The Nominations for our Software Meetup Hero Competition have now opened. We had so many wonderful entries with testers looking to salute their Meetup Heroes.

We’ve narrowed it down to our Top 4 Nominees!

One of these lucky people will win 3 FREE Tickets to UKSTAR This March – 1 for themselves, 1 for the person that took the time to nominate them and put in wonderful effort making their case and 1 to give to whomever they want to join them.

We’ve condensed the winning entries into a few bullet points so you can see just how amazing these nominees are!

Once you’ve read all about them you can click the ‘Vote Now‘ button at the end and vote for the person you feel deserves to be crowned UKSTAR’s Software Meetup Hero 2018!

Voting closes 20th of December so Hurry!

We will announce the overall winner December 25th Via Email

Best of Luck to all of our Nominees!

 

Leigh Rathbone 

Liverpool Tester Gathering

Nominated By Chris Thacker

• Leigh’s passion and enthusiasm for testing and growing the community shines through on every meetup and every channel the Liverpool Tester Gathering inhabit.
• Until we changed venues he was responsible for buying and delivering all the drinks which I’m sure everybody agrees is a huge part of any meetup.
• He’s instrumental in helping to generate a buzz on social media and helping bring top quality speakers into the north west testing scene.
• This has been partially recognised by having Leigh host the Manchester edition of test bash following his excellent compering at the Liverpool event.
• He’s a true social butterfly at the Liverpool Tester Gathering ensuring everybody is welcomed and made to feel part of the community which I think is a huge part of why the Liverpool Tester Gathering still carries on.

“He’s also got one eye on the future and how the meetup can grow and become even more productive in building communities for the years coming forward.”

 

Dan Ashby

Software Testing Clinic

Nominated By Lauren Braid

• Dan is the most passionate tester I have ever met. He loves his craft and he loves teaching and mentoring anyone that he can.
• He set up the Software Testing Clinic in London with Mark Winteringham last year, a meet-up with the sole purpose of providing free education and mentoring to testers. This meet-up is literally changing people’s lives by helping them get a start in a new career. Organising and running these meet-ups requires hard work and dedication and even when he moved to Cambridge his commitment to the meet-up and the community didn’t flinch.
• Together Dan and Mark organise the syllabus, the mentors and the venue.
• They have had so much success it was officially made part of Ministry of Testing at the start of the year.
• The meet-up has grown and is now run in multiple locations around the UK- soon to go international too I believe.
• As well as the meet-up they provide TONS of online content as well as creating an online community of support and help.
• Dan puts so much into the community, he’s always creating models, talking, writing, tweeting and trying to think of better ways to make testing accessible. — Despite the sheer depth of his knowledge he always welcomes debate and relishes being challenged so he can keep learning.
• Dan always has time for anyone and over the years has personally helped me more times than I can count. A owe most of my career to Dan and the time he has taken to educate me and encourage me. I am eternally grateful to have him as mentor and I know every person who attends the Software Clinic feels the same.

“I have worked with and been managed by Dan at three companies over the past five years and can think of no one better to get recognition for all the work he does in the community. At every place I have worked with him Dan has been instrumental in bringing together testers and inspiring them to learn and grow, including myself. ”

 

 

Roman Iovlev

St.Petersburg Meetup

Nominated By Alexey Girin

• Roman is a key figure that unites the automation community in St. Petersburg. He is active both in organizing and hosting local conferences and meetups.
• Roman is rather modest in his speech: if you ask him about his role in the community, he will more likely without all the bells and whistles cite references to solid events he participated in (you can the list of them below). However his colleagues may tell you one peculiar story that vividly illustrates his meaningful personality and the sense of deep public respect toward his figure.
• Once, at the conference, Roman presented to the public a report on the theme of Model-based Testing. The presentation brought the audience to their feet. You would say – there was nothing earth-shattering…And now the punch: the report was presented in English and most of the audience did not speak English 🙂
• Roman’s background on conferences:
• Roman willingly shares his knowledge and practical experience with colleagues.
• It is also possible to get acquainted with the achievements and interesting developments of Roman online: he is an architect and active contributor of the framework for UI automation and also actively publishes for the field-oriented blog.)

“Roman always inspires his colleagues, sincerely smiling face to any difficult tasks and issues.”

 

 

Donata Vaidilaitė

Bugs ‘a’ loud

Nominated By Saulius Mašnauskas

• Donata started working as a QA unintentionally about 6 years ago.
• At first she was working as a project coordinator when her company got an invite to enroll an ISTQB certification. The person who had to get that certificate couldn’t go and nobody else was interested in it. Donata didn’t want that certificate to go to waste so she decided to go herself. After the exams she never looked back and started working as a full time QA. The QA role fits her perfectly.
• She cares deeply about quality, whether it’s software or agile processes or test automation or… dresses! She always knows how to dress with class!
• The tester community was almost non-existent at that time in Lithuania, so she decided to start one herself. She created the first (and only) tester user group in Lithuania: Bugs’a’loud.
• She now organizes it on a regular basis. She always tries her best to find extraordinary speakers to come to the user group. For example, James Bach spoke once!
• Furthermore, she wants this meet up to always be free and fun to everyone so she always finds sponsors to provide a conference hall, snacks and gifts for guests and speakers.
• Organizing such events is a lot of work to for one person. She felt a bit overwhelmed at times but never gave up because of her strong will. She knew that people need such events.
• Bugs’a’loud has gathered quite a following now so a small team of awesome volunteers joined to help her. She sacrificed a lot of her free time and energy to show and share that testing can be cool!

“I had the pleasure to work with Donata. She showed me and many others not only how to test but also how to learn to care for quality. Donata is a super star tester!”

 

Voting is now CLOSED. Voting closed December 20th 2017.

Winner will be announced December 25th via Email

Best of Luck to all our nominees!