So a few days ago, I officially submitted my first conference talk!  Bdd to the Bone: Test-Driving Web Applications with Behave and Selenium.  It’s no secret that testing is close to my heart as far as software enginnering goes, so I wanted to give a talk representing some of my interests.  I want to talk about some of the things that went through my head on this.

The Talk

So as I said, the talk is called BDD to the Bone.  I stole the title from a hackathon project I did at ADTRAN for introducing Behavior -Driven Development (BDD).  I am a sucker for puns, so I’m sticking with it.

There really are three parts of the talk:

1. What BDD is and how it can help
2. The behave library
3. The Selenium Library

First, there is BDD.  This is a something I’ve wanted to explore more, but have not been able to have the chance.  At one point in my software career, I didn’t see the need for it, but as I went through some pains of writing acceptance tests, I appreciated more and more what executive specifications had to offer.

Second, I wanted to introduce the Behave library.  It’s the Python way of handling Gherkin syntax.  Its pretty straight forward, and I hope to get into it a bit in future blog posts.

Lastly, I want to talk about Selenium.  Selenium is a nifty library for controlling web browsers .  I’ve given a talk on Selenium before for the Python User Group in Huntsville.

I’m targeting anyone who is interesting in testing or anyone who develops web applications.

PyTennessee

I submitted my talk to PyTennessee.  PyTennessee was the first conference I went to, and it was such a revelatory experience.  Most of my previous experience in public speaking had been small scale talks at work.  However, watching some really good talks at PyTN inspired me to get better at public speaking.  I ended up giving two talks for the Huntsville Python User Group and multiple talks at work.  I’ve slowly been making better presentations, and since PyTN, I’ve made it my mission to go to a conference each year.

 

PyTN is a great first conference.

1. It’s a regional conference, so its a good gateway to larger conferences
2. I love Python, so it will be easy to talk with passion about it.
3. They welcome first time speakers.

Submitting the talk

So submitting the talk was scary at first.  It’s the first time I’m really putting myself out there as a software engineer.  You run into a lot of imposter syndrome issues, and wondering if everyone is going to find the talk useful or not.  Thankfully, PyTN has really good guides to look up at what they expect out of talks, and I could look up some archives on the Wayback Machine to see other talks from previous years.

I thought I’d have a lot more anxiety about it after I submitted the talk.  After all, its early October, and I’ll have to wait until the middle of December to find out if my talk had been accepted or not.  However, I’m not anxious, I’m excited.  Even if I’m rejected, I’ve learned and have gotten it over with, ready for the next one.

 

I look forward to posting more about some of my talk material.  I’m also planning on submitting another talk, which I actually like more than this talk.  I hope to share it with you soon.

Some upcoming posts:

Notes about DevspaceConf.  I’ll be attending Huntsville’s DevspaceConf this weekend.  I hope to blog about what I learned.

Thoughts on Rust: I’m learning Rust for our board game AI engine and I’ve liked it so far.  I hope to share some thoughts on what I’ve liked and what I haven’t.

More on BDD and behave/selenium.