As part of the start of the PNSQC 2026 Call for Papers, we’re excited to invite the community to a full day of free, in-person workshops in Portland. Held the day after the PNSQC Quality Jam, this Free Workshop Day is designed to sharpen practical skills, spark new ideas, and bring the QA community together for hands-on learning and connection.

Join us for an interactive day led by experienced practitioners and thought leaders, featuring two workshop tracks with sessions offered in both the morning and afternoon. Whether you’re strengthening your core testing skills or exploring how AI is shaping modern quality practices, there’s something here for you.

Registration on the PNSQC website is required.

You can register for the full day, or choose only the workshop options that fit your schedule. Space is limited, so we encourage you to register early and help spread the word.

Morning Workshops (8:30 AM – 12:00 PM)

AI Orchestration: Dual Stewardship with John Cvetko. Explore how humans and AI can collaboratively manage quality, risk, and decision-making in modern systems. QA Re-Bootcamp with Heather Wilcox & Bhushan Gupta. Refresh foundational testing skills and examine modern quality practices through engaging, activity-based learning.

Afternoon Workshops (1:00 PM – 4:30 PM)

Integrate MCP into your workflow with Joe Petsche. We will work with a variety of MCP servers to connect your quality apps and find ways to do your job better and faster. Come with your apps and we will connect in to your scenarios too. Writing Practical Test Plans, Fast and Easy with Wayne Roseberry. This workshop teaches a pragmatic, lightweight approach to writing effective test plans—fast.

There will be morning refreshments, and we'll take a group lunch, giving you plenty of time to connect with fellow quality professionals throughout the day.

It’s time to kick off the 2026 Call for Papers with a Quality Jam! This will be an evening of lightning talks to inspire and be inspired for new proposals on software quality — a jam session to get together as a group and hear a variety of perspectives.

The speaker lineup for this year is:

"Testing the Future: From Testing Code to Testing Intelligence" with Premi Vinayagam from Jama software "The OWASP Top 10 Isn’t a Vulnerability List—It’s a Mirror: What 2025 Tells Us About Supply Chain Security" with Caroline Wong "Test Plans Made Easy: Saying a Lot By Saying Very Little" with Wayne Rosenberry "Data-Driven API Test Case Generation Using AI and Model Context Protocol" with Joseph Petsche "Formally Secure Hardware with Rust" with Calvin Deutschbein "Lessons Learned in AI Engineering" with Mitch White "Software Quality by Example as a Senior Engineer" with Mark Kleinhaus

Make a New Year's resolution to build your career by increasing your quality know-how and skills, and make some new connections with other software quality professionals.

The first hour will provide time for networking and a chance to share some food and drink.

This event is hybrid - we'll be returning to the University Place Hotel, and we'll also stream it online, all for free!

Lean methods in software development have progressed from conceptual understanding to practical techniques that people are using to solve problems and ship software today. The Lean toolkit augments or enhances the practices that are available to today's Agile practitioner. Lean expands the organizational scope of Agile and provides a rich and robust set of methods for process improvement.

Corey Ladas is a Lean Software Development consultant and practitioner who focuses on evolving local development processes through systematic self-organization and continuous improvement. He will discuss and demonstrate some of the techniques from his new book, Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development.

Pizza at 6:30pm, talk at 7pm, beer after. Pizza is sponsored by YesMail. As ever, we will follow the meeting with a chat and hang out at a local pub.

The presentation starts at 6:30.

Abstract:

What is your company’s culture? What is your org’s culture? What is your team’s culture? The three may be completely different, or have strong themes, but the point is that a culture exists with or without you. You don’t force a culture, you either invite or incite it to take on certain characteristics that are valued. For example, aspects such as learning, communication, and collaboration are three activities that may be rewarded on your team, but are they valued enough for the team to do it on their own? Culture is what an anthropologist sees if they observed you in action. Is it forced by another or is it organic? In this talk, Jon will share his thoughts and experiences about the cultures he has seen over the years and what you might take away to incite (and invite) in your culture when you get back to your desk.

Jon Bach from eBay

With almost 20 years of experience in software testing, Jon Bach has held technical and managerial positions at Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and eBay. His role as Director of Live Site Quality at eBay involves being on a team dedicated to building “end-to-end” tests (activity flows) to discover bugs on eBay’s sites that threaten its core business. Jon is most notable for being the brother of renowned testing expert James Bach, with whom he created Session-Based Test Management. He can usually be found wearing a ball cap, hanging out in conference hallways, talking about testing techniques and philosophy.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will complimentary hors d’oeuvres and beverages beginning at 5:30 pm. This is a great opportunity for networking and knowledge exchange with other practitioners on the current state of software development.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan by registering at: http://october-2014-spin-pnsqc.eventbrite.com

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

The 43rd Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference will be held October 13-15, 2025. The conference theme is "QI: Increase your Quality Intelligence" - many aspects of quality go beyond testing. Quality is relevant to design, manufacturing, code, applications, user experience, writing/prose, and many other areas that may not be obvious. We invite everyone to submit talks on a broad range of subjects and issue this challenge along with it: "What can I do to increase the overall quality intelligence of myself, my team, and the greater community?"

PNSQC 2025 is both an in-person and online event, even offering a FREE virtual track to watch our keynotes and invited speakers. Early bird pricing for our full conference lasts until September 15th!

Register online at: https://pnsqc.org/register

Tracks Include - Quality Engineering (Process & Methods, Tools & Technologies) - Management, Leadership, People & Enterprise IT Quality - AI and Emerging Technologies

Our industry learns from working with education, healthcare, manufacturing, government sectors, and more. What can those other industries learn from us? Come and find out at PNSQC 2025.