Google's LTAC

Two weeks ago was Google's London Test Automation Conference.

I have to say it was the highest standard for any conference I have been to. There was only one room, i.e. no selecting from multiple streams. But Allen Hutchison and his team selected some interesting talks. Probably one of the benefits of having the organisers selecting things they are really interested in, rather than competing goals with paid vendor talks and differing talks with little common theme at most conferences.

The questions from the audience were very lively and interesting. One of the consistent things that popped up was the varying ways of achieving the same goals. The presenters of many of the talks had interesting solutions to the problems they faced, while audience members had different solutions to similar problems. One of the best examples was a talk on literate functional testing of Web Applications. The demonstrated solution was a jmock based fluent API Literate, the domain language was clicks and html option lists etc. While others used business domain languages and FIT style testing for similar purposes.