October 22nd, 2018 by Adam Sandman
Inflectra was a proud sponsor of STARCANADA - an annual event for software testing and QA professionals that took place in Toronto, ON on October 14–19, 2018. STARCANADA is part of the STAR family of conferences organized by TechWell.
We were excited to meet testers and QA professionals in Canada, as well as introduce the Spira and Rapise family of software tools and Inflectra's name, in general. Attendees were enthusiastic, and eager to find out how SpiraTest, SpiraTeam and Rapise can transform testing and QA for them.
Inflectra at the STAR Canada Expo
#TeamInflectra was out in full force at the Expo, with Thea our head of marketing, demonstrating the popular Inflectra swag item, the "beanie", which we were told in Canada is usually called a "touque" or "tuque".
The weather in the evenings was a bit brisk, with some cold winds racing down the avenues between the skyscrapers, so conference attendees were glad that Inflectra had them covered (literally):
During the Expo we had a chance to meet Julie who was manning the very popular TestLab, a set of puzzles and quizzes to make even the brainiest tester stop and think. When she stumped us at the dice game, we offered her a free copy of SpiraTest as her prize.
Networking and Partnerships at STAR Canada
While the attendees were hard at work in the various sessions and tracks, learning about test automation, agile approaches and other QA topics, #TeamInflectra had some time to meet other exhibitors, including the very knowledgeable Blended Perspectives, who were kind enough to recommend SpiraTest to some of their Atlassian Jira customers looking for a test management options that integrate with Jira.
During the break between the sessions, we had time to meet attendees who came from various provinces of Canada (Ontario, Quebec mainly, plus some folks from BC and the Atlantic Provinces) and also fellow Americans traveling from nearby US states such as New York and Michigan.
Prizes and Fun at STAR Canada
It wasn't all work though, we also had several fun games, where attendees could stop by our booth, ask us some questions, and have their "passport" card stamped. This meant they were entered into the raffle for such awesome prizes as WONDERBOOM Bluetooth speakers, Google Home, Amazon Echo, and other goodies:
For the Thursday game, it worked the same way except we had a handy dandy hole punch, which we used to stamp the prize card:
Farewell to STAR Canada
All in all, #TeamInflectra had an awesome time, meeting testers, demonstrating SpiraTest and Rapise, learning about other cool new tools and technologies we can integrate with, and also hearing about the toughest challenges in testing that we can hopefully help with.
We had a great time, and hope to be back next year at STAR Canada 2019.
Finally, a shout out to Owen from Techwell who organized the inaugural walking tour of Toronto for the early bird arrivals (including Adam Sandman, our Director of Technology), which was so popular, it's planned for the next Techwell Agile Testing Days in Chicago.