I remember a talk from Cory Foy back at XP 2010 in Trondheim, Norway. He referred to Corey Haines as the happiest guy in the world. Although he lost his job, he started to travel around in the world, from shop to shop, from company to company. He was able to learn so much in a single year that he continued his journeyman tour after that.

One thing that Corey Haines invented alongside is a Coderetreat. Up until the global day of Coderetreat last year on 3rd of December I didn’t know what a Coderetreat actually is. At the core are six sessions of 45 minutes each where you solve a problem in code. Then you delete your code, and do it again – maybe with a different pair partner.

Recently J.B. Rainsberger invented the idea of a Legacy Coderetreat. The idea there is similar to a Coderetreat, but have to deal with legacy code and improve it. I attended one Legacy Coderetreat in the mean time, and it was quite interesting to solve the problem of a big mess of code.

At some point back last year I got in touch with Corey Haines and Adam Goucher. We bounced some ideas back an forth, and I refined them later with Adrian Bolboaca to yield a Coderetreat for testautomation code. Now I am happy to announce the first Testautomation Coderetreat in Munich on June 2nd.

What is a Testautomation Coderetreat?

We will work on automating tests for a website that is already there. We will use different approaches, and over the course of the day learn about different ways to implement our test code.

Over the course of the day I will challenge test automators to try different tools, different approaches, and also test-driven their test code. The programming language, the test framework, and maybe even the test driver will be decided upon by the different pairs in each session.

Why should you attend?

1. You will get to know how web applications can be tested with an automation framework
2. You will strengthen your techniques around test automation code
3. You will exchange your thoughts with other test automation developers.

I already have some inquiries for another session somewhere in Germany. Due to personal reasons, I won’t be able to run such a session before July, unfortunately. I also hope for some participants from other countries, so that we can spread our learning and bounce back some more ideas.

Looking forward to a great learning opportunity – also for me.