Ilari Henrik Aegerter

Ilari is a candidate in the board elections for 2019.

Q1: Why are you an AST Member?

I became a member of the AST back in 2011 because I wanted to expand my professional network and interact internationally with likeminded people. I remained a member of the AST ever since because it enriched my professional life and I consider the AST as my intellectual home when it comes to testing.

Q2: How do you intend to promote diversity within the AST? How could AST promote diversity, of all kinds, within our own organization and within the wider testing and technology communities?

The AST shall always take an explicit position in all its communications that we are an inclusive organization. We shall continue our collaboration with SpeakEasy and take great care to have a balanced selection of speakers at our conferences. When giving out grants the AST shall make sure, the events it is supporting are promoting diversity, too.

Q3: What do you think the AST board has historically done well, and what do you think needs to change?

We have almost always created one of the most awesome conference programmes and I still believe the CAST model with facilitated sessions is the best model of holding a conference.

Having been on the board for a while it has become painfully obvious that the AST has a disadvantage of being a volunteer organization and that applies to the board, too. There is a lack of time to get all the ideas done and I certainly have felt once in a while that I could not deliver on all the grandiose ideas I had.

Q4: If you are elected to serve on the board, what is your vision for the future of AST and what do you hope to accomplish as part of the board?

We have started in the past to delegate some of the tasks, such as logistics and contract negotiation for CAST to professionals outside of the board. I believe the AST should make even broader use of including outside professionals in getting things done.

Furthermore, I think it is crucial to come up with more educational content, which, again, requires outside help.

We have started with creating local chapters of the AST (in Armenia) and I want to put my energy into expanding that model even further.

Q5: Many people come to be AST Board of Directors candidates through a long history of community involvement. This community involvement usually involves teaching, creating and running peer conferences, creating and running regular conferences, and working with commercial entities.

Q5A: These are all wonderful and valuable activities, but they might create conflicts for board members. One problem is that a board member spending time helping a personal conference to thrive means less or no time spent on AST events. The other problem, and the more important one, is that knowing program and financial information of a personal event will affect decisions made for AST events and initiatives and vice versa.

Not sure where the question is, but I agree with the above 🙂

Q5B: Please describe any current initiatives you participate in that might affect your ability to serve on the AST board, and serve the AST membership

I have commercial activities that are limited to Switzerland and I believe they do not interfere with any of AST’s interests. However, here more in detail:

 

    • I organize Meetups and mini-conferences on Testing in Switzerland:
      https://www.meetup.com/Meetup-of-Test/

    • I sell professional testing workshops in Zurich, Switzerland, as listed here: https://rebelsof.it. Many of the workshop holders are also actual or potential speakers at CAST

    • I teach Software Testing at a post-graduate degree course at a Swiss technical university

Q6: What is your vision for the future of AST’s training program?

Our training programme needs to be extended into covering the technical aspects of testing. Also, the current BBST courses have come of age and need a brush-up. It would be good to also pay great attention to the volunteer instructors without which the courses cannot be offered.

Q7: (Optional) Would you like to provide a short (250-400 word) introduction to go on your candidate page?

Ilari Henrik Aegerter’s formal studies have brought him from General Linguistics and Sociology to Software Engineering and Software Testing. Coming from the medical software domain at Phonak AG and progressing to e-commerce at eBay. He is now the Managing Director of House of Test GmbH and he believes that there is still a lot of work to be done for excellent software testing. In 2015 he was elected into the board of the Association for Software Testing (AST) where he acts as Vice President. He is also a lecturer at the HSR technical university for the post-graduate course CAS Software Testing.