What was remembered at the past Heisenbug, and what will happen next?



    Enough time has passed since the Heisenbug 2019 Piter conference so that we can calculate all the audience ratings of the reports. Now we can talk more confidently about how everything went: relying not only on our feelings, but also on the audience’s feedback.

    Therefore, under the cut - a few impressions about the past Heisenbug, compiled taking into account which reports were in the top ten. What trends can be highlighted? Which speaker turned out to be the most important favorite? And for dessert - a little about what awaits at the next Heisenbug (there’s another six months before it, but just now the tickets are the cheapest).

    Balloons


    Before we get to the reports about what you could see in the lobby during breaks. As usual, there were quite a few companies at Heisenbug that arranged something interesting at their stands and went up to a special “demo stage”. And this time, the companies have chosen a completely different profile: the services of Kontur help the business, and the services of SEMrush to the marketers; Veeam is engaged in backup of virtual machines, and in Deutsche Bank - of course, banking. Innopolis is not a company at all, but a city.

    And in the design of the stand, VKontakte was the brightest this time. They brought a whole dry pool to the conference, calling it “test pool”:



    And over the course of two days, many adult serious specialists who had gathered for an adult industrial event, in between adult technical reports, experienced childish delight.

    Lightning talks


    In addition, there was another “half-serious” story: lightning talks. These are five-minute reports that were delivered at the end of the first day after the main program (in parallel with the already familiar BoF sessions), and anyone could apply for such a presentation.

    For us it was an experiment. Will anyone apply? Will people be able to limit themselves to five minutes? Will it be possible to put something meaningful in them, or will it all come down only to jokes? And, most importantly, is it all interesting to someone?

    The result is this. We were not overwhelmed with applications, but this may be the first time effect: now that the audience is already familiar with the format, the number of applicants may increase. Sometimes the performances got out in five minutes, but in general they managed to comply with the regulations. A serious thesis is quite met. But, of course, such a format is much more informal than ordinary reports, and it could not do without funny slides either:



    And as for the interest in these performances, this is what it says about it. Unlike regular reports, in the case of lightning talks, we didn’t do professional video filming - but with the efforts of the community everything turned out to be taken to the phone, divided by reports and uploaded to YouTube by a playlist, and the total score of views from this playlist has already gone to hundreds. In general, not in vain started.

    Krupnyak


    This time among the speakers there were a number of representatives of large companies, from Google to Intel. Not surprisingly, the topic of testing on such a scale also appeared in the reports. And in the top 10, according to audience estimates, there were just two performances that examined this topic from different angles.

    At George DimovThere was a story about how they approach testing in Uber. Startups from the Valley in the early stages usually follow the principle of “move fast and break things” (if nothing breaks, it means that you are not developing fast enough). But when the developer’s bill begins to go to hundreds, and the cost of error - to millions, they begin to devote much more time to quality. And how exactly do they approach mobile testing in this company, which has grown from a small startup into a giant? For example, like this: “We do not have manual testers. Instead, we have 20,000 employees who receive app updates in advance. ”


    Jim Holmes

    And in a speech that, according to users' estimates, was already in second place, the topic was approached differently. Jim Holmesduring his long career, he worked with a wide variety of companies - and did not talk about how everything is structured in a particular one, but about what kind of problems are typical for large-scale companies and how to live with it.

    Here, I also want to quote: “It is often said that testers need to participate at the stage of drawing up requirements. But actually it makes sense to participate even earlier. I had a case when a business chose from three projects and leaned towards one of them. We noticed that there are difficulties associated with it that will require additional time. When we drew the attention of the business to this, it was decided to switch to another option, so that in the first draft, the matter did not even reach the requirements. ”

    Security


    Another feature of this Heisenbug has been the abundance of security related reports. And here two of them also hit the top at once.


