PeersCon2711 March 2027, Nottingham
Buy a ticketPast events
Every PeersCon has been run by testers for testers on a tight budget and a lot of goodwill. Take a look back at the themes we chose, the people who gave their time to speak and the committees who put it all together. You can see pictures of the day in the gallery.
PeersCon24
14 March 2024 | 153 people
A not for profit, low budget, slightly punk and very much peer focused, friendly testing conference
Keynotes
Keynote
Leigh Rathbone
The history of testing and why it’s important as it feeds our future
A fast-paced tour of testing from 1998 to today, covering technology shifts, Agile, automation and changing tester mindsets, and what testers need to look like next.
Keynote
Heather Reid
Wait! That’s not tested
Complete testing is never achieved, so this talk covers balancing thoroughness with delivery speed, small high-quality changes, and explaining why not everything was tested.
Talk
Jitesh Gosai
Psychological safety: The link between speaking up, complexity and high performing teams
Why people hold back concerns, how that compounds in complex work, common misconceptions about psychological safety, and research-based ways to build safer environments.
Talk
Callum Akehurst-Ryan and Chris Armstrong
Don’t do a strategy, be strategic!
Experience report on building useful testing strategies from scratch: assessing needs, writing the strategy, handling stakeholder pushback and bringing people along.
Talk
Sanne Visser
That which isn’t good for the hive, isn’t good for the bee
Argues competition and hierarchy harm collaboration, examines three common beliefs about running teams, and suggests moving away from reliance on external rewards.
Workshop
Richard Hinton
Reporting on quality at all levels
Workshop on writing test reports that build trust, using a reporting pyramid to match detail to the reader’s seniority, with progress indicators and action items.
Talk
Claire Reckless
Finding leadership confidence in community
How an internal Engineering Management community at Moneysupermarket built leadership confidence, countered imposter syndrome and helped solve people problems.
This event smashed it out of the park. So many insightful talks and workshops on offer, friendly faces and at an affordable price.
Connor WestleyTest Engineer at Victorian Plumbing
Talk
Al Goodall
Things I learned being a new(ish) quality manager
A personal account of moving into quality management, the mindset shifts involved, sharing personal motivation with a team, and mistakes made along the way.
Talk
Chris Armstrong, Shey Crompton and Sanne Visser
9/10 testers
Moderated, interactive panel on testers’ frustrations and pet peeves, inviting audience contributions with humour and empathy.
Workshop
Huib Schoots
How the heck do I perform a risk analysis?
Hands-on workshop on using heuristics to identify and assess software risks and use them to guide test strategy.
Talk
Beth Clarke
Being the glue: The role of DevOps in testing
How DevOps practices help testers protect quality, improve monitoring and reporting, bridge technical and non-technical stakeholders, and shift culture toward collaboration.
Talk
Andrew Brown
Rethinking testing and risk within complex systems: The Swiss cheese model
Why failures in complex systems stem from multiple factors, using an aviation example, ten principles of complex system failure and the Swiss Cheese Model for managing risk.
PeersCon25
13 March 2025 | About 175 people
Testing horizons: navigating career paths, embracing diversity and cultivating unique perspectives in software testing
Keynotes
Keynote
Katja Obring
Debugging the mind: Teaching developers to think like testers
Argues the tester mindset must now be taught to developers, product owners and delivery leads so they write better tests and weigh unintended consequences.
Keynote
Veerle Verhagen
Left flank is falling! Continuous communication in the heat of battle
Uses Viking-age line fighting to show that teams communicate less than they think and that the best communicators, not the strongest individuals, succeed.
Talk
Tom Game
Reinventing myself: A dyslexic’s journey from manufacturing to software testing
A career changer’s story from manufacturing to testing, arguing dyslexic thinking helps find defects and edge cases, with three tips for career transitions.
Workshop
Szilard Szell
The pipeline game
Groups use Emily Bache’s Pipeline card game to design delivery pipelines for a scenario and discuss step order, trade-offs and differing risk tolerances.
Talk
Stephen Platten
Ancient philosophy, modern methods
Applies Stoic ideas of focusing on what you control, embracing challenges and staying calm to ambiguity, problem solving and collaboration in testing.
Talk
Sanne Visser
Defend the indefensible
A debate game where participants defend absurd statements for thirty seconds, with audience applause deciding who advances through knockout rounds.
Talk
Jitesh Gosai
Speed vs quality: Can you have both?
