For a long time now I’ve been chasing the idea of a conference for Selenium. It probably started when I heard about the San Francisco Selenium users meetup group, and was certainly on my mind when I started the London version of the group.
I think it was back in 2009 when Adam Goucher started some initial discussions on when/where such a conference would be held, and although it’s taken a while, now here we are just 34 (there’s an inside joke there) days from Selenium Conference 2011! Okay, so it’s not the first Selenium conference[1], but it’s still pretty awesome!
As if it wasn’t enough excitement that I’ll be attending, and finally meeting some of the people I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the last few years, but I will also be giving a presentation on automating canvas using Selenium! For me this is equal parts exciting and terrifying as I’m not a confident speaker, but it does help that I’ll be co-presenting with my good friend (and old colleague), Andy Smith. It also helps that together we have created a presentation and demo that I’m really pleased with and excited to show off!
Unfortunately, it turns out that the Mozilla all-hands will clash with the conference. I have to say I’m really frustrated about this, although I do understand organising these events is not easy, and that it would have been a struggle for me to fit in a longer trip. So the plan now is for me to hire a car and drive between San Francisco and Mountain View for the various planned activities.
Today the speaker schedule was announced, and it turns out that we will be the first talk after Jason Huggins gives the opening keynote. Part of this fills me with fear as Jason will be a tough act to follow, and any technical issues might not have been ironed out. On the other hand at least we will get the nervous job of presenting out of the way early and then relax into the event.
If you’re planning on going to Selenium Conference you can get your tickets here, or if you’re interested in our presentation then we’ll be giving a preview of it at the London Selenium users meetup group on March 23rd, which you can sign up for here.
[1] The first Selenium conference was Selenium Camp, which took place last weekend. Here’s a nice writeup from David Burns who was invited along to give the opening talk.