Ask Me Anything!
Have you ever wondered how a conference program is put together? Did you always want to know what happens behind the scenes at a conference? Maybe you have an automation question for the self-proclaimed lazy Automator, Chris Loder? Perhaps you wanted to ask Melissa Benua about continuous testing, containers, or imposter syndrome? It may be that you are interested in asking Dawn Jardine about her career path, what she thinks about One-On-One meetings, or how you too can be a speaker? Or conceivably your very curious mind wants to know "so why did Alison Wade start Women Who Test?" During this informal panel session, the entire STARCanada Program Team is at your disposal to answer this wide variety of questions on anything that your inquiring mind wants to know.
From the largest companies to the very smallest, Melissa Benua has worked in nearly every software development role—dev, test, DevOps, and program management—in her career. She cut her teeth while building running high-availability, high-quality services while working on Microsoft’s Bing and Cortana, and honed her skills for rapid iteration and test while generating enormous quantities of code at pre-Series A startup PlayFab. Now with mParticle, Melissa is passionate about spreading their productivity-boosting best practices far and wide! She isn’t afraid to mix traditional approaches with bold new ideas to make her products better, faster, and more reliable. She’s passionate not only about maximizing efficiency both in her product code and in her developer tools, but also about sharing best practices among colleagues and the tech world at large.
An Automation Architect at InGenius Software, Chris Loder is an automation enthusiast to the core. His passion and experience help companies reduce regression time and improve overall software quality. With over two decades of automation experience, he designs and implements automation frameworks with his team of automation developers. Chris is a regular speaker at conferences and has delivered tutorials, keynotes and track sessions at STAREAST, STARWEST and STARCANADA. Topics include how to get started in automation, building automation frameworks and what we have learned from Saturday morning cartoons! Attendees of STAREAST 2019 will remember Chris from the Automation Zone in the Test Lab where he helps people learn to automate on his custom built framework. Chris loves to share his knowledge and experience and talk about all things automation! You can contact Chris via Twitter or LinkedIn.
An Independent QA Consultant in Toronto, Dawn Jardine has worked in several roles in her career. After years in the teaching profession, Dawn changed direction and entered the software field as a front-end web developer for an eLearning software company. Dawn expanded her skills and expertise to include instructional design, eventually joining the QA testing team. With more than fifteen years of experience, she has participated in the launch of several eLearning and eCommerce projects, including Canadian Police Knowledge Network, Canadian Tire Corporation, Walmart Canada, and American Express Membership Rewards. Passionate about quality process and women in technology, Dawn can be found on Twitter @dawnjardine.
Alison Wade is the President of TechWell and an accomplished executive dedicated to the business of software. For the past fifteen years, she has worked with industry leaders developing programs for software development and testing professionals. She has been the Program Chair for the Mobile Dev + Test and IoT Dev + Test conferences, and she plays a pivotal role in the development of Agile + DevOps and STAR Conferences. Alison strives to increase awareness of diversity in the software industry concerning both the workforce and the role of software beyond commercial products and IT departments. In 2015, Alison launched Women Who Test, a program dedicated to women in software testing www.womenwhotest.com. You can find her at @awadesqe or @womenwhotest.