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.

For the next two hours, over coffee, tea and white peach slushy, we chatted about our backgrounds, our experience as software testers and, of course, our uTest experiences. Instantly, I was amazed by the diversity of our community, as testers reflected on their careers in everything from semiconductors and gaming, to enterprise software and localization. Despite their unique backgrounds, these testers did show one common trait: their passion for testing and their excitement to be part of uTest.

Aside from my meeting with the testers, I was also fortunate to sit down with our new Japanese partner, Looops. We are quite excited about this partnership here at uTest, and look forward to expanding our testing services in the Japanese market. For more information about this partnership, you can check out our latest press release.

Since our meet up, I am encouraged to see that several of the testers I met have gone on to participate in multiple releases with uTest. If you’d like to learn more about getting more involved with our many upcoming projects, click here.

It goes without saying that I had a wonderful time meeting testers in our community – and it certainly won’t be the last time we get together. In the coming months and years we intend to host meetups in your local area as well.

Until then, see you all in the uTest Forums!