In the recent months, we’ve been taking a hard look at the discipline of Engineering Productivity as a logical next step in the evolution of test automation. In that same vein, we’re going to rethink what an Engineering Productivity focused conference should look like today. As we pivot, we will be extending these changes to GTAC and because we expect changes in theme, content and format, we are canceling the upcoming event scheduled in London this November. We’ll be bringing the event back in 2018 with a fresh outlook and strategy.
While we know this may be disappointing for many of the folks who were looking forward to GTAC, we’re excited to come back with a new format which will serve this conference well in today’s environment.
We are pleased to announce that the tenth GTAC (Google Test Automation Conference) will be held on Google’s campus in Sunnyvale (California, USA) on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 15th and 16th, 2016.
Based on feedback from the last GTAC (2015) and the increasing demand every year, we have decided to keep GTAC on a fall schedule. This schedule is a change from what we previously announced.
The schedule for the next few months is:
May 1, 2016 - Registration opens for speakers and attendees.
June 1, 2016June 15, 2016 - Registration closes for speaker and attendee submissions.
June 30, 2016July 15, 2016 - Selected attendees will be notified.
August 15, 2016August 29, 2016 - Selected speakers will be notified.
November 14, 2016 - Rehearsal day for speakers.
November 15-16, 2016 - GTAC 2016!
As part of our efforts to increase diversity of speakers and attendees at GTAC, we will be offering travel scholarships for selected applicants from traditionally underrepresented groups in technology.
Stay tuned to this blog and the GTAC website for information about attending or presenting at GTAC. Please do not hesitate to contact [email protected] if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you there!
All presentation videos and slides are posted on the Video Recordings and Presentations pages. All videos have professionally transcribed closed captions, and the YouTube descriptions have the slides links. Enjoy and share!
We had over 1,300 applicants and over 200 of those for speaking. Over 250 people filled our venue to capacity, and the live stream had a peak of about 400 concurrent viewers, with about 3,300 total viewing hours.
Our goal in hosting GTAC is to make the conference highly relevant and useful for both attendees and the larger test engineering community as a whole. Our post-conference survey shows that we are close to achieving that goal; thanks to everyone who completed the feedback survey!
Our 82 survey respondents were mostly (81%) test focused professionals with a wide range of 1 to 40 years of experience.
Another 76% of respondents rated the conference as a whole as above average, with marked satisfaction for the venue, the food (those Diwali treats!), and the breadth and coverage of the talks themselves.
The top five most popular talks were:
The Uber Challenge of Cross-Application/Cross-Device Testing (Apple Chow and Bian Jiang)
Your Tests Aren't Flaky (Alister Scott)
Statistical Data Sampling (Celal Ziftci and Ben Greenberg)
Coverage is Not Strongly Correlated with Test Suite Effectiveness (Laura Inozemtseva)
Chrome OS Test Automation Lab (Simran Basi and Chris Sosa).
Our social events also proved to be crowd pleasers. The social events were a direct response to feedback from GTAC 2014 for organized opportunities for socialization among the GTAC attendees.
This isn’t to say there isn’t room for improvement. We had 11% of respondents express frustration with event communications and provided some long, thoughtful suggestions for what we could do to improve next year. Also, many of the long form comments asked for a better mix of technologies, noting that mobile had a big presence in the talks this year.
If you have any suggestions on how we can improve, please comment on this post, or better yet – fill out the survey, which remains open. Based on feedback from last year urging more transparency in speaker selection, we included an individual outside of Google in the speaker evaluation. Feedback is precious, we take it very seriously, and we will use it to improve next time around.
Thank you to all the speakers, attendees, and online viewers who made this a special event once again. To receive announcements about the next GTAC, currently planned for early 2017, subscribe to the Google Testing Blog.
The deadline to apply for GTAC 2015 is this Monday, August 10th, 2015. There is a great deal of interest to both attend and speak, and we’ve received many outstanding proposals. However, it’s not too late to submit your proposal for consideration. If you would like to speak or attend, be sure to complete the form by Monday.
We will be making regular updates to the GTAC site (developers.google.com/gtac/2015/) over the next several weeks, and you can find conference details there.
