The Software Test & Performance Conference is soliciting proposals from speakers for tutorials and classroom sessions for STPCon Spring 2009, March 31 – April 2, 2009, at the San Mateo Marriott Hotel in San Mateo, California.

CALL FOR SPEAKERS DUE OCTOBER 31

This premier technical conference on testing and performance issues is designed for software developers and development managers, as well as testing/QA managers and senior test professionals.

Classes and tutorials will offer instruction on testing and performance-management techniques and strategies across the application development life cycle. Emphasis is on practical, hands-on information that attendees can put to work in their organizations today.

The event will feature a limited number of full-day hands-on tutorial sessions. These will be followed by two full days of technical classes featuring practical education on software testing and performance-management strategies, tactics and techniques.

Ideal speakers are software development practitioners including development managers, software developers, test and QA managers, and senior testers who will speak to their peers, offering practical solutions to their most pressing challenges.

Sample Topics and Areas of Interest:

  • Testing and performance-tuning of Web applications
  • Agile processes and extreme programming testing tactics, test-driven development
  • Performance-testing large-scale distributed systems
  • Security testing
  • Compliance testing
  • Locating performance bottlenecks in Java EE, .NET
  • Managing testing/performance teams, including outsourced testing
  • Performance management of deployed applications
  • Best practices for test automation
  • Requirements analysis and collection
  • Software design for test
  • Testing and performance issues for rich Internet and Web 2.0 applications
  • Test-Driven Design
  • End-to-end testing of SOA, Web services or other loosely coupled systems
  • Testing in virtualized environments
  • Hiring, firing and other management techniques
  • Interface design and function testing

Description of Tutorials and Technical Classes

Tutorials are intensive, full-day, eight-hour workshops offering in-depth, technical training to attendees.

Technical classes are 60 minutes in length. Longer topics can be proposed to spread across two consecutive sessions in a “Part 1, Part 2” format.

Suggestions and Examples of What NOT to Submit

  1. Attendees are paying to take classes—they don’t want to hear a sales pitch, no matter how thickly veiled. Please do not submit classes that feature your product or describe problems that happen to be solved by your products.

    Attendees and the conference organizers are equally skeptical of technical talks proposed by marketing people, business development managers or CEOs—unless that person has the appropriate technical background and experience. Even the appearance of a sales pitch, such as when a talk is given by a marketer, will cause people to not attend that class.

  2. Attendees don’t need to be taught why something is important (why security testing is important, why testing early in the SDLC is important, etc….). If they sign up for the class, they already know that. In your abstract, explain how the attendees will learn how to do something by taking your class.

  3. Read the Course Catalog from the previous conference to learn how the classes are described. Try to match that, and have a colleague review your submission to make sure that your abstract makes sense. Experience has shown that an incoherent abstract is often a good indicator of an incoherent presentation.

Event Schedule

Tuesday, March 31 2009
9:00 am – 5:00 pm: Full-day Tutorials

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
10:00 am – 4:45 pm: Technical Classes

Thursday, April 2, 2009
8:45 am – 4:40 pm: Technical Classes

Speaker Deadlines

CALL FOR SPEAKERS DUE OCTOBER 31

Abstract submissions including speaker bio: October 31, 2008
Author notification of acceptance: November 5, 2008
Final class handouts and presentation material: February 3, 2009

Preparation of Submission

Please include the following information in your abstract:

  • Title of class or tutorial
  • 150–200 words describing the class and what attendees will learn
  • Any necessary prerequisites for the proposed class, such as technical proficiency
    or knowledge of a topic or programming language
  • Any requirements such as a laptop and any pre-loaded software
  • Speaker bio, 125–150 words
  • Speaker name(s), mailing and e-mail addresses, telephone and cell phone numbers
  • Hi-res digital headshot of speaker

Please submit your information electronically as a text e-mail or as a Word document to Kathy Bruin, kbruin@bzmedia.com

Contacts

Questions about the speaker submission process:

Kathy Bruin, Conference Manager
+1-415-642-6108 or kbruin@bzmedia.com

General questions about the Software Test & Performance Conference:

Donna Esposito, Director of Events
+1- 415-785-3419 or desposito@bzmedia.com