Thank you everyone who joined us for our first user conference, As promised we will be posting the recorded version of sessions next week and will be sure to let everyone know where they can be found.

The speaker presentation slides are now available! 

Peter Antman "Stop the Line:" http://www.slideshare.net/SmartBear_Software/build-quality-in-stop-the-line-peter-antman

Jonas Hermansson "The Tester is Dead:" http://www.slideshare.net/SmartBear_Software/the-tester-is-dead-long-live-the-tester-jonas-hermansson

Per Åkerberg "Implementing the Click:" http://www.slideshare.net/SmartBear_Software/implementing-the-click

Kristian Karl "How Spotify Does Test Automation:" http://www.slideshare.net/SmartBear_Software/how-spotify-does-test-management-kristian-karl

Ulrika Malmgren "Committing to Quality as a Team:" http://prezi.com/kjzrru5get5y/commiting-to-quality-as-a-team/ 

GREAT NEWS! Mark your calendars now for our first free Users Conference in Stockholm on May 23rd.

We are excited to announce our first SoapUI User Conference which is all set to happen in May.

There is a lot to gain from the User Conference. There will be great speakers and hands-on learning opportunities, tips and lessons from SoapUI users, panel discussion and the most important one, tonnes of FUN!

Featured Sessions:

Build Quality in - Stop the Line By Peter Antman

Committing to Quality as a Team By Ulrika Malmgren

How Spotify does Test Automation By Kristian Karl

The Tester is Dead, Long Live the Tester! By Jonas Hermansson

SoapUI at Centiro – Implementing the “Click”! By Per Åkerberg

SmartBear Software, provider of software quality tools used by more than one million developers and testers worldwide,­ eliminates the reason to invest in costly, complex load testing tools for Web applications with the release of WebLoadUI. Offering a range of features typically found only in costly tools and sporting a user interface that is intuitive and easy–to-use, the free performance, stress and load testing tool offers the more than one million developers in the SoapUI open source community and other developers the ability to easily load test Web servers and services without being tied down to trial periods or budget constraints.

“SmartBear has been supporting its growing SoapUI and LoadUI community for more than three years, and we are strengthening that commitment,” said Ole Lensmar, co-developer of SoapUI and Chief Architect at SmartBear. “Through our freeware initiative, we are making software tools available to our open source community and beyond so developers can contribute to improving the overall quality of software applications without high cost and technical obstacles. WebLoadUI is the first, easy-to-use, easy-to-get tool that allows developers to begin full load testing immediately.”

WebLoadUI puts enterprise-class features into the hands of developers for free. Using a simplified wizard-based interface, developers can go beyond pinging websites and simulate real user activity for a large number of virtual users. Key benefits include the ability to run load and stress tests on any Web server or type of Rich Internet Application (RIA), create realistic load tests by recording user scenarios on any browser, easily create data-driven tests by simulating users and using the over 15 built-in data generators. With WebLoadUI, developers can also produce powerful reports with full-detailed results and graphs.

Download WebLoadUI and get started right away.

Welcome to the first part our eight-part webinar series about “The Seven Fundamentals of Mission-Critical Service Testing.” In this series, Robert Schneider, from our training-partner WiseClouds, goes through what you should be thinking about if you’re testing mission-critical services. Even if they’re not necessarily mission-critical, you should probably be following these guidelines.

Because Web services lack a GUI, which usually makes the user interaction fairly constrained, they require much more rigorous testing. Since anyone can send anything to a service it’s important that you thoroughly test the business logic, data, exception handling and security aspects of your service.

In this first part of “The Seven Fundamentals of Mission-Critical Service Testing” Robert gives us a brief introduction to the series; how they came up with the list, how Web service testing differs from testing GUI-based applications, and then a short rundown of the Seven Fundamentals.

View the first part here

Next week we are hosting a fantastic webinar that will give you the chance to learn from experienced QA Managers who have implemented test automation in their process and who have had success with it. Join our panel of test automation experts on Tuesday, March 12, at 1:00 p.m. (EST) as they share their secrets to success with test automation.

Glen Accardo

Test Automation Lead for Schlumberger Information Solution’s Houston Technology CenterGlen is the Test Automation Lead for Schlumberger Information Solution’s Houston Technology Center. In this role, he built the test automation practice for the technology center and influences the development of test automation throughout Schlumberger. In addition to automating tests for Windows, Unix, and mainframe applications, he also has experience with quality assurance, development, and technical writing.

Linda Foley

Linda is a Quality Engineering Manager at Intuit, with experience in Java development, test automation and software quality assurance all with an eye on end to end customer experience. Prior to her moving into Quality Management, Linda was a Java Web Service developer and contributed source code and unit test code to various projects.

Join us as Linda and Glen share their experience with test automation, and offer their advice for success. Each of them has a great deal of experience with the adoption of test automation, and they both come from incredibly successful organizations in their respective industry domains.

In this event we're not going to talk about individual tools, but rather focus on other important topics, such as:

1. How to hire the right resources
2. How to integrate test automation in the overall quality control process
3. What are the little known secrets to success?

Don't miss this opportunity to join the event and to engage in the discussion.

During registration, you have the opportunity to post any questions you would like answered. Yesterday I had a chance to review the first batch of several hundreds of questions. One set of similar questions caught my eye, and I feel they are important to address even before the event. Here's a succinct example of the common question::

How will I pursuade my boss to invest in test automation?

First of all, kudos for articulating the problem in a clean and concise way. Here is something you can do to start the process: Bring your boss to the event next Tuesday! Tell him or her that this will be an opportunity to hear first hand from those who have done test automation.

In today's day and age, it is absolutely neccessary to use test automation in the arsenal of qulity control methods. There is no way around it. I'm sure Glen will stress this idea in the webinar: Start small and automate some very basic and repetitive activities like setup and clean-up of the test environment, or the installation procedure, then apply these basic scripts to multiple operating systems and multiple browsers and run these tests on a regular basis.

There are many myths about test automation that can stand in your way. A good way to prevent them from keeping your processes stuck in the past is by learning from those who have been succesful. And that, my friends, is precisely why we've organized this event.

Register for the Webinar now!