For those that have already signed up to attend or speak, we will contact you directly by mid-September.
We are pleased to announce that the ninth GTAC (Google Test Automation Conference) will be held in Cambridge (Greatah Boston, USA) on November 10th and 11th (Toozdee and Wenzdee), 2015. So, tell everyone to save the date for this wicked good event.
GTAC is an annual conference hosted by Google, bringing together engineers from industry and academia to discuss advances in test automation and the test engineering computer science field. It’s a great opportunity to present, learn, and challenge modern testing technologies and strategies.
You can browse presentation abstracts, slides, and videos from previous years on the GTAC site.
Stay tuned to this blog and the GTAC website for application information and opportunities to present at GTAC. Subscribing to this blog is the best way to get notified. We're looking forward to seeing you there!
Speakers from numerous companies and universities (Adobe, American Express, Comcast, Dropbox, Facebook, FINRA, Google, HP, Medidata Solutions, Mozilla, Netflix, Orange, and University of Waterloo) spoke on a variety of interesting and cutting edge test automation topics.
All of the slides and video recordings are now available on the GTAC site. Photos will be available soon as well.
This was our most popular GTAC to date, with over 1,500 applicants and almost 200 of those for speaking. About 250 people filled our venue to capacity, and the live stream had a peak of about 400 concurrent viewers with 4,700 playbacks during the event. And, there was plenty of interesting Twitter and Google+ activity during the event.
Our goal in hosting GTAC is to make the conference highly relevant and useful for, not only attendees, but the larger test engineering community as a whole. Our post-conference survey shows that we are close to achieving that goal:
If you have any suggestions on how we can improve, please comment on this post.
Thank you to all the speakers, attendees, and online viewers who made this a special event once again. To receive announcements about the next GTAC, subscribe to the Google Testing Blog.
GTAC is a periodic conference hosted by Google, bringing together engineers from industry and academia to discuss advances in test automation and the test engineering computer science field. It’s a great opportunity to present, learn, and challenge modern testing technologies and strategies.
You can browse the presentation abstracts, slides, and videos from last year on the GTAC 2013 page.
Stay tuned to this blog and the GTAC website for application information and opportunities to present at GTAC. Subscribing to this blog is the best way to get notified. We're looking forward to seeing you there!
The Google Test Automation Conference (GTAC) was held last week in NYC on April 23rd & 24th. The theme for this year's conference was focused on Mobile and Media. We were fortunate to have a cross section of attendees and presenters from industry and academia. This year’s talks focused on trends we are seeing in industry combined with compelling talks on tools and infrastructure that can have a direct impact on our products. We believe we achieved a conference that was focused for engineers by engineers. GTAC 2013 demonstrated that there is a strong trend toward the emergence of test engineering as a computer science discipline across companies and academia alike.
All of the slides, video recordings, and photos are now available on the GTAC site. Thank you to all the speakers and attendees who made this event spectacular. We are already looking forward to the next GTAC. If you have suggestions for next year’s location or theme, please comment on this post. To receive GTAC updates, subscribe to the Google Testing Blog.
Here are some responses to GTAC 2013:
“My first GTAC, and one of the best conferences of any kind I've ever been to. The talks were consistently great and the chance to interact with so many experts from all over the map was priceless.” - Gareth Bowles, Netflix
“Adding my own thanks as a speaker (and consumer of the material, I learned a lot from the other speakers) -- this was amazingly well run, and had facilities that I've seen many larger conferences not provide. I got everything I wanted from attending and more!” - James Waldrop, Twitter
“This was a wonderful conference. I learned so much in two days and met some great people. Can't wait to get back to Denver and use all this newly acquired knowledge!” - Crystal Preston-Watson, Ping Identity
“GTAC is hands down the smoothest conference/event I've attended. Well done to Google and all involved.” - Alister Scott, ThoughtWorks
“Thanks and compliments for an amazingly brain activity spurring event. I returned very inspired. First day back at work and the first thing I am doing is looking into improving our build automation and speed (1 min is too long. We are not building that much, groovy is dynamic).” - Irina Muchnik, Zynx Health
The Google Test Automation Conference (
All of the 
Here are some responses to GTAC 2013:
