
Attention: Software Professionals Looking To Duplicate Proven Strategies Of Top Tier E2E Automation Testing Experts To Stay Ahead Of The Curve, Avoid Time-Consuming Mistakes, And Network W/ Peers From All Over The World.
Automation Guild '26
TestGuild's 10th Annual LIVE Online Event Dedicated To Helping You Achieve Better, Faster, More Reliable & Less Flaky Automation...And Succeed With All Your E2E Automation Testing Efforts
Get Notified When Registration Opens & Reserve Your Kickoff Discount!
What is the Automation Guild Event?
Automation Guild is a premium, industry-standard annual ONLINE event I’ve organized since 2017.
My goal? To create a community-driven event "made for the testers, by the testers" — laser focused to help them:
✓ Achieve faster, better, and more reliable automation
✓ Save time wasted on flaky tests
✓ Avoid little-known mistakes to accelerate your day-to-day
✓ Stay ahead of the curve
✓ Massively grow your network
✓ Upgrade (and widen) your skillset to gain a competitive edge in your career
✓ Open up more (and better) career opportunities
Each year, the event brings together real-world industry experts to present video training (+ Q&A) sessions, panel talks, workshop sessions, etc. covering the latest, most relevant, & cutting-edge E2E automation testing topics — all decided by TestGuild community votes.
Reach out for sponsorship opportunities (limited slots left)
More session topics will be added soon.
TRUSTED BY TESTERS, DEVELOPERS, QAs, AUTOMATION ENGRS., & TEAM MANAGERS FROM:

Automation Guild 2026: Sessions & Speakers
Note: Each training session (except roundtable/panel discussions) will be followed by a dedicated Q&A session with the expert speaker.
If you can't attend LIVE, submit your questions to me in advance and I'll ask the speaker on your behalf. If you can attend LIVE, you can always ask the expert exactly what you want to know around their topic.

Principal Software Quality Engineer
Anna Patterson
Day & TIME: TBD
Many testers feel stuck in their careers - doing daily work but not standing out, struggling to show their value, or unsure how to grow into leadership roles.
In this session, Anna will use her own career journey - from starting as a freelance tester to becoming a Principal Test Engineer, mentor, and speaker - to show attendees how to break out of the status quo.
She will share practical techniques that helped her take ownership of her career and build a lasting professional brand, so testers can apply them to accelerate their own growth.

Testing Specialist
Rahul Parwal
Day & TIME: TBD
Gen AI is a general purpose technology. For testers, context is the king. If context is not engineered well, AI will continue to produce shallow and general results, regardless of how carefully we craft our prompts.
In this talk, we will dive into the practical aspects of context engineering and how it can improve your overall AI assistance.

Senior QA Engineer
Khawla Benbennasser
Day & TIME: TBD
Many QA teams struggle with test automation adoption. Either their automation isn’t scalable, their test suites become brittle, or they can’t influence the wider team to trust and use the results.
This session will tackle how to build automation that scales with the product and culture, not against it.

Senior Director of Product Management
Andrew Knight
Day & TIME: TBD
Everyone knows the Testing Pyramid. It’s been a universal model for testing strategies for nearly two decades. To question the wisdom of the ancients is controversial but necessary. Times have changed, and so has test automation.
New tools like Playwright and Cypress challenge past norms. Smarter ways to cover APIs cut out middle management. If we as an industry carefully consider alternatives, then we will see that all tests are good because they mitigate different risks and that one size structure does not fit all teams.
This session will help you build a more modern, relevant way of planning your tests.

Senior Software Engineer
Chris Sellek
Day & TIME: TBD
LLMs are new and LLMs are scary. The entire way that humanity has built, tested, and shipped software has (seemingly) been flipped on its head with the introduction of LLMs and Generative AI. So how are we supposed to test these things??
This talk seeks to de-magic-ify LLMs and the apps that will be built utilizing this new crazy tech and show that testing these things is not really all that different from what we've all been doing our entire careers.

QA Leader
Sarah Hutchins
Day & TIME: TBD
It is easy to just say "test all the things", but as we all know, that rather quickly becomes unmaintainable. So how do you start from the beginning with a "worth the cost" approach and change over time to continue covering an ever changing product?
This session will give you the techniques for creating strategies and evolving to challenges faced.

QA Automation Advocate
Alan Voigt
Day & TIME: TBD
Many teams are stuck with outdated or brittle automation strategies that don’t scale, can’t prove ROI, and crumble under tool transitions (e.g., migrating to Playwright).
This session will tackle how to reboot automation with modern, stable, and ROI-driven practices.

Engineering Executive
Priyanka Halder
Day & TIME: TBD
Practical, governed AI is no longer optional—it’s the only scalable way to keep quality high while moving faster.
But teams who “AI everything,” burn resources without a ruthless ROI model.
This session delivers the playbook and proof to do it safely in 90 days.

Test Automation Architect
Larry Goddard
Day & TIME: TBD
For many years QA / Business Analysts have had to shift through lots of high level documents and identify the business requirements and extract the acceptance criteria.
This sessions aims to teach how to generate test cases from high level documentation in multiple formats.

Senior Consultant
Maria Shalnova-Weinzierl
Day & TIME: TBD
In agile projects in particular, it is very important to assess software quality as early as possible.
This session aims to lay out all the best practices for API Testing.

Alejandro Molina
Day & TIME: TBD
Many people who know Selenium or Cypress are encouraged to learn Playwright. We sometimes hear that the best way to learn is to just do it.
Why not have Claude Code right there with you in VS Code helping you learn as you experiment?
It's a pair programmer with you 24/7 as you learn.
Alejandro used it to learn Playwright while also trying the Pop-Up Challenge at candymapper.com.
This session will show you how to use Claude Code as a way to learn new frameworks that feels less daunting.

Quality Assurance Director
Karime Salomon
Day & TIME: TBD
Every QA team is interested in AI but often don’t know how to start or apply it in daily work.
This session focuses on turning that curiosity into simple, repeatable habits that teams can actually use.

Quality Leader
Elias Pardo
Day & TIME: TBD
AI outputs are unpredictable and context-sensitive, so standard testing practices don’t always apply.
Many teams don’t know where to begin, which leads to overlooked issues and unexpected behavior in production.
By sharing lessons from a small-scale project, this talk highlights approaches that anyone can try to start testing AI features responsibly.

QA Engineer
Judy Mosley
Day & TIME: TBD
Many times, QA professionals know they need to learn automation. Yet, taking the first steps to start can feel overwhelming.
Which framework should I choose? What should I automate? How do I know I'm doing it "right"?
Having direction is crucial in these first steps. Knowing where to go and what steps to take can be so helpful when starting in automation.
This session will break down actionable steps that will be helpful in learning how to created automated tests on the job.

Sr Engng Mgr, Perf., Resiliency & DevSecOps
Sravanthi Naga
Day & TIME: TBD
In this session, you'll learn how to:
‣ Understand new resilience and performance challenges in MCP-based AI systems.
‣ Learn to integrate AI-assisted observability into traditional load-testing pipelines.
‣ Design adaptive tests that evolve with workload behavior and context drift.
‣ Use open-source telemetry stacks to detect regressions automatically.
‣ Build a continuous-resilience framework for cloud-native, AI-driven platforms.

Vice President
Toni Ramchandani
Day & TIME: TBD
Release cadence outpaces hand-authored tests; dynamic UIs and headers change faster than scripts.
Traditional frameworks don’t reason, use tools, or self-correct;
GenAI alone doesn’t close the loop.
Security and quality signals are fragmented (browser, network, policy); no autonomous layer connects them.
Teams need operational AI—LLM agents that run workflows (not just generate snippets).
Net: Without agentic patterns (Sense→Plan→Act→Reflect + Memory/Tools), AI remains a helper, not a testing co-worker.

Senior Product Manager
Abhinav Premsekhar
Day & TIME: TBD
Performance testing provides a complex set of challenges dealing with requirements like scalability, reliability, and speed under varying loads.
Effectively managing these dimensions require you to have deep knowledge of frameworks and provide a large number of inputs to setup and run load tests.
The performance metric outputs are complex and difficult for teams to analyse. This entire process is expensive and time-consuming.
This session will teach you how to use AI to quickly create load tests and analyse test results and get recommendations on how to fix performance bottlenecks in your applications.

Senior QA Expert
Umanga Buddhini
Day & TIME: TBD
Most automation engineers and QA leads struggle to clearly demonstrate the business value of their automation efforts.
When leadership asks, “What’s the ROI of your automation?” the answer often feels vague or purely technical.
This session solves that by giving attendees a practical, repeatable way to calculate, communicate, and prove the ROI of their automation — in terms that win executive trust and investment.