Contrasts working harder with working smarter, using Theory of Constraints, five experimentation skills and DORA metrics to find bottlenecks.
It was a day packed with learning, connection, and inspiration.
Jitesh GosaiQuality Engineering Newsletter
Talk
Linda Van De Vooren
A comedy of errors
A humorous talk on test automation for haters, sceptics and the code-averse, with a few practical tips for working around not automating.
Workshop
Beren Van Daele
Riskstorming
Run by the creator of RiskStorming, TestSphere and RiskStormingOnline.
Workshop
Stuart Pates
Can you hear me? Techniques to have better conversations
Covers communication breakdowns in hybrid and cross-location teams, with practical conversation skills, active listening, difficult conversations and an interactive breathing exercise.
Talk
Lauren Borodajko
Beyond cross functional: How D&I elevate quality
Explains how diversity, inclusion and psychological safety raise quality, with practical steps for inclusive cross-functional teams and nonviolent communication.
Talk
Christopher Briggs
Outrunning extinction: Surviving, then thriving in an era of change
Uses the dinosaur analogy to argue resisting change fails, offering a reinvention toolkit, resilience practices and personal-growth lessons from his career.
Programme committee
Programme chair
Chris
ArmstrongQuality engineering leader
Committee
Jo
Richards-SteeleQA engineer
Committee
Bruce
Generalist tester
Committee
Kat
Obring20 years in testing
Committee
Yogita
LadSoftware tester
PeersCon26
12 March 2026 | About 300 people
Context is everything: lessons from the universality of quality and testing across different industries
Keynotes
Keynote
Callum Akehurst-Ryan
Argues many testers are out of step with modern teams. Drawing on conversations with CTOs and engineers, urges pragmatic generalism and changing how testing is discussed.
Keynote
Suman Bala and Parveen Khan
The quality engineering playbook: Adapting to your context
A playbook as a flexible framework for scaling quality across teams with differing stacks and maturity, aimed at leaders wanting a shared language for quality.
Talk
Helen Whitaker
My squiggly path to QA mastery: Why industry experience isn’t the gatekeeper to quality
Using the Squiggly Career idea, argues core quality practices apply across industries after working in seven sectors. Curiosity and advocacy outweigh domain knowledge.
Talk
Ester Greenwood
Quality is a ballet: Test like the best companies in the world
Compares ballet company practice (rehearsal stages, risk contingencies, shared vision) to testing practices such as shift-left, shift-right and end-to-end testing.
Talk
Philippa Jennings
Beyond the gatekeeper: Redefining the tester’s role in modern software teams
Challenges the tester-as-gatekeeper model with examples from several sectors, covering risk awareness, early influence on design and shared ownership of quality.
Talk
Brijesh Deb
The tester’s time machine: Learning from old school to future tools
Traces career eras from end-of-line gatekeeping to AI-generated tests, arguing old mistakes recur in new tools and testers should keep curiosity and judgment.
Talk
Stephen Platten
Airworthiness for everyone: Quality and testing lessons from ex Royal Air Force engineering
Applies RAF aircraft engineering practice to testing through four pillars of standards, checks, traceability and learning, built on culture, plus a Stoic Tester framework.
The talks have been fantastic and given me lots of ideas for my current workplace and beyond.
Richard AdamsMoT Edinburgh Chapter Lead
Talk
Rene van Veldhuijzen
It never hurts to test… unless you’re testing in chaos
Humorous storytelling from regulated DevOps on how a shared test strategy, chained production-like environments and empathetic governance turn chaos into collaboration.
Workshop
Dan Billing
A test odyssey: Exploring intelligent agents in end-to-end testing
Hands-on workshop using Playwright and Playwright MCP with AI agents to plan, generate and heal end-to-end tests and handle flakiness.
Workshop
Willem Keesman and Hugo van Heuveln
Dice dice baby! Critical fails and quality tales
Interactive D&D session set in a fantasy corporate office where test roles work through bureaucracy to convince the CEO that quality matters.
Talk
Steve Watson
What have the testers ever done for us?
Argues testers should focus less on titles and terminology and show stakeholders the shared core principles of testing, drawing on experience across several industries.
Programme committee
Programme co-chair
Simon
PriorQuality engineering coach
Programme co-chair
David
MaynardTest department lead
Committee
Suman
BalaQuality advocate
Committee
Rita
AvotaTester since 2014
Committee
Beth
MarshallQuality engineering trainer
Committee
Dan
AshbyEngineering leader and coach