Have you ever wanted to meet Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon? So have I, but we probably never will. However, if you’re free in mid-July and don’t mind traveling to Toronto, you can meet Gerald “Jerry” Weinberg, the man generally cited as the industry’s first software tester. He’ll be speaking at the Conference of the Association for Software Testing, aka CAST, a clunky name but a great learning opportunity for people in our business.

Conference organizers announced today that due to popular demand for his sold-out July 14 engagement, Jerry will host his full-day tutorial “The Tester’s Communication Clinic” again on July 17. In the talk, Jerry will assert that while working with hardware and software are indeed difficult parts of the tester’s job, “it’s not nearly as hard as the other half, working with people.”

The workshop will cover strategies for being more sensitive to the needs of managers, getting more effective results from developers and other strategies for communicating with peers and customers. The talk also delves into the Satir Interaction Model, Congruence Model, personality types and modality preferences. Jerry also will deliver a keynote titled “Lessons from the Past to Carry Into the Future,” for which he draws on his experiences over his 50-year career starting in 1958 with his work developing life-critical software as part of Project Mercury.

Other notable CAST keynotes include “Applied Testing Lessons from Delivery Room Labor Triage,” by testing consultant Robert Sabourin and his wife Anne, and “The Value of Checklists and the Danger of Scripts: What Legal Training Suggests for Testers,” by Cem Kaner, the father of exploratory testing. CAST runs from July 14 to 16 plus the extra day on July 17. Registration fees start at US$320 for students.

In the interest of full disclosure, I know many of the speakers at this conference personally. But it's because I know them to be the best in their field that I'm comfortable recommending this event.