Software Engineer
Paul Turchinetz
Day & TIME: TBD
By using principles from Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people” - this session will teach testers in guiding their organizations to adopt the right mindset about the value of test automation by walking them through common situations and arguments.

Microsoft MVP & Sr. Front-end Developer
Bob Fornal
Day & TIME: TBD
There are times when simple Manual Testing and Smoke Testing isn’t enough.
When you are deploying 8-10 sites with hundreds of pages each, manual testing can allow you to check a dozen pages or so. Smoke Testing covers the critical paths.
This session will help you reduce the pressure of manual validation post-deployment.

Senior SDET
David Ingraham
Day & TIME: TBD
Many teams build large automation suites without a roadmap, leading to flakiness, slow feedback, and unclear value.
Leaders struggle to prove the ROI of automation or decide what to prioritize next. Testers often focus only on adding more tests instead of improving stability, speed, or business impact.
Without a maturity model, teams lack a shared language to assess progress and align on growth goals.
This session will give teams a maturity framework -- create a shared roadmap: a way to assess current state, identify gaps, and prioritize improvements that align automation with business goals.

Testing Advocate
Federico Toledo
Day & TIME: TBD
Most testing initiatives fail not because the solution is wrong, but because the business problem wasn’t framed—or sold—correctly.
In this talk, Federico will show how to connect the dots from messy business challenges to clear quality engineering outcomes that stakeholders actually support.

Chief Storyteller
Jon Robinson
Day & TIME: TBD
A lot of people don't know how to create an effective test strategy (or even that they need to) and often resort to only doing the bare minimum or trying to shoehorn their needs into the tools they have available.
This hands-on workshop session will show how to effectively use AI to create effective and efficient test strategies that work.

Gaurav Khurana
Day & TIME: TBD
Universal frustration: Every automation engineer has once said "But it works on my machine!" When tests fail unpredictably in CI, teams lose confidence in their automation.
Many test automation engineers excel at writing tests but lack deep knowledge of CI environments, containerization, and infrastructure differences.
This session aims to solve that problem.

QA Manager
Shyamal Raju
Day & TIME: TBD
Test frameworks don’t adapt when applications change. Even small UI updates can cause tests to break, leaving teams stuck spending too much time on fixes.
Self-healing, including AI-assisted approaches, helps shift the balance back toward writing useful tests instead of endlessly repairing them.
This session will explain how to make your tests more resilient by adding AI-assisted self-healing into your frameworks, with practical steps you can build on.
Meet Your Host & Co-host
Joe Colantonio
Founder of TestGuild & Guild conferences
Hi. I’m Joe Colantonio, founder of TestGuild - a dedicated resource of actionable & real-world technical advice (Blog, Video Tutorials, Podcasts, and Online Guild Conferences) to help improve your automation, performance, and security testing efforts.
TRUSTED BY MEMBERS EMPLOYED BY:



Chris Trimper
Enterprise QA Automation Architect
Chris has been involved in software testing for over 16 years, dedicating most of that time to adding efficiencies in the testing process through functional test automation. He is currently the Test Automation Architect for his QA team at Independent Health, leveraging various tools and techniques for functional automation and performance testing. He has had the opportunity to speak at various conferences on software testing and monitoring aspects. Over the past few years, he has begun to adopt forms of Al in the toolbox of efficiencies in testing.
Get Notified When Registration Opens & Reserve Your Kickoff Discount!










