Chris Struble Writes

This week I got email invitations to several conferences that are being scheduled for next year. Each of the emails said that the decision has not been made whether to hold the conference in person or virtually. Seriously? I think that anyone planning a major gathering for 2021 should plan now to have it virtually. Switching to a virtual conference is not a turn that can be made on a dime. I just presented at a virtual technology conference that decided months in advance to go virtual. Overall it went very well. One reason for that is they had experts involved who have done virtual conferences before. If you have never run a virtual conference before, it is very difficult for everyone involved. I don't have confidence that America will be able to get COVID-19 sufficiently under control next year to make an in-person indoor conference safe. Even if Joe Biden wins the election and enacts more serious measures to control the virus, Donald Trump has done the damage to our country that

I want to thank all the volunteers who put together the PNSQC conference. This was my second time attending and presenting at PNSQC. It was great to be able to connect and share some of my ideas with people who work in my field. The videos and slide decks should be public in a few days. Once the links are available I will try to write about my impressions of the conference, and two of the keynotes that I thought were particularly good and insightful. Before the end of the year, I hope to release the Test Generator, a model-based testing tool I wrote in Ruby, which I demonstrated in my talk. When I do that I will post the links here.

I gave my talk at PNSQC 2020 today. Everything went well. Below is a live blog about my talk. The author is blogging about every talk at the conference so far. Here is a  link  to the blog article. I am really enjoying the conference. All the talks so far have been great and I am learning a lot. Meeting other people - many from the northwest, but not all - who practice in the same profession as I do, and face similar challenges, is deeply satisfying.

The PNSQC 2020 conference is underway. If you found this link from my author page , welcome. My talk on Generator-based Testing is at 10 AM Pacific on 10/13/2020.

Last night I watched the gubernatorial debate for Washington state election. Incumbent Democratic governor Jay Inslee faced Republican challenger Loren Culp, current police chief of Republic, Washington. On the COVID-19 crisis, Jay Inslee's decisive action to implement a stay at home executive order has saved thousands of lives in our state. I have watched for months as Washington state, which had the first known cases in the country, was overtaken by one state after another in counts of cases and deaths whose governors did too little too late. Loren Culp opposes stay at home orders, mask mandates, and business restrictions to fight COVID-19. His policies sound a lot like those of governors of other states who opposed shutting down or who reopened too quickly, and whose states have now overtaken Washington in cases and death counts. Viruses are a lot like wildfires. If you don't contain them quickly, they spread out of control. When wildfires come, no one complains about consti