It was 08:00am, hundreds of testers rushed for the registrations at the registration desk to get their conference kits for the 15th annual Software Testing Conference organised by QAI and ETI. There were speakers, who were all set to present their papers, keynote speakers who were ready to setup the framework for the event, organisers walking around everywhere to ensure the best hospitality for every attendee of the event.

It all started with a welcoming note, followed by a speech on 'Qs of Quality' by Indranil Das, Vice President at Ericsson, who has a vast 18 years of experience in the industry. Indranil just made the crowd realise how the testers are consciously unconscious about the quality of the developed product and how important it is to position the branding quality in the right way. His speech instilled the thoughts of quality testing, which was followed by the speech of Rajendra Prasad (RP), who spoke on 'The New Age Testing'. RP, who is the Managing Director at Accenture, has a total of 20 years of experience in the industry in driving organisational change, software delivery, project and process management, and the list continues. RP shared not only the five technology trends of the tech-vision of Accenture for 2015, but also about the significance of the fundamentals like quality engineering, quality assurance, planning, tracking and reporting that shall not change along with the trends. These lines enlightened the crowd on staying updated but with same strong fundamentals. These two important subject matters were succeeded by 'Testing and QA Transformation Trends - Capgemini's 2015 World Quality Report'. The keynote was stated by Renu Rajani, the Vice President with Capgemini Testing Global Service Line, with a 25 years of experience in the industry, who has seen the growth of various technologies and the scope of testing services. She was also recently awarded 'Testing Leader of the Year 2015' by Unicorn's India Testing League.

As the keynote speeches ended, the delegates were all set to learn from the best practitioners of software testing and quality. 4 tracks which included business leadership + agile, emerging areas, tools and techniques, and program management - altogether about 8 plenary sessions that involved some of the best tech-based companies like Amdocs, iGate Global Solutions, First American India Pvt. Ltd, QA Infotech, ADP Pvt. Ltd, L&T Infotech, Capgemini India Pvt. Ltd, Fiserv India Pvt. Ltd discussed on the above subject areas with the delegates. More interactions on the agile approach to testing was comprehended, which was successful in acquiring inputs from employees at various designations in their companies. The conversations seemed to mean that the growth in the approach is still emerging and that there is a need to attain perfection.

The sessions were successful in infusing the best thoughts for not just the testers, but for the organisation on the whole. As the sessions ended, the crowd got to network and learn from each other along with the lunch, immediately after which Stephane Jammet, Managing Director of Neotys opened the discussion on performance testing and about the tool, Neotys has, for performance testing. Mir Hidayathulla, Technology Solutions Professional, Microsoft, introduced important insights into testing capabilities of the Microsoft Visual Studio which could help with automations in testing for the software development life cycle and now, has the ability to generate unit test cases based on the code written. The Q&A involved the intelligence used in the platform, improvements and more topics related to the testing ability of Visual Studio. Naveen Gurusiddaiah, Head of Technical services at Microfocus also happened to share about performance testing.

The crowd was energised, entertained and was made aware of the importance of a tester's role in conscious quality delivery by Ajay Balamurugadas from IBM India Pvt. Ltd, with the use of a simple presentation. He shared not just the role of the tester, but also how a tester could help himself make his job easier through various skills. A tea break that continued the networking, was proceeded with Practice and Tool Demo sessions where the delegates were shared about various tools for better testing and test automations, after which a few corporates presented their products. QAI & ETI organised an amalgamation of Djembe Drummers and Beat Boxing for the entertainment evening followed by the gala dinner. While the day one of the conference ended tiring and joyous, with a lot of learning and network, the delegates look forward to learn more from day two of the event while the senior management shall continue eyeing for networks.