We’ve already had more than 400 testers participate and 150+ bugs, including a few verrrrry interesting defects. The bar has been raised, but we’re looking forward to seeing what this weekend produces.
Ok, maybe not exactly “proof”, but we were recently named to Gartner’s 2009 Cool Vendor list in the Application Development category. It’s always an honor to be recognized by a thought leader and opinion-shaper like Gartner, but the even-more-pleasant surprise is that this type of acknowledgment is happening before our first birthday.
It’s further validation of the uTest model and our mission to make professional QA accessible to companies of all shapes and sizes. And more importantly, it’s a reflection on our community and our customers who bought into the uTest concept and have helped us grow up so quickly. Sincere thanks to everyone in the uTest universe.
We capped off our week with another exciting piece of news — uTest has been named a finalist in the 2009 MITX Technology Awards.
In their own words, “The MITX Technology awards recognize emergent and innovative technologies developed in the New England area, as well as the individuals and companies responsible for driving these advancements”.
We submitted our written application last month and uTest was stacked up against scores of other New England-area companies. Last week, we were notified that we’d made the cut and were invited to present to an impressive group of judges at Microsoft’s offices in Cambridge, MA on Thursday night. And on Friday afternoon, the news came in that we’d been selected as a finalist.
This is our first year participating in the MITX awards and we’re excited to be recognized among this exclusive list of finalists. Apparently, the word’s getting out on crowdsourcing and uTest, because we’ve been on a bit of a roll when it comes to awards and speaking at high-profile events.
Check out our recent announcements about presenting at Under the Radar, Star East and Information Week’s Startup 50 award. We wouldn’t be able to tell this powerful story of crowdsourced QA without our testing community. As always, we thank you. More to come!
As we mentioned previously in this space, uTest was recently chosen to present at the Under the Radar event in the heart of The Valley. With only 24 start-ups being handpicked from among hundreds to present at UTR, just being selected is an honor. Their track record for finding future stars before they pop is beyond impressive.
So last Friday afternoon, in front of a crowd of 200+ start-up execs, VCs and members of the media, Doron took the stage to tell the uTest story — and to do it in six minutes or less. At an event that was focused almost entirely on cloud computing (infrastructure, management, apps, etc.), we knew our vision of crowdsourced software testing would be the exception and we wondered how it would be received amidst all the cloud talk.
And while I’m unabashedly biased, my initial reaction was that our story was popular within the room. Apparently I was right because, later that day, we learned that uTest had won the judges’ choice award in the “Applications” category. A high honor indeed, as our judges were such notables as John Foley from InformationWeek, Matthew Glotzbach from Google and Robin Vasan from Mayfield Fund.
The entire experience was positive — some great meetings with prospective customers and partners, good meetings with members of the media, and another feather in our cap as we rewrite the rules of what’s possible in the world of software testing.
Check out the six minute presentation for yourself and drop us a comment with your thoughts.
Just when you thought it was safe to sleep tight, comes this disturbing piece of news. It seems that bed bugs – that’s right, bed bugs – are beginning to resurface in several US cities. In fact, the problem has gotten so bad for many hospitals, dorms and hotels lately that the EPA decided to hold a two-day conference on the matter, brilliantly titled the “National Bed Bug Summit”. Let the party begin!
As EPA officials discuss solutions with business owners, landlords and bed bug experts (yes, there’s more than one), I’m reminded of James Whittaker’s webinar and e-book from a few weeks back. If you recall, he paraphrased Boris Beizer’s well-known pesticide paradox:
“…where testing kills some bugs, but like actual pesticide, other bugs become resistant. One needs to change the chemical formula to kill more insects. For testers, this means injecting variation.”
Any chance Beizer and Whittaker will be asked to consult the EPA on this one? We can only hope.
Until then, sleep tight (you know how the rest of it goes).
I wanted to post a quick note to share a milestone in the uTest marketplace — we recently surpassed the 10,000 mark in total bugs reported. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 55 bugs per release, or one bug every 23 minutes since our August launch. Pretty stunning results in a short period of time, and we’re grateful to our customers and our testing community for their support.
And the next 10,000 bugs will come even faster. As we shared with MSNBC recently, the number of customers, releases and bugs reported doubled from Q3 to Q4. So we’re growing rapidly and we’ll have more and more testing work for our community in the months and quarters ahead. Thanks again.
As the clock winds down on 2008 and before we turn our eyes toward ’09, we wanted to take a moment to wish everyone in the greater uTest community — testers, customers, investors, partners and employees — a safe and happy holiday season.
Thank you for contributing to an exciting and successful ’08. Next year will be one of great opportunity, challenge and growth for uTest. And with your help, we’ll someday look back on 2009 as a breakthrough year for all of us, as well as the beginning of mainstream adoption for community-driven software testing.
James McElhiney, CTO of Second Rotation, sat down with me to talk about how they use uTest to test Gazelle.com. Gazelle is a fantastic site – they make it easy to sell or recycle your old gadgets, making the Earth a little greener in the process.
Gazelle uses an agile process with three week sprints. Towards the end of their sprint cycle, the uTester community performs agile testing over the weekend and provides results the following Monday. Gazelle’s developers are able to fix any bugs and then launch new updates.
If you would like to learn more, check out our complete Agile Testing Case Study highlighting how uTest provides outstanding software testing for Second Rotation/Gazelle.