    Ivan Rumak

    In the case of "effective search XSS-vulnerability" Ivan Rumak high score show that if the theme is not new, it does not mean that it is irrelevant. And in Igor Lyrchikov’s speech (Digital Security) “Recon and collecting scopes before penetration testing”, many could remember joining almost in the spirit of spy thrillers: “customers hire us to try to hack their system in different ways, even penetrating the building under the guise of pool cleaners. " True, the report itself was nevertheless dedicated not to how to wear a false mustache, but to a more online approach to the initial collection of information.

    Tool developers


    If large companies and security became the trend of the specifically held Heisenbug, then another thing was typical of the conference before: people who are responsible for these tools often talk about popular tools for testers. And here among the favorite reports, there were also two of these.

    Firstly, about Andrei Lushnikov from Google spoke about Puppeteer , who is on the first line in the list of contributors to this project. Therefore, for example, the latest prototype of Puppetter for Firefox could be found first hand. Although Andrei speaks Russian, the report was in English - this is typical of a situation where a person lives abroad and recognizes new terms immediately in English.


    Andrey Lushnikov

    And secondly, Alexei Lavrenyuk (Yandex), known to many, again spoke about stress testing . He previously represented Yandex.Tank and Yandex.Volta projects at Heisenbug, and now he returned with a report about Pandora - “a gun for Yandex.Tank”. This is far from the only available gun for him - why was it needed if others exist? In what situations is it better to use it? How to do this?

    The best


    And which report led the rating? Which speaker has become the main favorite of the audience?

    This man was Ivan Yamshchikov : a man who has long been known to many, but not as a tester. He is interested in machine learning from an academic perspective (Ivan works at the Max Planck Institute), and from an industrial one (he collaborates with ABBYY), and as a hobby (many know him as the creator of the Neural Defense project). Due to the fact that he deeply knows this topic and at the same time knows how to speak very clearly about it, Ivan always shines like a speaker: he has already spoken at our other conferences, and he is always welcomed with a bang.


    Ivan shares the wisdom of the ancients

    And what was he talking about if his main activity was not testing? Just about how this activity intersects with testing: the report was entitled “What is in common between testing and data analysis”. This presentation was closing at the conference, so it was just right for such a general view.

    And here there is an interesting trend. Six months earlier, at Moscow's Heisenbug, many were delighted with Baruch Sadogursky - who is also not a tester, and also made a keynote , examining everything from a close angle to Baruch (DevOps). And the time before last Vitaly Fridman received excellent marks - also not a tester.

    It turns out that on every Heisenbug there is a speaker that everyone likes, who generally specializes in a different topic - but, firstly, thanks to this, he can talk about testing from a non-standard angle, and secondly, he can vividly present the material. I wonder who will become like this next time?

    What next time?


    Closing one Heisenbug, we immediately announce another: the next time the conference will be held in Moscow on December 5-6 . Who will perform there? Now we can name three speakers:

    Artyom Eroshenko (Qameta Software)
    Artyom has repeatedly spoken at Heisenbug - talking about the Allure Framework, to which he is directly related, and not only. And at Heisenbug 2019, Piter Artyom could also be seen, but not as a speaker, but at the Qameta Software booth. Everyone who misses his reports and wants to see him on stage will be able to do this in Moscow.






    Vitaliy Fridman (Smashing Magazine)
    As mentioned above, Vitaliy has already stolen the hearts of many Heisenbug viewers last year. Now he will return for new ones.








    Adam Carmi (Applitools)
    Previously, Adam managed to work at IBM, Microsoft and Intel - an impressive list. His current company, Applitools, is not so famous, but in this case he is not just an employee, but one of the founders. And the goal of this company is “AI powered end-to-end visual testing”. Does Adam in the future want to replace all of us with artificial intelligence? So we find out.




    The rest of the program will become known later. You can wait for this, and then decide whether to go to the conference. But here's what to consider: tickets will gradually go up in price. Therefore, if you already have a feeling that Heisenbug will be interesting for you - now is the best time to move on to action. All relevant conference information and tickets are available on its website.

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