Beyond DevOps Borders: QSConf’s Journey from Uruguay to Chile with Federico Toledo

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Hey, I'm Joe Colantonio, host of the DevOps Toolchain podcast and my goal is.

To help you create DevOps toolchain awesomeness. Hey it's Joe and welcome to another episode of the Test Skill DevOps Toolchain podcast. Today we'll be talking with Federico Toledo all about the upcoming Quality Sense conference taking place on November 9th to the 10th and it's taking place in Chile and I think there's a virtual part as well. That's what we're going to learn about. It's an annual event for testing in quality software community in Latam to continually grow and feature talks by top tier international leaders. I really love this event one because I think it features more than just functional automation, but they cover performance and other type of DevOps type of talks that you don't find at other a lot of other conferences. I'm really excited about that and I'm really excited that Federico is going to be here to join us. He's from a He's the co founder of Abstracta, a company that is dedicated to providing test services and creating development tools that help simplify software testing tasks. He also has a PhD in computer science. A really smart guy and he is a lot of experience. He started testing I think 2005 and he's participated in functional automation and performance testing projects as an analyst, tester and project lead. He also, as I mentioned, is the co founder of Abstractor Academy in Aptum, formerly Munkop. So he has a lot of experience. He's been publishing things since 2014. He has a book in Spanish called Introduction to Information Systems Testing and he also co founded and collaborated with in the Newhall Project, nonprofit organization for social inclusion through education and software testing and Testing ui, the biggest testing conference in Latin America. So really exciting to have him on the show. You don't want to miss it.

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Hey, Federico, welcome back to the Guild.

Thank you, Joe. Excited to be here.

Awesome to have you. So I thought before we dive in, is anything in your bio that I messed or botched up that you want the Guild to know more about? A lot of times I mess up the intro. So anything that I missed?

No, not much. I spent some years, I'm from Uruguay in South America. I spent some years in Spain where I did my PhD and also recently I spent some years in California. I had a great time over there and I had the chance to go to different conferences where, for example, I met you recently. Right?

Yeah. That was awesome. It was great to finally meet you in person. That was great. Great time.

Yeah, finally.

Cool. So I also. I always wanted to go to this event, but it always happens during a time that I'm always busy, so I really missed out. So, you know, this event is. Happens every year, so maybe give a little background maybe of what Quality Sense Conference is all about and where you really shine and why it's different maybe from other events people may have heard about or attended.

Yeah, sure. Well, this is going to be the second edition. The first time we did this event was last year. And the main motivation to understand the history of the event, it's because we wanted to host the Whopper, the workshop on performance and reliability that probably you heard about it, which is, I think they started in 2003 or something like that. And last year was the first time that we hosted the event in Latin America. Right. So we wanted to bring professionals in the SRE and performance and DevOps to Uruguay to share their knowledge and everything. But the workshop is only for 20 people. So having Eric Prowler, Mark Tomlinson, Almudena Vivanco, I don't know, Senor performer Leandro Melendez. So many great minds here in Uruguay. Only to speak in a group of 20 people was too little, you know, for that opportunity. So we wanted to do in the same week another event which is open and free, accessible for everyone. And that was a way to take the chance to take the opportunity of having those people here and share their knowledge to the local community. Also, we transmitted the event virtually and this year we are doing something different. We are having one day with a fully virtual event that's November 9th, and another day only in person. The talks are going to be recorded, but it's only in person and it's going to be in Santiago, Chile.

Nice. Now why Santiago, Chile? Because it's different from where you had it last year. Are you just moving around just to get exposure to different communities?

Yeah, exactly. Because one of the main motivations now is not only bring people from other places of the world to share their knowledge here, but also showcase the talent and the experience, the expertise that we have in Latin America to other countries and generate a sense of community around testing and quality in all the countries. So our plan is this year in Chile, next year in Colombia, and probably in the following years it's going to be in Mexico and in the future maybe in the United States as well. Why not?

Nice. Absolutely. So it's also an undisturbed community, I would think Latin America, you have all this talent, but people may not be aware of it. So maybe could you talk about like how big is the community and maybe is it underserved or is it under utilized? You think there's probably untapped potential that maybe companies listening may not be aware of.

