There are still sponsorship opportunities available for CAST08, the annual conference of the Association for Software Testing.The AST is a non-profit professional association with a mission of advancing the understanding and practice of software testing through conferences, LAWSTâ„¢ style peer workshops, publications, training courses, web sites, and other services.
This is an exciting year for CAST. We are planning for 350 participants to join us this year at 89 Chestnut in Toronto, Canada. We’ve secured Gerald M. Weinberg, Cem Kaner, Robert Sabourin, and Brian Fish as keynote speakers related to the conference theme of Beyond the Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Software Testing. Pre-conference tutorials are being given by Jerry Weinberg, Scott Barber, Hung Nguyen, and Julian Harty. The rest of the program is equally impressive in terms of content and speaker quality. As an added bonus, Jerry has scheduled the official launch of his new book Perfect Software and Other Testing Myths to be at CAST. These are just some of the reasons that CAST attracts some of the most well known and influential testers, testing consultants, and trainers of testers from around the globe to attend as participants.
CAST’s Sponsorship and Exhibitor Programs include what you’d expect from a conference in our industry, but probably at a lower price than you might be used to. There are packages where promotional material is delivered to participants on your behalf, meal and artifact (participant backpacks, proceedings CDs, etc.) sponsorship opportunities, as well as exhibitor booth options. Additionally, this year we have added a “Vendors & Service Providers Only” track at the conference. This is where you get to come and discuss, demonstrate, answer questions about, and/or introduce your products and services to interested CAST participants. We do require vendors to follow the same 2/3, 1/3 rule that CAST mandates for all sessions, that is: You present for up to 2/3 of the total time slot, you leave at least 1/3 of the time for facilitated questions and answers. Last year we piloted this idea with 2 sessions. Participants *loved* that the vendors were presenting then sticking around to field hard questions and the vendors who presented reported that in addition to high quality leads and contacts, they gained significantly more valuable market information than they get as exhibitors or vendor-presenters at other conferences.
I hope you find all the information you need to decide what level of sponsorship is right for you in the link below, but if you do not find what you need, please do not hesitate to contact AST’s Executive Director and this year’s CAST Sponsorship Chairperson, Scott Barber at
executive.director@associationforsoftwaretesting.org
CAST 2008 Sponsorship and Exhibitor Program:
http://www.cast2008.org/sponsors