Max Saperstone, director of test and automation at Coveros, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about codeless automation, using ROI to drive test automation decisions, and why manual testing is here to stay.

Rick Faulise, COO at PinkLion, talks about how to get involved in AI and how your company can highly benefit from it. AI has been around for a long time, but he says people need to change their mindsets about it in order to start implanting AI strategies. Rick explains how the bot software works and how it can be extremely useful in gathering information so that testers can look at the data for any program.

Melissa Tondi, QA professional services manager at Rainforest, talks about how fast the role of the tester is changing. She describes it as a pendulum, saying when she first started, everything was very user-focused, and now it is all about the technical teams. Melissa explains why it’s important to have a distribution of both technical and user-focused roles, then gives some strategies to find the right balance.

Kevin Pyles, director of QA at Domo Inc., discusses his keynote presentation, “From Zero to AI Hero.” He advises to start small with automation and Python, expanding as you discover how AI can add value to your job. He also talks about getting his hands dirty with AI and building internal tools without being afraid, saying that as a tester, you cannot be fearful of technology—you need to embrace the fun in it.

Stacy Kirk, CEO at QualityWorks Consulting Group, discusses how testers can go from champions of quality to true QA heroes. She says people in testing are the unspoken heroes of software, and details what needs to change so they can find their voices to step up and lead. Stacy also talks about how far women in tech have come and how much value they bring, as well as discusses the challenges she has faced as a female CEO and how much it has taught her, both in and out of the tech world.

Janna Loeffler, manager of quality engineering at Ultimate Software, discusses the importance of detailing a test strategy, along with the most crucial aspect: communication. She talks about how testers are often not comfortable saying “I don’t know,” and about how they should get out of their comfort zone to ask for help. She also gives insight into strategies people can take to admit they don’t know without fear, and seeking answers and conversations from others in the testing community.

Melissa Benua, a senior technical lead at mParticle, discusses the wide range of topics she will present at the STARWEST conference, including continuous integration, containers, and process management. She also shares details of the projects her team is working on with deep back-end core features, qualities, and dev tools. Melissa also talks about her involvement with Women Who Test, why she made sure to expose her kids to the events at a young age, and how it reinforces the importance of a work-life balance.

Max Saperstone, director of test and automation at Coveros, discusses the different types of tests that Selenium helps with, as well as why Selenium is very fragile. He also gets into the testing pyramid and how the layers of the pyramid work break down, the distinction between testing and checking, and which tests developers should be responsible for.

Andy Glover, director of delivery engineering at Netflix, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about a couple of Netflix's open source projects, the benefits of open source, and a few open source lessons his team learned along the way.

Chris Loder, an automation architect at InGenius Software, talks about his open source framework for automation, as well as why he says he left testing behind and started automating. He also discusses running the Test Lab at STARWEST, where conference attendees can practice their QA skills together to solve puzzles and test code. This year there were new AI features and an Automation Zone, where participants got hands-on experience with automation.