Yeah, it's a growing community, of course. Our own software in general. Right. Last week I was in Argentina for a conference, also a very popular conference, which is Nardiarla is the name. They are free. It's like an open source community, if you will. And they have 45,000 resistant people.

Registered for the online event. That's a lot. And I think that talks about the size of the community and the community is growing year after year. In our case last year it was the first time and it's only focused on quality and we have more than 2,000 attendees and we are hoping this year to have at least the dao. Yeah. Something particular about Latin American community, I think. Why is it growing? I think my vision is that it's related to the adoption of agile methodologies in the US where it's the most important market and where most companies are. Right. And now in the last 20 years we value more the live communication, like to be at the same time working all the team together. So this is why Latin America has a time zone which is beneficial to this type of collaboration. And this is why I believe it's growing more and more.

Well, that's a great point. A lot of people look to when they're working with testers, maybe outside of the US it's on the complete other side of the world. And then you have. Which is fine, but you get these communication things, but you have an untapped Almost resource of technical folks that are almost on the same time zone that it works out perfectly. Like said, especially with Agile. That's a great point. So do you need to know Spanish though to attend this event or are the presentations done in Spanish? Is it done in both? How does that work out?

That's a great question. And actually this is one of the things that we try to put a lot of focus since the beginning as we are going to have speakers from North America, from United States, from Europe, from India and also from Latam. It's important to have the simultaneous translation for both languages. So if you don't speak Spanish you will be able to listen to all the talks and enjoy them. So this is not a limitation for sure.

Yeah, very cool. So you talked about Whopper a little bit and that's what caught my attention originally. It's the performance aspect I think is missing from some events. So is that still going on then? You're going to have like a Whopper before and then, or will it be performance DevOps type of sessions sprinkled in throughout the virtual and the on site event?

The answer is yes to both questions because we are going to have the Whopper. But this year is going to be the first Whopper Latam which is going to be only in Spanish. This workshop for 20 people is going to be the first time that is happening only in Spanish. And in the same week we have the Quality Sense Conf which also will have some talks about performance DevOps, observability and also related to other non functional aspects like accessibility. There are a couple of talks about that topic which is really important also.

Awesome. So can you I guess highlight some of the speakers and maybe some things or sessions that they might be talking about?

Yeah, sure. I have the draft of the agenda here. For instance, from North America, Charlie Wells from Datadog is coming for the in person event. He will be talking about the relationship between observability and quality which I believe that especially now with a lot of applications using LLMs or artificial intelligence for testers it's getting harder and harder to understand how to test a software in a black box approach. So observability can help us to understand more of what's happening right inside the application. So that's one of the topics we will have also Vigo Molina from the Selenium community showing how to, you know, leverage the power of AI in Selenium to improve the way we test and automate and learn about the applications we are testing. We will have Krystal Krustuk from Teslio. She will talk about the purpose behind testing, why we test, how to find purpose in our activities. Right. We have Leandro Melendez again talking about how to accelerate qa. He will be participating in the online event because it's the same week he's getting married.

That's what I was going to just say. Oh, boy, is the marriage off? Because I saw his name list and I'm like, oh, I thought he said he wasn't talking, but his wife's already going to be upset with him. That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

So Lisandra Armas, she will be talking about. She's one of the most important voices in Latin America talking about accessibility and she will be talking about how to shift left accessibility in our processes. Patominier is a very famous tester in the LATAM community. He is known as the free range tester. He will be sharing a lot of his experience in testing ETL systems, using Python in particular. Then we have different talks of different new voices as well, because that's important also to open the door to new speakers. Right. And we have other people with tons of experience. For example, Mark Tomlinson, he will be sharing his experience about performance, but in particular more related to what he calls perform or something like that, which is how to take into consideration the sustainability of the systems we develop, their resources they use, the energy they consume and how we can improve that by analyzing the performance.

Right.

Andrew Knight, Automation Panda, is also participating in the online event with his talk about open testing, how we can open source software testing. Right. Who else? Daryl Ferris. He will be talking about mail and test automation and artificial intelligence. Around that. There is another Uruguayan colleague sharing an open source product that he's preparing called testcraft. He's Damien Pereira. He will be talking about how to create this type of software using ChatGPT under the hood. Right. In order to assist software testers in the generation of test ideas and test data. And we also have Rishesh Dev participating in a panel discussing how to navigate your first job as a tester and how to mentor testers. So there are different topics. I really like to have this diversity of speakers and also diversity in the topics we cover in order to try to pay attention to the different needs of the different people in their learning paths. Right.

