Unpacking the Top Highlights of STAREAST 2023

Last week, Orlando, Florida played host to STAREAST, the world’s leading software testing conference. With over 500 QA experts in attendance, the 6-day event presented a fantastic opportunity to expand professional networks and stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends. Even those unable to attend in person were able to enjoy the same top-quality content thanks to the hybrid conference’s model. Boasting more than 75 different talks, expert sessions, tutorials, and training, STAREAST offered a wealth of valuable insights.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the event’s top highlights.

Pre-Conference Trainings & Tutorials

The conference’s first day (Sunday) was exclusively dedicated to training and certification. The 10 training sessions offered were tailored to different areas of software testing, ranging from foundational concepts to software testing management. These sessions were highly relevant and covered automation testing from various angles, including the ISTQB Test Automation Engineer certification and the Fundamentals of Agile Test Automation.

Over the next two days, the conference delved deeper into essential software testing topics. As one of the most popular aspects of STAREAST, attendees were treated to high-quality content led by top industry professionals. The BDD for Champions!, a tutorial led by Andrew Knight and Sarah Watkins, proved to be a standout session, providing immense value for participants. The tutorial covered in-depth Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and offered practical insights.

Keynote Sessions

The heart of every conference is definitely the keynote sessions. This year, there were 5 one-hour sessions by industry thought leaders about trending topics spread over Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, “Rest API Testing Strategies” was presented by Júlio de Lima. Júlio brought more comprehensive approaches for testing Rest APIs rather than common concepts and covered several aspects like testing for backwards compatibility and Rest API heuristics.

Moving forward to Thursday, we really enjoyed Shivani Gaba’s session, “A Tester’s Journey in the World of Machine Learning”. It focused on the trending topic of machine learning, which will become increasingly valuable for testers. Vital software testers’ skills such as product knowledge, attention to detail, and creative thinking will become even more crucial in machine learning, and Shivani covered extensively what every tester should know.

Breaks & Spare Time

Although the keynote sessions and workshops were undoubtedly the main draw of STAREAST, the spare time was also an important part of our experience. The breaks provided a great opportunity to connect with other industry experts and technology leaders and share valuable insights from their personal experiences. We also had an amazing time hosting people in our booth, chatting about the latest testing techniques and tools, and hearing about some of our customers’ experiences with PractiTest.

Essentially, STAREAST was magical, and we can’t wait to see more QA experts share insights, create new opportunities for collaboration, and just enjoy each other’s company. Hope to see you all soon!