Michael Raw is the Vice President of Handheld Software Verification at Research In Motion.

Michael’s diverse career path has taken him through many different fields and industries, and as a result he has a unique and interesting perspective to bring to the field of software quality. He’ll be sharing his observations and insights related to how software quality is both similar to and different from other disciplines he’s worked in, as well as some of his experiences so far in the newly created role of VP of Handheld Software Verification.

Conference Topic

Gil Broza helps organizations, teams and individuals implement high-performance Agile principles and practices. His coaching and training clients – over 1,000 professionals in 20 companies – have delighted their customers, shipped working software on time, boosted their productivity and decimated their software defects.

Beyond teaching skills and methods, Gil helps people overcome limiting habits, fears of change, blind spots and outdated beliefs; through his personal coaching practice he helps them find their true north and reach self-actualization.

Gil has an M.Sc. in Computational Linguistics and a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics; he’s also an NLP Master Practitioner. He lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife and twins.

Conference Topic
Get Your Point Across

Kevin Burr has twenty years of software development experience and ten years of management experience in software quality, security risk analysis, test automation strategies, unit and usability testing, performance, and interoperability.

Kevin has managed performance, integration, and system testing groups in Nortel, as well as having created the Test Acceleration Consulting Group within Nortel's Software Engineering Analysis Lab.

Currently, Kevin is in the Technology Innovation Management Program at Carleton University, and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.

Conference Topic
Test Automation Myths

Selena Delesie has 8 years experience managing and coaching on software, testing, and agile practices. She has worked on programs and projects in wireless, media, embedded, telematics, web, billing, and speech technologies. She is passionate about creating empowered and collaborative organizations by way of individualized coaching and interactive training experiences.

Selena is past chair for the Kitchener-Waterloo Software Quality Association (KWSQA), and is co-founder and host for the Waterloo Workshops on Software Testing. You can contact Selena via her website at www.selenadelesie.com.

Conference Topic
Engage Your Brain (There Is No Spoon)

Rob is employed as a Software Test Lead at Research in Motion. Over the past few years he has been honing his skills in Exploratory Testing and Rapid Software Testing. As well, Rob has started focusing his attention on technical leadership and team interaction.

Conference Topic
Speed vs. Quality Simulation

Michael Bolton has been teaching software testing on five continents for ten years. He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a course that presents a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. He has been Program Chair for the Toronto Association of System and Software Quality, and Conference Chair (in 2008) for the Association of Software Testing. He wrote a column in Better Software Magazine ran for four years, and very sporadically produces his own newsletter.

Michael lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and two children. He can be reached at mb@developsense.com, or through his Web site, http://www.developsense.com

Conference Topic
Questioning the Best Practice Myths

Dianne has been involved in IT Business Consulting and Project Management for over 15 years. An employee of Manulife Financial for over 20 years, Dianne received her Project Management Professional Certification in 2001 and is a charter member of the Project Management Institute's Canada's Technology Triangle Chapter.

In 2008, Dianne completed her MBA from Athabasca University and published her graduate thesis Utilization of Offshore Resources in Financial Services Information Technology Application Development and Support, where she researched and investigated how global resources are changing the nature of IS development in Canada.

Today, Dianne is responsible for Project Portfolio Management and Solutions Delivery for Canadian Group Savings and Retirement Solutions at Manulife.

Conference Topic
Global Resourcing and Quality - how the use of Global Resources impacts your role and how you can survive and thrive in this new paradigm

Adam Goucher has been testing professionally for over 12 years at a range of organizations from national banks to startups. A large part of that time has been spent augmenting his exploratory testing with automation. But automation is not the only tool in his toolbox.

As an experienced tester who believes in the principles of both the Context School of Testing and the Agile Manifesto he brings an open and modern view of testing to projects.

His first book, Beautiful Testing was published in October 2009. His second, still untitled book is on Selenium and due out late 2010 by the Pragmatic Programmers.

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Successful Web Automation with Selenium

Paul Carvalho has over 20 years experience in the IT industry, with more than 13 of those years in various QA/Testing roles. On an unrelated note, he also worked as a high school Science teacher, environmental technology profiler, bicycle courier, bartender and tree planter.

Paul tackles testing with passion and fun, has been published in Better Software magazine, and has a terrific gift for analogies and storytelling to help explain software testing and development concepts. He has been a practitioner, coach and presenter of methods in Exploratory Testing for over 7 years now. Contact Paul at http://www.staqs.com

Conference Topic
Testing vs. QA

Experienced from the fertile ground of both success and failure, Mark Meninger has been steadily working in various software testing capacities since 1999.

He has been driving, designing, developing, and implementing test automation solutions since 2004. Mark gives regular presentations on test automation to the local technology community and also at major testing conferences (SQE, QAI)

Mark is currently Senior Test Automation Manager, Consumer Applications at McAfee Inc. Previous to this Mark was test automation manager for the BlackBerry Handheld at Research In Motion.

Conference Topic
From Idea to Implementation - A Full Cycle Step Through of the Test Automation Process.

Mark is currently the QA lead on commercial business software used by thousands of users across North America. He has extensive experience working in an Agile Scrum QA environment. He is a Computer Science/Math graduate of University of Guelph and both lives and works in Guelph.

Conference Topic
Implementing an agile process