Our philosophy
We want to share with you what is dear to our hearts and drives us every day.
-
Our core values are diversity, inclusivity, and fostering a safe, familial atmosphere.
-
We want all different voices to find their stage and we highly encourage
new voices, young & previous young people to be part of our events and the community. -
Our commitment to equity, fairness, and transparency drives us to create events
that promote growth and learning for all participants.
Our Commitment to the Agile Testing Community
Over the years, we supported underrepresented groups to become more visible at our events, organized special sessions to celebrate Women in Agile, organized an art auction to help a community member raise money for experimental cancer treatments and therapy, campaigned to get the Afghan Girls Robotics to the Agile Testing Days,
build a "Little Home" for homeless people and more.
Free Meetups & Webinars
With the magnificient support of our community we continuously organise on-site meetups and online webinars to keep you all up-to-date, engaged and to shorten the time until our next big conference. We hope to welcome many of you at one of our meetups throughout Germany, and soon further European cities as well or online. All our online webinars will be recorded, so in case you don't have the chance to watch any of those live-online, feel free to checkout the recordings.
Women in Agile Summit
This evening has a long history with the Agile Testing Days. Since 2016 the Woman in Agile Summit is an integral part of the Agile Testing Days conference agenda. This evening event reflects our commitment to diversity. In the course of time, this event has been renamed Friends & Allies because it “has grown to be much more than that” (Gitte Klitgaard). Now, it is about more than women, and it is about more than allies but it’s still “a safe space to talk about uncomfortable subjects" (Lisa Crispin).
Young Professional Program
We've been there - being a young professional, new to the job, willing to learn, but not having enough funds to attend a professional event. The AgileTD USA Young Professional Program welcomes all graduates and young professionals to attend our US edition. As a young professional, you get your conference ticket for a reduced fee and have access to all sessions on the conference days, including social events, evening events and bonus sessions. As we have to draw the line somewhere, this reduced rate applies to all people under 30 years old, who have started with the job after 2019. But of course, we can always find individual solutions based on your budget and circumstances too.
The same applies to all students, who get an even further reduced rate as funds during studies are even worse. We feel ya, don't hesitate and reach out to the team if you would like to hear more.
Sustainability in Tech
Since the topic of sustainability is becoming increasingly important in the IT industry we decided we need to also raise more awareness for sustainability and climate protection in the IT Industry. At AgileTD 2021, Jutta Eckstein’s talk about Agility and sustainability and how these define more and more the success of every company resonated with many attendees, sponsors and with us as well. We, therefore, dedicated a whole track at AgileTD 2022 to the topic with talks and a workshop revolving around how we can reduce our Carbon footprint when developing software and what it looks like to become more sustainable as an IT company including customers, agile teams, and cross-team work. Read more about it here. We encourage everyone to join our various Call for Papers and submit applicable topics so we can continue to support the case.
AgileTD 2021 supports Little Home e.V.
After hearing about the project of 'Little Home', it was immediately clear to the AgileTD team that they want to bring this idea to the Agile Testing Days and play a supporting role. "We wholeheartedly support this important commitment", said José Diaz. The idea behind Little Home e.V. is to provide homeless people with a better and more protected place to sleep and thereby build them a bridge back into society. So far, Little Home e.V. has built shelters for the homeless in 21 different cities in Germany. The AgileTD Team together with Søren Wassard and Christian Baumann built a little home as a temporary dwelling for a homeless person. Sven Lüdecke and his team offered individual and unique insights into their social project.
Collaboration with TechVoices
For Agile Testing Days USA 2019, we collaborated with TechVoices (formerly known as SpeakEasy), which is a conference diversity initiative to bring aspiring speakers, mentors, and conferences together. The goal was to bring new voices and high-quality content to international tech conferences. We continuously aspire to bring up a diverse speaker line-up and include speakers from various experience levels, therefore, we were proud to work together with TechVoices to increase the number of under-indexed and new speakers at our conference. You can find more information about TechVoices on their website.
Afghan Girls Robotics Team
One of our goals is to provide opportunities and access to underrepresented communities. In 2017, Anne-Marie Charrett and Keith Klain made us aware of a group of 6 Afghan school girls aged 14 to 16 that have developed a robot together for a competition in the US. The girls together with her mentor Roya Mahboob were invited to the Agile Testing Days in Potsdam 2017 to give them the opportunity to present their project abroad. With the help of a GoFundMe campaign initiated by Keith Klain to help send the Afghan Girls Robotics Team to Agile Testing Days, the AgileTD organizers, the agile testing community, and other supporters provided the funds to get the Afghan Girls Robotics to the Agile Testing Days.
Art Auction for a Good Cause
There is a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child. And sometimes it takes a whole community to save a life. An agile testing community member was in need of funding the experimental but possibly life-saving cancer treatment for a beloved relative. This treatment was very expensive and the family needed any support to cover the costs. Therefore, the AgileTD organizers initiated a spontaneous donation campaign and auctioned off several live drawings from Stuart Young made during the Agile Testing Days 2017 keynotes. At AgileTD USA 2018 in Boston, MA, we also auctioned off a big blow-up unicorn, to raise funds once again.
Software Testing Worldcup
In the year of 2014 we organized and hosted - supported by our great community - the first ever Software Testing World Cup. More than 5000 testers from all over the world participated in this Championship. In teams of 4 we played for each continent an online qualification round. The best team of each continent got invited to the finals, that took place physically during the Agile Testing Days in Germany. In 2015 we also played an Europan Championship, followed by another World Cup in 2016. Our winning team in 2014 came from Brazil and the European Champion-ship and the 2016 World Cup got won by a team from the Netherlands. We hope to pick up on this tournaments again in the future!
Agile Kids
At AgileTD 2013, we wanted to provide a fun way to learn about agile methodologies for young students. Therefore, we created “an Agile Kids” day at the Agile Testing Days 2012 to introduce the basic knowledge and skills for working as a software tester. In 2016, Grammy Award winner Michael “The Wanz” Wansley shared his experience as a software tester with students from a Berlin middle school.