burns

On Nov 12, 2010 8:36 PM, "Patrick Lightbody" <pat...@lightbody.net> wrote:

+1 to that

--

Patrick Lightbody

+1 (415) 830-5488

On Nov 12, 2010, at 12:33 PM, Jason Huggins wrote: > I like how JSConf did it... 2 tracks: A and B...

-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Selenium Developers" ...

[Dave Hunt]

Exciting stuff!

Happy to be on the advisory committee, and I'm more than happy to be a
speaker.

San Francisco works, and makes sense considering the success of the
regular meetup events, so I'm +1 for that.

I'll be very keen to get some dates confirmed so that I can make sure
there are no conflicts.

Dave.

> email: h...@saucelabs.com
> twitter: @hugs

[Adam Christian]

Greetings everyone!

I was interested in getting some conference feedback on the length of the conference. 

I know there will be a lot of good content and I have had some input saying that stopping at noon on sunday would be frustrating for people coming from far away. Since we have a venue for both days, does anyone see a reason not to keep the talks going until 5pm on sunday? Of course people can leave earlier if they need to, but I'm pretty sure we can fill two full days with awesomeness.

JSConf was pretty small and fully filled up two days with a preceding friday night party.

Adam

[Frank Cohen]

Dear Jason and Everyone:

Yes! A Selenium conference is a great idea.

Please consider adding to the list:

Advisory Committee:

Frank Cohen (PushToTest)

Workhorse Committee:

Saurabh Mallik (PushToTest) sau...@pushtotest.com

You can count on us for:

1) Screencast production of the event

2) Sponsoring a snack break, pizza, or party

3) Promotion of the event to our community

We're open for anything else.

I would like to show-off the new Designer tool (alternative to SeIDE) and talk about the challenges to Selenium in an HTML5 environment. The CIOs from two of our customers (Measured Progress and Ford) would be glad to do talks on what Selenium means to their organizations.

I have hosted these kinds of events in the past. The biggest effort is in pulling together the first event, the second, third and fourth copies are straight forward. +1 on San Francisco, and then Chicago, New York, and London. +1 on 2 full days, with 2 tracks.

-Frank

--
Frank Cohen, http://www.PushToTest.com, phone 408 871 0122
PushToTest, the open-source test automation company
Twitter: fcohen, LinkedIn: Frank Cohen

[Paul Hammant]

Hi gang,

ThoughtWorks is of course interested in helping out.  Though, the precise nature of that I've yet to determine.

My +1 for venue would be Chicago, SF, London, New York (if not too expensive) or Dallas (can't blame me for trying).  It could be that a "London too" design would be best of all.

As much as my heart belong in SF, I'm thinking the Selenium tool-chain needs to break into the large corporate culture more than it has done so.  Thus Chicago/London and NewYork are more alluring for that purpose.  

I might also say that I hear great things about Citcon and its open format style, though I suspect that the two-track way would be better.

Lastly, I'd like to throw my hat into the ring for a JBehave3+Groovy+GrooBe+WebDriver presentation, which I think is the new in-the-box tool-chain for stiff corporate Java environments (that want to rest on open source only).

Is the conference going to have vendor stands ?

- Paul

[David Burns]

I personally don't mind if there are vendor stands, obviously for some contribution to the running costs. 

Frank has brought up an important point. Is this going to be a technical conference or is this going to be a "Gee golly, someone sold me a service using Selenium and its Grrrrrreeeeeaaaat" with CIO's who bought the service, and not using it directly, doing the talking.

I know I don't like conferences with the latter but its something that we should clarify as part of the intentions for the conference.

David

David Burns
URL: http://www.theautomatedtester.co.uk/

[Frank Cohen]

Hi David:

Good point about the technical-ity of the conference. I hate being in a session for x when I'm needing y.

The air gets pretty rarified in a room of people with the technical expertise to identify the need for SE, write the scripts to prove SE, coordinate resources with the other parts of the organization, know and recommend SE over JMeter, QTP, and Rational Tester, fight the budget wars, define the goals of the test, run the test, analyze the results, and present the results in a way that's actionable. When I say 'CIO' that's what I mean.

I'm arguing for more a more inclusive conference. Let the CIOs have a place at the conference to talk their talk. They're needed for SE to be successful in the long term in an organization.