“
A must-attend event for all testing professionals.
You get all the best practices and innovative techniques in a concise manner.
George Ukkuru
Head of Quality Eng. UST
“
Although early in my automation career, Automation Guild provided me a plethora of information, resources, and education that was well worth the price of admission.
Mike Clark
QA Engineering Manager
“
4th year attending the Automation Guild conference and its value and content keeps getting better. Huge thanks to Joe for putting on such a great event.
Stuart Noble
Test Manager
“
I enjoyed the Automation Guild, made a stack of notes, then implemented nearly code-less automation in just 90 days!
Nick Baynham
Automation Architect
“
I've enjoyed attending these conferences since the beginning. It's very informative. I learn about industries I haven't worked in yet, new tools, and I get to connect with others. Together, we have a wealth of knowledge! It's great to be able to share ideas. And I always look forward to using what I learned.
Annette S.
Test Automation Architect
“
The community is just amazing!
The conversations and interactions with both participants and other speakers are stellar!
Being an online conference, it still manages to feel "closer" than many in-person dittos.
Simon Aronsson
Head of Developer Relations
“
As always, an awesome event! A superabundance of testing goodness.
Even before the conference had ended, the team was already chasing new ideas, refining existing practices and getting colleagues excited about new possibilities.
Validation of current practices and plans is always a tremendous win and Automation Guild weighs in massively in this regard.
Our plans are solid and aligned with those of our peers around the globe; the future is bright indeed!
What could be more awesome than that?
Mike Taber
Test Architect
“
I gained critical insights into the tools and techniques that industry practitioners use, the strategies that businesses consider when building an automation strategy, and the industry's latest automation trends.
I didn't expect an e-conference to be so well organized...and how welcoming the community that Joe and Team have built was. You also retain access to all conference materials even after the event.
Perhaps even more valuable is the opportunity to be part of an inclusive and supportive community of knowledgeable folks that you can tap into as a resource as you develop your career. Automation Guild sets the bar high!
Felix Lee
Test Lead
“
I joined the Automation Guild conference 4 times already. I always enjoy it.
You meet a lot of people who work in the same fields with you or related. And they give so many thoughts and brilliant ideas.
I feel very happy this time each year.
And I'm always looking forward to see what we will have next year ;)
Michelle Xie
Automation Tester
Reach out for sponsorship opportunities (limited slots left)
Get Only Real-World, Practical, Actionable Info
Discover key insights, proven strategies, core principles, and actionable techniques that'll make a REAL difference in your automation efforts - fast!
Have Everything At Your Fingertips
Watch every single session you couldn't attend LIVE - at your own pace - based on your current priorities, goals, and interests.
Get 24/7 Community Help & Support of 2600+ Testers
Find quick solutions, get important feedback, discover new ideas, get career help & strategy advice, explore networking opportunities, etc.
Get Notified When Registration Opens & Reserve Your Kickoff Discount!
Here's Some More Attendee Feedback About Automation Guild
“
Automation Guild brings us a lot of news in testing and test automation field every year.
It is more than a conference; it is a community where you can motivate yourself.
As a long-term follower I really appreciate Joe’s work for the community and test automation topic. Cheers!
Maros Dzuris
Sr. Test Automation Engineer
“
A fantastic event! Better than any conference I've been to.
What a great way to stay up to date on tech related to all things automation awesomeness!
I got so many things to take back and implement :)
Jesse Gregory
QA Automation Engineer
“
Automation Guild 2022 was awesome! I learned a lot and there were many takeaways to implement in practice.
I loved the Q&As (the quality of the questions was very high)...and also the fact that I get lifetime access to all the video sessions because it was lot of info. Many sessions are worth rewatching.
Mark Cole
Application Software Tester
“
Automation Guild was an amazing experience for me. It was a wealth of knowledge being shared. Everyone was supportive.
I definitely learned a lot and it showed me a wide range of techniques that can be applied to make testing better.
One of THE best conferences I have attended. From the content to the community interaction - AMAZING!
Julia Pottinger
Training & Development Manager
“
Automation Guild is timely, practical, and community led.
Unlike in other conferences, the talks favor demos and techniques over abstract philosophies and marketing.
I would highly recommend Automation Guild as a great way to learn new things and network with other testing professionals.
Nicole Van Der Hoeven
Developer Advocate (Perf. Testing)
“
I've been doing testing automation for 21 years and I really enjoyed the Automation Guild.
I really like that I got back into latest industry trends. The conference was really well organized and there was a wide variety of applicable topics.
I'm also really enjoying the Slack community and the ability to communicate with test automation experts from all around the world, year-round.
Overall, I found that Automation Guild was really great and I have a lot of ideas that I can apply to my work.
Michelle Pleas
Principal Test Engineer
“
You think you know everything, and then you find our you really do know just a small part of the equation.
Having testers in the Slack channel giving ideas and pointers has helped me immensely in expanding my range of knowledge and acceptance of tools that can make the wheels turn even better.
Charlie Harris
Senior Quality Assurance Manager
Get Notified When Registration Opens & Reserve Your Kickoff Discount!
Reach out for sponsorship opportunities (limited slots left)
