Excellent. So what are your thoughts on testing in DevOps? This is the DevOps podcast. A lot of people don't realize continuous testing is such a big part of DevOps. And a lot of these topics sounds like they would apply to anywhere in your tool chain, especially the performance, you have some on observability AI. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, sure. I really believe that testing is an enabler of DevOps as a culture. Right. Not DevOps as the engineer working on the pipeline to automate things. Right. But DevOps as the culture that you want the different teams to be more connected and collaborating in a better way. So through testing we start asking different questions in order to optimize the collaboration between the teams. And this is why we talk about shift testing to the left. Performance, security, accessibility, everything. To start asking these type of questions earlier in the process. Right. And also to the right and paying attention and getting feedback from the users. And this is how we start talking about observability and all of that stuff. I even consider that the Canary releases are a way of doing testing because you deploy to a few users, friends and family probably, and you learn from them. But actually this is your test and you analyze the result of these tests and according to the result, according to the verdict, you decide to promote the application to more and more users. And this is a way to learn about the quality of your product and make a decision about the product. And this is the definition of testing, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. A lot of people, I think, kind of don't equate the two, but I love how you put it. It's like an enabler, it's almost like agile. It's like a mindset that helps the team in general. So I love that. So you said the on site is free, so if someone just flew over, they could just walk right on in and join the event.

Exactly. And this is also the most important part for us about helping to build communities. Right. To make this space available for everyone, you need just, you need to register in qualitysenseconf.com and the event is free. If you want to watch it online or if you want to attend in person, the in person event, there are going to be 250seats, so don't let the time pass. Right. But yeah, it's free.

Nice. So you know, you did this last year as well. Is there anything that you're improving on based on what you learned from last year that people that may have attended last year, like, hey, you can expect this based on your feedback, we're going to be doing this or that.

Yeah. According to the feedback, we decided to include some other topics that were left last year. For example, accessibility, one of them. But also we decided to divide the conference in two different days. Last year we did only One day with online transmission. And this year we are dividing the event in two days. One is only virtual, so we have a full experience for the people attending the event online and one day in person. So we focus on the experience inside, right in the site.

Nice. So how is Abstractor involved then? Are they the sponsor of it? Do you have speakers or how much are you all involved with the event?

We started with the event, we have some speakers, but again for us it's really important not to be a conference only from Abstracta, where all the speakers or most of the speakers are from our team. Right. This is our speakers also participating in the call for speakers. They have to apply and we evaluated the proposals. So that's one important aspect. It's like a conference that we organized. We tried to have sponsors in order to make it sustainable. Right. But I think this is an investment we do in time, effort, money to help the community grow, help the people grow, and also showcase, as I said before, the talent we have in Latin America that can collaborate with companies in Europe, in the States or other parts of the world. So this is our main involvement, like organizing the space for the community, right?

Absolutely. So speaking of community, is there any type of community building activities or networking opportunities? If someone's going to fly there, what can they expect to maybe get the most out of the event?

Yeah, for sure. There is going to be a welcome dinner for the speakers. There's going to be an after party as well, on the same day, the Friday, November 10th. But also I really believe that these conferences are really good for. Not only for to watch the talks, but also to take the advantage during the coffee breaks to interact with the speakers or with other members of the community. And there are going to be different spaces for that, that I really believe that generating these spaces is a good way to. To make the community grow. It's not only about what you provide, it's also about generating the space for them to connect, to know each other, to build synergies. Right.

Love it. Absolutely. So if someone's listening, they're like, I want to expand my reach into Latin America. Do you have any tips or things that maybe they may avoid? Maybe like a dumb American may do something that may not fly in Latin America. Are there any ways to approach a tester in Latin America to get the most out of the relationship both ways? That's beneficial.

