I Was There

I Was There !

Well, I almost wasn't as I had to work late to help a dev confirm a bug was fixed so didn't get to SkillsMatter until the event had started.
But I Was There !

Laptop powered up, connected to the wi-fi, Skype started and I was part of it.

Part of what ?

A Weeknight testing session with people attending by Skype video from Germany and San Fransisco joining the attendees in London - with various other people joining on the Skype chat

Mission was to test Firefox 4 using the FCC CUTS VIDS heuristic but that was not the main takeaway from the evening for me.

I've taken part in several weekend testing sessions and one weeknight testing session, always enjoyed them and got something out of them but this session seemed different

Over in San Fransisco Lisa Crispin was there with assorted other US testers - there wasn't the usual 'introduce yourself' start to the session so I didn't get to find out who else was there

In Germany the session was led by Markus Gärtner

In London the session was hosted by Mike Scott and Sharath Byregowda.
In the audience were testing names such as Gojko Adzic ( who I'm sure will want me to mention the Agile Testing UK user group at agiletesters.org.uk ), David Evans. John Stevenson, Tony 'Tester Gathering' Bruce and others

And two esteemed managers of the Software Testing Club - myself and Rob Lambert. Good to meet the Social Tester in person even if he couldn't be social afterwards and had to head off to get a train

The usual suspects joined in on the Skype chat but I'm not sure how well the session worked out for them if they couldn't see the video feeds and hear the audio.

Rob showed he was a Bug Magnet by crashing Firefox, spell checking didn't seem to work for me though this was one of the claimed features but to be honest I wasn't totally involved in the mission.

I was just enjoying the feeling of community - worldwide testers coming together to work on and improve their testing skills.

Thanks to SkillsMatter for the venue and thanks to Mike and Sharath for facilitating