A QA conference in Sofia/ Bulgaria through my „testing professional“eyes

The 8th conference edition took place in Sofia Tech Park and online on the 10^th of September 2022.The QA: Challenge Accepted is an international conference targeted toward enthusiasts, specialists, and managers participating in software testing and quality assurance. The event is initiated by the QA community in Bulgaria – for professionals from professionals. This community is getting bigger and bigger and has a stronger influence. The story behind this event began with a group of young people, who had the idea to change the way a conference can be held – in a more informal way, more interesting, and more interactive, unlike most conferences. And they succeeded. Year after year, the popularity of the testing / QA profession in Bulgaria grows, and with this, the importance of the event also grows. The organisers succeeded in gathering a lot of people in person this year.

Two of my colleagues and I participated in the conference. We were very excited about the event as some of us visited the event in the years before Covid-19 and didn’t know what to expect now. But this year, the first in-person after the last two editions attracted a very good attendance level which was good to see.

The lecturers were very prominent experts in the field, practitioners with great backgrounds. Some international speakers were invited. The lecture programme was interesting, a modern one, practice-oriented, and the hall were full during all the presentations. It was a full-day running programme, with 30 minutes sessions each and coffee breaks in between. The conference started with shared experiences of the lecturers from their professional paths. They talked about the general part of quality assurance as a profession, and what would be the benefits of contract testing, which are the top 10 misconceptions in performance testing. The most interesting lecturers for us were related to the Selenium Tests, Continuous Testing at Scale, and Automation tests which are some of the most trending themes right now. The overall conclusion after each session was that the future is on the cloud. Here we are proud that Hitachi Solutions is already in this direction.

A lot of companies presented themselves there with stands, games, and merchandise. The programme ended with a great networking event and many discussions with interesting people in the industry.