STANZ 2012 Speakers

Meet Elisabeth, the most excited tester on the planet. There are thousands of testers in the world, hundreds of people who talk about testing and a handful who are inspiring, innovative and insightful presenters. But you would be hard pushed to find someone as test obsessed (the title of her blog ) as Elisabeth.

In her Google tech talk on Agile testing Elisabeth announces, “I am in fact test obsessed… I live, eat, breathe and sleep testing. I think it's FUN!”. That's why she's worked in the software industry since 1984. She began hearing about Agile in 2003, became a Certified Scrum Master in 2005 and joined the Agile Alliance board of directors in 2007.

Elisabeth has been a Tester, Programmer, Test Automation Manager, Quality Engineering Director and Technical Writer. She's worked for start-ups and multi-national software vendors. She's spoken at conferences in the U.S., Sweden, Portugal, Australia and New Zealand. She founded Quality Tree Software, Inc. in 1997 to provide training and consulting in software quality and testing.

In short, there is no doubt that Elisabeth knows testing, but what is different about her is that she's so excited about testing that when she speaks you can't help but feel excited too. Today she can be found teaching, writing and speaking about testing as well as working in Extreme Programming teams.

Elisabeth will be running a two and half hour workshop about Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD). She is a thought leader in this area which is all about collaborative practices, and where better to talk about that than at a conference called 'Fusion'? This conference is an opportunity to share her test experience and knowledge with people who work in all areas of software development. In Elisabeth's own words, “how cool is that?”

Julie is not only a knowledgeable tester but also a great public speaker and trainer. She has won best presentation at STAREAST, best presentation at British Computer Society SIGiST and best tutorial at EuroSTAR. She has been a keynote speaker at STARWEST, Innovate Test Management and SoftEd's STANZ. She will now be adding Fusion to that impressive list of conference experience, where she is sure to once again get great reviews.

Julie is QA Test Manager at Sage UK and Principal Consultant at QST (her own company). Sage is a huge organisation, the world's third largest supplier of enterprise resource planning software (after Oracle and SAP), with over six million customers. Before taking her current role Julie was a senior consultant and trainer with Gove Consultants in the U.K. and has been an analyst programmer, Oracle database administrator and Project Manager with first-hand experience as a test analyst, test team leader, test consultant and test manager.

Julie has done lots of consulting and training over her twenty years' experience in the testing world. She has even been a marker for the ISEB Practitioner certification. She has used lots of software development methodologies, from waterfall to Agile, and is a certified ScrumMaster. Her specialities include risk-based testing, Agile testing, test management and people issues. She has worked in a variety of industries including financial, utilities, retail, insurance, construction and the public sector.

At SoftEd we love getting Julie to come 'down under' and share her testing expertise and enthusiasm. Many of you will remember her from STANZ 2008 and she was also a participant at STANZ 2011.

Geoff Horne is not afraid of a challenge. After many years working in IT in various roles such as software development, sales and marketing and project management, Geoff found himself, almost by accident, involved in testing a complex fault management system. Since then he has worked on a variety of testing and QA assignments and founded and run two testing companies.

Geoff's companies are ISQA, a strategic and tactical testing consultancy, and Testimation.com which focuses on the development of testing tools. Although based in New Zealand, he has worked with clients in Australia, the UK and USA. Recently he has focused on a few select clients running complex test projects in a programme test management capacity. Geoff has worked with Auckland City Council, Tower Insurance, Capgemini, Southern Cross and IBM so he understands how to get things done in large and complicated organisations.

Geoff likes to share his testing knowledge and experience and does so by writing white papers and speaking conferences. He has spoken at STANZ as well as TPNs, the Better Software Conference and AsiaStar and STAREAST (at which he has presented keynote sessions).

As well as taking on professional challenges in 2011 Geoff was the Chief Pilot and Navigator on a three month trip around Europe with his better half. In 2012 he'll be doing some travelling a bit closer to home when he presents at STANZ in Auckland and Christchurch.