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I believe that communication is key and also the alignment in culture. So getting to know the people, if you can know the country, a Little bit. If you are focusing on Chile, on Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, we are all different countries and we speak slightly different versions of Spanish. Brazil, they speak Portuguese. Right. But in the rest of the countries we speak Spanish, but it's not the same. My Spanish is very different to the Spanish from Spain or from Mexico or from Peru. Right. So learning a little bit of the particularities of that country will help to build a connection for us. Connecting with our co workers is a really important part of our life. It's not. We don't divide like work and life like this with a wall in the middle. We try to make everything an integral part of our life. So that type of connection, paying attention to that type of connection will help in the motivation of the person and if the person is really motivated, will be more engaged with, with the purpose of the company and with the rest of the team and will be more productive if you want to focus on that aspect. Right, right.

Yeah. I didn't know about the dialect. I know with Italian. My mother, southern Italy. I have a friend whose family grew up in Rome and they couldn't really understand each other when they spoke Italian because the dialects were so different. So I know that was the same with Spanish. I thought it was universal. That's good to know.

We have influences from the different mixtures. And actually in this region, Uruguay, Buenos Aires, we have a lot of influence from the Italians who came here 100 years ago. So our Spanish has the same tone of the Italian, of an Italian person. Right?

Yeah. You know, I told you this earlier that my grandfather immigrated to Brazil and they had like an Italian community there. And then they came to America and that was like around the turn of the century. Cause they were really old. But yeah, that's why I want to visit so bad, because I think that'd be so cool. So if someone's listening and they're like, oh, I want to support this event, I want to be a speaker at future events. What can they do to get involved maybe with next year? Do you have a plan for next year? Is it too soon to plan that far out?

No, no. We are already working in the next year event with Mercedes Quintero, which is another thought leader from Colombia. So we are organizing in Colombia the next event, the next edition. We don't have a date or anything in particular, but probably is going to be in November. October, November, more or less. So if you want to be part of that event, pay attention to our social media or registering in the event so we can send you information when we have more things prepared if you want to participate also in the wapor, that's a great opportunity to interact with other thought leaders, particular in the DevOps SRE performance side of things in Latin America this year we are focusing the theme of the Whopper this year is the state of the practice of performance testing in Latin America. Which is important because we typically consume mainly information about what people are doing in other parts of the world. I would like to show or share within the participants what we are doing here in the companies that are established in this region. Right. But yeah, for sure pay attention to the Abstracta, Twitter, LinkedIn. We typically share details of the conference and everything over there.

Nice. So if someone wants to attend this year's event, what's the best way for them to get on the board? Because it's happening soon. So if someone hasn't taken advantage of it, where will they register for? Maybe the online and then how do they get involved if they want to actually visit and go to the on site event?

So qualitysenseconf.com you can register there for both events. For the online event you will receive the link to connect during that day. And for the in person event you should book a hotel also in Santiago de Chile and spend a few days in that beautiful city as well. And the important part is to be registered. Then it's free, you can attend, you can enjoy the event.

Awesome. We'll have all these links here in the show notes as well on how to attend and how to register for sure. Okay Federico, before we go, is there one piece of actual advice you can give to someone to help them maybe with their DevOps performance type automation testing efforts? And what's the best way to find or contact you directly?

Yeah, sure. I really appreciate all your support Joe, for the conference. I think my piece of advice today is related to this. We can be learning, attending conferences or watching videos in YouTube or doing boot camps. But for the personal and professional growth, in my experience in my career, what contributed the most was attending conferences and build connections. This is a perfect opportunity. Even the small conferences, the small workshops are even better because you interact with a few people, but during more time so you build a stronger connection. So attending to this type of events, there are many that are free or very cheap. Try to find those in person because they have a special addition of getting to know with other people. Even better. And yeah, to contact me, try to look searching LinkedIn. I'm typically sharing content over there. Federico Toledo, you can find more information about our company Abstracta US we really like to organize this type of events, share what we learn in our journey, and I'm really open to connect with people and so I love to continue the conversation about the event or about any DevOps or performance testing topic.

And for links of everything of value we covered in this DevOps toolchain show, head on over to testguild.com P131 and and while you're there, make sure to click on the SmartBear link and learn all about SmartBear's awesome solutions to give you the visibility you need to deliver great software. That's smartbear.com so that's it for this episode of the DevOps Toolchain Show. I'm Joe. My mission is to help you succeed, creating end to end full stack DevOps toolchain awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.

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