BREWTCON 2026 - Mixing Formats and Communities

I've heard about BREWT and their meetups for quite a while. I've known some of the folks organizing these events. This year, I had the opportunity to finally participate in their community conference BREWTCON and at the same time I had the honor to give the opening keynote. Many thanks to the organizing team of Kristof Van Kriekingen, Geert van de Lisdonk and Andreas Faes for making this happen and trusting me to kick off the event!

BREWTCON differed from other conferences I've been at by deliberately mixing two formats. We spent the first half of the day with a pre-scheduled program of talks. The afternoon was reserved for an open space where participants co-created the schedule right in the moment. Lunch and dinner allowed for proper socializing and networking. 

This conference also brought people from various communities together. I've met folks from the local BREWT meetups, yet also from SoCraTes Germany, FroGS Conf and Agile Testing Days. I really appreciated that while the conference mainly targeted testing and quality folks, we had other roles in the room as well, like developers, architects and more.

 

Scheduled Talks

Besides the keynotes, the conference offered two tracks so people could choose what topic intrigued them most. Maybe even get inspired for sessions to propose at the later open space. 

• Keynote "Stop Judging and Tear Down Your Gates – Make Humans the Strongest Link in Security" by me. This was the premiere of this brand-new talk that's been brewing for a while now. While I believe the talk is transferable from security to several roles like testers and architects, I was curious whether it would resonate with the BREWTCON audience. Seems it did, though! Really appreciate the feedback received and am already looking forward to giving this one again. 
  
• "Testers Against Nature: The Case for Unnatural Thinking" by Ewald Wassink. Ewald pointed out how critical thinking naturally requires a lot of energy by design of our brain. We have to challenge our own biases intentionally and that comes at a cost. Yet the message was clear: we need to practice our thinking skills or we will lose them. The key practice Ewald recommended is to make use of specific Socratic questions and build a routine to ask them every day. I also appreciate that he made it very clear that we need to take good care of our brains. 
  
• "From sceptics to builders: AI powered Testing" by Lotte Rombaut. Lotte shared the story of how her company came up with a custom-made AI agent to support testing activities. She was clear about the advantages of where it helped them, but also about the issues it caused. Costs are the main worry - while it helped them, there was no money to be made with it. 
  
• "From Complex Configurations to Tester-Friendly Test Plans" by Isha Pathan. Isha painted the picture of a complex system covered by a massive amount of regression tests across various components. They struggled with pinpointing the cause of failing tests. What helped them was to build a custom test data portal. 
  
• Keynote "The Fear Factor in Software Testing" by Suzanne Kraaij. This was a really great presentation where I just kept nodding along as I've seen what Suzanne described way too often. Have you also faced the situation when suddenly everyone started fearing they missed important parts, so they kept testing, trying to reduce uncertainty and their fear of the unknown to a point way beyond reason? When testing becomes the goal instead of delivering value? As Suzanne pointed out, this is causing more harm than good. We need to bring the fear out in the open and ask about impact, evidence, assumptions and the information people might miss - and then guide them back to risk-based testing. 
  

 

Open Space 

After a nice lunch and some good conversations on company cultures and how adjacent teams in the same company can work in vastly different ways, it was time to introduce people to the open space format. Lots of folks proposed sessions so the schedule filled up pretty quickly. It's always great to see that magic happen at open space conferences! At first, you might worry whether the time slots would even be filled - until suddenly there's no slot available anymore and you have the difficult task of choosing which sessions to attend.

• "Capture the Bugs" by Joep Schuurkes. "Capture the Bugs" is an application created by Maaret Pyhäjärvi and Ru Cindrea to allow testers to test their own testing skills. As a test target they offer E-Primer built by Alan Richardson. This was a truly fun session with everyone contributing a lot of ideas and finding issues together. I won't spoil things for you, just test it out yourself.
• "What are the limits of the Socratic method?" by Sasha. Originally, I wanted to take a break. I only went to the session's room because the coffee machine was located there - and then stayed for the conversation. It wasn't as philosophical as intended by Sasha and yet people gathered a lot of insights into where the Socratic method would not be appropriate and what other options we may choose instead, especially to help people learn. A key insight: people have to want to learn and for that get out of their comfort zones.
• "Public disclosure of vulnerabilities - to fear or to embrace?" by me. While it's not fully applicable yet, the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) has already put specific reporting obligations in place. They affect companies who put software products on the EU market that run on customer infrastructure. Those obligations include the public disclosure of exploitable vulnerabilities identified that made it to production. A lot of companies are still unaware of all the implications, may try to keep hiding their shortcomings, or even rather stop testing in order not to become aware of issues. On the bright side, the CRA finally serves as leverage to get our stuff in order and good practices applied. Like investing in our capability to deliver updates quickly and advising everyone what to do in case they have a vulnerable product version running.
• "Casual online testing hangout sessions". The facilitator wondered whether there would be interest in a remote space for the community to meet, hang out and learn together. The people coming to the session clearly confirmed that there is! While such online community spaces already exist, there can always be more that may attract different kinds of folks. The BREWT people were up for it and first steps already took place to make it happen. Loved the initiative people took! 
• "Small things - big impact" by Gabrijela Hladnik. What a great session full of valuable insights! Gabrijela asked people to share anything that makes a huge impact for them or others, in private or professional life. People showed up and contributed lots of little things that truly make a difference. We ended up with a whole compilation including classics like the Pacman rule for groups standing in circles to keep some space open for people to join the group with ease and waving your hands as silent applause instead of the rather overwhelming cacophony of clapping. People also brought ideas that were new to me, like activating auto-decline for focus time blockers in calendars (brilliant idea!), declining 30-minute meetings unless they are worth investing two hours for everything including preparation and follow-up, or expressing your energy freely so others can build on it.

After the conference closing, dinner was served. The food was nice and the evening full of insightful conversations and experience exchange. A small group around Elizabeth Zagroba, Joep Schuurkes, Sasha, Sanne Visser and her partner chose to extend the communing in a bar over a couple of more stories. A perfect ending for a great community conference!