Technically CAST is a 3 day conference with the third day being tutorials. I’m not sticking around for the third day so as to not eat up too much of my annual conference budget. Overall. I would have to say that Jon Bach (and his support team) did a great job putting together the conference even if we did get disqualified after winning the testing competition. Winning the iPod from Google did make up for it somewhat though. If you attended and have any feedback, AST is going to put a feedback form somewhere on the site for comments on things you liked or disliked. Make sure you fill it out when it gets put online; they are not mind readers.

CAST is a facilitated conference which means that all the presenters are expecting to be challenged on their ideas. I was concerned going into it that people would not participate because of who the speakers were and to some degree I think that happened. There was a group who constantly were asking questions but they were the minority. Perhaps it is because they already have a rapport with the speaker or are used to the LAWST style of facilitation from attending workshops. I’m not sure. But during the Testing Exhibition one person who ironically had been asking question for the last 2 days started his point with ‘I do not feel confident to challenge the panel’. Wrong! They want the challenge. At worst, one part of the conversation learns something and at best both (or more) do. I think this point is one of the biggest things affecting testing right now.

That said, I look forward to CAST2008. The location is going to either be somewhere in the Research Triangle, North Carolina or Toronto. Toronto sooo fits better into my travel budget. (Are you reading this Jon? 🙂 )