Three new good things about Indian testers

Once upon a time, Bangalore was ahead in testing leadership compared to other cities in India. What I mean by that is, we did things and made it visible to the world. We did good things that helps us develop ourselves plus do something good to others.

I acted like a brand ambasdoor for Bangalore testing within India and used that opportunity to challenge testers outside Bangalore. In fact, looking at what was happening in Bangalore, my dear friend Manoj Nair relocated from Pune to Bangalore to later co-found the weekend testing. NCR also lost one of the passionate tester Mohit Verma to Bangalore. He relocated to Bangalore tired of seeing no action up there. I went to places like NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Mysore... blah blah, I kept telling; explore or be the ash of our explosion. Maybe they thought Bangalore's explosion should be made to look small.

First good thing

NCR Testers led by Ajoy Singha, Vipul Kocher and Vipul Gupta have made it happen to an extent that we Bangaloreans are feeling the pressure to keep up to what we were doing.

First one is the NCR Testers Meet. For those who do not know what NCR means, it is, National Capital Region. It comprises of Gurgaon (which belongs to Haryana), Noida (which belongs to Uttar Pradesh) and Delhi (which belongs to Sonia G, oops, belongs to New Delhi)

NCR Testers Meet happened the 2nd consecutive time on 15th Jan and they seem to be doing very well. Tweets suggest to me that for the first time I am feeling bad for not being in the NCR Region. God give me enough money to travel to such meets in future.

NCR 1 : Bangalore 1

The second good thing

If that's one, the second one is Testing Circus Magazine led by Ajoy Singha. He is the editor of the magazine and with the help of other passionate people, has been spear heading this magazine for a couple of months now. You won't see a fancy looking magazine or a hyper stimulant content on all pages yet. It still is our own truly Indian testing magazine that is gaining consistency.

If these guys can keep it going and keep it going up, I bet we may see a migration of people from Bangalore to the happening place of NCR. Time for us, Bangalore testers, to think and try to stand up to the challenge. All these days, we were a monopoly and its nice to have a competition come in. We didn't expect a stiff competition upfront so testers at NCR, here goes a special thank you on behalf of testers in Bangalore.

We could still say, so what NCR Weekend Testing is not active enough? :)

NCR 2 : Bangalore 1

Now, what's the third thing?

Bharath from Chennai, the founder of co-founder of Weekend Testing Chennai chapter had attended my workshop about an year and a half back. I talked about the Bangalore Testers meetup and asked what's happening with Chennai testers? Why aren't they doing anything? Bharath stood up to the challenge and mingled with RIA-RUI folks and launched India's first truly low cost & highly affordable testing conference in Chennai. Its called the Bug-Debug.

I instantly agreed to be a speaker learning about the low cost highly affordable testing conference. This conference is a great challenge to all those hi fi commercial conferences who charge a lot both from the participants and the sponsors, making it unaffordable to many serious testers who have not yet started to earn good.

Looking at the speaker line up, Bug-Debug has a better speaker lineup than other conferences here in India to start with. Chennai, here I come.

Chennai 1 : Bangalore 0

Phew! Bangalore testers, are you reading this?

If you have read the book Outliers from Malcom Gladwell, you'd know that the best time to be a software tester in India, is from now on. I am going back to doing something credible in Moolya and continue to help Bangalore retain its status :)

Bangalore is hiring thought leaders, who is the next Sharath Byregowda and Parimala Shankaraiah?