STARWEST 2026 in Disneyland

2 weeks ago I went to my 5th STARWEST conference, and as always, it was a blast!

Brought my family with me to enjoy the parks during the weekend. If you have not heard about it: the conference is in Disneyland. Literally, within the Disneyland Hotel! That's one of the reasons why in 2014 I set a goal to speak at this conference. They had a pre-Halloween theme in the hotels, the downtown and both parks.

My involvement at the event was a tutor, held half-day tutorials on Monday and Tuesday. As everybody is preaching AI, I wanted to stand out by not having AI as the backbone of my content. The Become Your Company's Quality Consultant had zero AI content, although I did talk a little bit about whenever relevant AI questions I received.

The Test Automation Architecture Master Class was mostly focused on teaching beginners on some of the basic principles, and helping senior engineers grow into an architect role. I added some AI spice to it, as my view-point is that Test Automation as a discipline is moving into a practice that is and will become part of an expectation of all software engineering job roles. Will there be dedicated Test Automation Engineers in the future? Sure, there are still shoe manufacturers today that make shoes manually. But 99% of the shoes we buy today are built fully automatically with machines, and just a bit of human involvement.

That is a view that my friends, Andy Knight and Filip Hric share with me. Since the last STARWEST, we've been talking about how our beloved discipline is going to change, and I think Filip nailed it in his keynote: Tester 2.0—Becoming Indispensable in the Age of AI.

The reality is: we need to adapt to the changes ahead. There is a bright future for us testers, but by standing in one place, and refusing to adapt, we will be left behind. Let's leverage our skillset, knowledge and experience. If you are interested in Filip's take, you can still register for free for the online content, and all 5 keynote sessions are included.

My colleagues, Svetlana Stogni and Praveen Bagare had track sessions on Thursday. And the undisputed king of testing, Tariq King had sessions basically all 4 days! We also represented our company, sponsoring with our TestIO brand and department. The takeaway at the booth is people are now interested in how AI is applied in vendor tools, or what AI related services we can provide. That changed a lot since last year, when people were still hesitant about AI discussions, and AI infused testing platforms.

I'm already looking forward to next year's STAR conferences. Hope to see some of you in Orlando next April!