Date – February 17, 2015
Location – Columbus State Community College – Columbus, Ohio

Personal Reflections
This was the second conference that I was able to attend with my wife, Mindy.  It was an excellent day of learning.  The conference was well put together.  The speakers were dynamic and provided excellent content for the sessions that I attended.  I thank all of the individuals and vendors who made this event possible. I am already looking forward to the conference next year.

During the sessions, Mindy and my brother, David, were able to take some picture of the speakers in action. Mindy put together a glimpse of the conference in a slideshow for your enjoyment.

On February 24th, if you are in the Columbus/Dublin area, The Software QA & Testing meetup will be discussing “Lessons Learned from QA or the Highway 2015.”  I am looking forward to hearing about the experience of other conference attendees.

And now, to the recap.

Our fifteenth featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Ken DeSouza.

1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway?

I heard a talk at the Targeting Quality Conference in Waterloo Ontario by Joseph Ours. At the end of his talk, he had mentioned QA or the Highway. I regretted not submitting to a conference in my own backyard, so I thought I would take this as my opportunity. I had a personal career goal to speak at a conference, so this is a fulfillment of that goal.

Our fourteenth featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Dave Patel.

1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway?

I decided to speak at QA or the Highway after attending one of your SQA meetups.

Our thirteenth featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Todd Fox.

1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway?

I like this conference because of the central Ohio software testing/engineering community. As you know, we have a very robust SQA community in Columbus. I like this conference because it give this community an opportunity to spend a day together talking and learning!

Our twelfth featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Anna Royzman.

1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway?

I support local testing conferences. They build community. Last summer, I organized CAST (Conference of Association for Software Testing) in New York, and right after that, few of us who attended that conference, started NYC Testers Meetup. We now have about 400 members, and our meetups attract 60-80 testers every time.

Our eleventh featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Damian Synadinos.

1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway?

For me, speaking at the QA or the Highway conference is a way to “give back”.  I’ve been in software testing for 22 years.  During that time, I’ve taken quite a lot.  I’ve taken time, instruction, and wisdom from a variety of sources.  And now, I feel it is my turn and responsibility to give back.  The conference provides me a forum to do so.

Our tenth featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Gareth Bowles.

1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway?

Up to last year, I’d spoken at a few developer and devops conferences about how we build, test and deploy software at Netflix. In 2014 it occurred to me that a lot of this could be interesting to an audience of testers as well. Since I’ve spent quite a bit of my career in testing, it’s great to reconnect with my old comrades !

Our ninth featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Joe DeMeyer.

1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway?

I was attracted to its location (I live in Ohio), and the opportunity to meet people interested in sharing testing experiences and viewpoints.