-Frank

[David Burns]

For me this is where vendor stands would be great. The vendors can invite their customers to tell people about their experiences. I believe, and sorry if this is cynical, that if are CIO's doing a talk there is a good chance they are a customer of a vendor and that vendor will gain customers from it. 

This to me goes against the "by users for users" approach that is needed for this conference to be a true success!

David Burns
URL: http://www.theautomatedtester.co.uk/

[Jari Bakken]

One of my favorite things about GTAC is the lack of both vendor stands
and talks trying to sell a product. My vote goes for keeping it as
much about the technology as possible. Adam asked about keeping the
talks going until 5pm on Sunday - I'd much rather see any extra time
left for hacking / chatting with other attendees than filling it up
with CIO talks.

Just my 2 cents though, I'm not really knowledgeable about the vendor
situation around Selenium or what the target audience for the
conference is meant to be.

Jari

[Eran M.]

I think the talks should suit the nature of the tool: There's a lot of sense in CIO talks for commercial products, where the cost of the product is a factor, among other factors. With free tools, it is my impression that upper management is less involved in picking those tools so the focus is technical in such conferences. Showing off new products is exactly what vendor stands are for. 

I also liked Jari's idea for extra time for coding - this could be an excellent opportunity for Selenium users to bring along their nagging Selenium issues and get guidance from the developers on solving them.

Eran 

--

[Dave Hunt]

Personally I'm not keen on the idea for vendor stands or non-technical
presentations.

I'm also not sure where a talk on 'an alternative to Selenium IDE'
would fit in a Selenium conference, but maybe that's just me.

As for the Sunday continuing past 5pm, that's a +1 from me.

Eran's suggestion of hands-on troubleshooting with Selenium users
sounds like an awesome idea, although maybe this is something that
should be run throughout the conference. Kinda like a drop-in center
for Selenium issues. I'd be happy to contribute to the running of
that. In fact, there's possibly even a place for vendor
representatives there.

Is it worth getting a survey online with some of these questions and
throwing it out to the community?

Dave.

On Nov 14, 10:35 pm, "Eran M." <eran....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the talks should suit the nature of the tool: There's a lot of sense
> in CIO talks for commercial products, where the cost of the product is a
> factor, among other factors. With free tools, it is my impression that upper
> management is less involved in picking those tools so the focus is technical
> in such conferences. Showing off new products is exactly what vendor stands
> are for.
>
> I also liked Jari's idea for extra time for coding - this could be an
> excellent opportunity for Selenium users to bring along their nagging
> Selenium issues and get guidance from the developers on solving them.
>
> Eran
>

> On 14 November 2010 10:19, Jari Bakken <jari.bak...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > One of my favorite things about GTAC is the lack of both vendor stands
> > and talks trying to sell a product. My vote goes for keeping it as
> > much about the technology as possible. Adam asked about keeping the
> > talks going until 5pm on Sunday - I'd much rather see any extra time
> > left for hacking / chatting with other attendees than filling it up
> > with CIO talks.
>
> > Just my 2 cents though, I'm not really knowledgeable about the vendor
> > situation around Selenium or what the target audience for the
> > conference is meant to be.
>
> > Jari
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Selenium Developers" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to selenium-...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > selenium-develo...@googlegroups.com<selenium-developers%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

[Santiago Suarez Ordoñez]

Feels like vendor talks is is definitely not for the main track but the kind of presentation that would fit in the alternative free speech room, if we end up doing that plan.

+1 for 2 full days of awesomeness
+1 for a 2hr hackaton

My two cents
Santi

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to selenium-develo...@googlegroups.com.

[Adam Goucher]

http://groups.google.com/group/seconf

Thanks.

-adam

[Patrick Lightbody]

+1 but can someone please keep the rest of the group updated on a regular basis of any decisions that get made or critical issues that are being decided?

--
Patrick Lightbody
+1 (415) 830-5488

On Nov 14, 2010, at 5:41 PM, Adam Goucher wrote:

> http://groups.google.com/group/seconf
>
> Thanks.
>
> -adam

[Paul Grandjean]

ok, I'm a month behind but I'm going to make every effort to attend this conference, hopefully my new employer will support me on that.

+1 more for 2 full days of awesomeness

+1 more for a 2hr hackathon.  (is 2 hours enough?)

Paul