As far as we're concerned, our first SoapUI user conference was a great success! Although we were realistically expecting to have about 50 SoapUI users in our Stockholm office for the May 23 event, we actually hosted more than 100 guests, of which over one-third were testers according to my very official "raise-your-hands" Gallup poll.
The biggest reason I believe that this event as a major success was that our first priority was to come together with all of our users and bring some value to each person who attended or live streamed the event. After all, the "UI ”in MeetUI does for You and I meeting - get it?
Most of all, as the new product owner of SoapUI, it was extremely valuable for me to speak face-to-face with a lot of the users that make this product so great. During the dinner buffet, I had the chance to meet a lot of great people, getting valuable input directly from real users of SoapUI.
However, it would have been selfish for us to keep this experience to ourselves. Luckily, a few SmartBears were able to sit down with some of the users (two of which presented at MeetUI 2013). Below, I'd like to share with you a few interviews with actual SoapUI users about who they are, what they do, and what makes them tick.
Viktor Johannson
Viktor is a software tester at Symbio who has been a SoapUI user for more than two years. He lives in Stockholm and is particularly interested in mobile testing solutions. When he's not working, Viktor is an avid sportsman and blogger. Connect with him on Twitter.
Per Åkerberg
25 years ago, a Commodore-64 found its way into Per’s house and he’s been hooked ever since. Per has been a SoapUI user since 2010 and currently works as a C# developer at Centiro Solutions in Borås, Sweden. Over the years, he found his passion for quality and started blogging about his quest for software excellence. Per was a presenter at MeetUI 2013 and has written three blog posts for SmartBear. Connect with Per on Twitter.
Peter Antman
Peter has a passion for improving how we build software together. Currently, he coaches companies doing Agile transformations as a consultant at Crisp. He has a background as Head of Development of Atex Polopoly where he enjoyed building large scale test environments. He was also one of the early comitters to the JBoss project. Peter was a presenter at MeetUI 2013 and has written a handful of quality-themed blog articles for SmartBear. Connect with Peter on Twitter.
I'd like to thank all of you that gave feedback at the event. For all of you that I haven't had the luck to meet, I'd like to invite you to email me if there is anything you need from SoapUI, or anything you'd just like to discuss.
Thanks for those of you that attend to our first user conference. Hope to see you all at another user conference! I don't know when it will happen, or even where, in the mean time we will have smaller events which all SoapUI users are welcome to take part in!
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