Software Testing Blog

As the Community Ambassador here at uTest, I spend the bulk of my time conversing with testers from our office here in Southborough, Massachusetts. So you can imagine how excited I was when I got the chance to host an off-site tester meetup – in Tokyo of all places!

I was already planning to vacation in the area, and so I decided to “advertise” the event in the uTest Forums. Since I posted the meetup on relatively short notice (10 days), and seeing how we have only launched a handful of releases in Japan (so far), I was somewhat unsure of the response I would receive. Well, after five days, I had been contacted by five our testers, and so we decided to meet at the world’s busiest intersection: Shibuya’s famous Hachiko area.

So how, you ask, were our fellow uTesters able to find each other in such a hectic setting? Easy – the uTest t-shirt. A few minutes before the meeting on a Saturday afternoon, our first Japanese uTester – an Austrian gentleman who has lived in Japan for the past 15 years – flagged me down when he caught glimpse of said t-shirt. Ten minutes later, the other testers showed up and we took our meeting across the street to the Excelsior Café – a nearby coffee shop that is a favorite among the locals.

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The bug hunting portion of our Q2 Bug Battle is now history. Although testers are no longer looking for bugs in the top 6 Twitter applications – like they were for the last seven days -  they can still win prize money for submitting valuable feedback.

So if you were one of the hundreds of testers who participated in our now famous bug hunting competition, be sure to visit the uTest Forums and complete the brief survey. If you’re looking for tips on leaving valuable feedback, you can find that in the forums as well. NOTE: You have until midnight (EST) on Saturday, June 6 to complete the survey.

We’ll be announcing the official results shortly, so be sure to check back in regularly for more details. We’ve got to keep quiet for now (top-secret stuff, you know) but from what we’ve seen so far, the results have been predictably twitterific – err – terrific.

Once more, great job to all those from our community who participated. We’re looking forward to reading your survey responses. Good luck!

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.

Hello uTesters – allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Peter Shih and I recently joined uTest as the Community Manager. My background has been in software product management and engineering, where I worked closely with the QA team and performed the fun task of testing during the critical release phases.  I appreciate the passion and skill required to find high-quality bugs in a methodical fashion, so you can imagine how excited I am to be a part of this community.

My primary responsibility at uTest will be to help serve you, the testers.  As I watch the number of QA professionals increase each day, I’ve become quite optimistic about the power and the potential of our global community.  With more and more releases coming in, there’s a growing demand for top-notch testers in all segments, particularly web and mobile applications. Therefore, I’ll be looking for ways to help testers further sharpen their QA skills, get more work, and of course, make more money through uTest.

Feel free to contact me directly at peters@utest.com with any comments or suggestions about the community, the forums, fresh ideas, etc.  Once again, I’m delighted to be joining the uTest team and I look forward to working with you!