Take advantage of the lowest conference rates before prices increase.

Register for PNSQC 2026

Whether you come for the technical talks, practical insights, community discussions, or hallway conversations with people who truly understand software quality, PNSQC is built for practitioners by practitioners.

Join us for another year of thoughtful conversations, real-world experience, and a community that has been advancing software quality for more than four decades.

Keynotes free to stream: Not ready to commit? Register for free access to the keynote track and decide later.

Attention High School Students: Registration is Open for the 2026 PNSQC STEM Fair!

Do you love robotics, AI, cybersecurity, coding, or game development? Want to show off something you built and meet other students who are passionate about technology?

Join us for the 2026 PNSQC STEM Fair!

Hosted by PNSQC, the STEM Fair gives high school students in the Portland area the opportunity to share projects, explore technology, and connect with industry professionals in a fun and welcoming environment.

Main Events

🤖 Robotics Team Competition
Build a robot and make it dance! Teams will compete on creativity, choreography, technical execution, and entertainment.

🧠 AI & Software Project Exposition
Set up a science-fair style booth to demo your project — whether it’s an AI model, cybersecurity tool, game, app, or another technology project.

What to Expect

• Inspiring keynote speakers from the tech industry

• Student project booths and live demos

• Sponsor and technology booths

• Interactive activities and hands-on experiences

• Awards and closing celebration

At PNSQC, we believe students learn best when they have the freedom to explore, create, and share what they’ve built. The STEM Fair is designed to encourage curiosity, creativity, and future careers in technology.

Register your team or project today:
https://pnsqc.org/stem-fair/

PNSQC 2026 Poster Paper Program

Have an idea, experiment, project, or question related to software quality? Present it at the 44th Annual Pacific NW Software Quality Conference.

PNSQC’s Poster Paper Program is designed for practitioners, students, researchers, and emerging speakers who want to share exploratory or in-progress work in a professional conference setting, no formal paper required.

Accepted poster authors receive:

• 50% off conference registration

• Reviewer feedback before the conference

• Publication credit in the conference proceedings

• Direct access to software quality professionals and hiring managers

Topics can include AI, automation, testing, cybersecurity, tooling, lessons learned, research, and more.

📅 Deadline: September 22, 2026
Submit your proposal:
https://pnsqc.org/conference/2026/poster/

May Meetup: From the PMI Floor - an honest conversation on AI

Join us for the PNSQC May Meetup on Tuesday, May 26, for an honest and timely conversation about AI, project management, and software quality.

This month’s discussion, “From the PMI Conference Floor: What the PM World Is Saying About Quality, AI, and Getting Work Done Right,” will be led by Jahzeel Ormeño, Founder and Principal Consultant at SimplexityPM. Fresh from the PMI Portland Annual Conference, Jahzeel will share insights into what project managers are really discussing around AI adoption, delivery challenges, and the practices that quietly improve quality before issues ever reach production.

Whether you work in QA, testing, development, leadership, or project management, this hybrid meetup is a chance to compare notes, exchange ideas, and continue the broader industry conversation around AI and delivery teams.

Join us in person at Steeplejack Brewing in Portland or online from anywhere.

📅 Tuesday, May 26 · 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM PDT

We hope to see you there!

Register here:

• Meetup

• Luma

PNSQC June Meetup: Tech Talk Team Up with Portland AWS User Groupune Meetup

PNSQC is teaming up with the Portland AWS User Group for our June Meetup at ProFocus Headquarters!

Join us for an evening of networking and technical learning with cloud, security, and quality professionals from across the region.

🎤 This month’s talk:

Trevor Gudeman, Senior Software Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, will explore how AWS-native tools like CodeBuild and CodePipeline can improve code quality across CI/CD workflows through automated linting, testing, security scanning, quality gates, and more.

📅 Monday, June 15

🕠 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM PDT

📍 Hybrid event: attend in Portland or online

RSVP through Meetup and join us!

Subscribe now

In 2012, I heard about PNSQC. I hadn’t presented much at conferences and wanted the experience, so I submitted a paper. Luckily, they accepted me.

I got the t-shirt. And I met my paper reviewer, John Burley. We’re still in touch today.

After the conference, I agreed to volunteer. The deal was simple: spread the word about PNSQC. That was my promise in exchange for the shirt. I started posting about the conference on social media and, somewhere along the way, became the de facto social media chair. Then I was an invited speaker, and later invited onto the board. Then I became program chair. Now I’m president.

My friend Moss Drake has been around even longer. He has 15 to 20 PNSQC t-shirts, one from each year, and he wears them with pride. That’s what this conference does to people. It pulls them in and keeps them. Not because of prestige or polish, but because of something harder to name.

I’ve been thinking about that lately. About what it actually is.

I think about it when I think about poster papers. Because the person I was in 2012, nervous, not sure I belonged, hoping my paper was good enough, that’s exactly who this program is designed for. Not just students or first-timers. Anyone who has something worth saying and isn’t quite sure yet how to say it from a stage.

That’s what Poster papers are about.

We’ve had them for years. Some years four. Some years eight. We never pushed them hard. We never put them on the front page or sent a dedicated campaign or wrote about why they exist. They just kept happening, year after year, tucked into the evening networking session, a few people standing next to their work, talking to whoever stopped.

I started thinking recently about why that is. Why something so lightly promoted keeps coming back.

The answer, I think, is that poster papers solve a problem most conferences don’t admit they have.

Most conferences have traditionally offered one way in. You write an abstract and submit it. You get accepted, or you don’t. If you get in, you give a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation at a podium to a room full of people. Then questions. Then done.

But some of the most interesting thinking in software quality doesn’t arrive fully formed. It arrives as a hunch, an experiment, a failure worth understanding, a question that’s been nagging at a team for six months. It arrives in the middle of the work, not at the end.

Poster papers were built for that.

You don’t write a paper or do a formal PowerPoint presentation. You create a visual poster board presentation of an idea, an experiment, a lesson, or a question. You stand with it during the evening session. People stop. They ask things. You answer. The conversation goes somewhere neither of you expected, taking you and your ideas forward. That’s the whole point.

Here’s something I don’t say often enough.

PNSQC is one of the only practitioner software quality conferences in the world that does this.

Academic conferences have had poster sessions for decades. It’s standard practice in academia because researchers understand that knowledge is built incrementally, that half-formed ideas deserve airtime, and that the conversation around a poster is valuable in getting feedback on your ideas.

The practitioner and professional conference world has never followed. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because it’s harder to put on a schedule. Maybe because nobody thought their audience wanted it.

We thought our audience wanted it. And we were right.

PNSQC is a nonprofit. We don’t have a commercial agenda shaping the program. Our peer-review process, which makes us the only peer-reviewed software quality conference in the United States, means we’re accountable to the quality of ideas, not how many people go to a sponsor’s booth. That independence is why we built something like poster papers and kept running it even when the numbers were small.

The poster papers enable PNSQC to push and pull content in both directions. Our peer-review process holds technical content to genuine academic scrutiny. That’s a high bar, and it’s intentional. But the same conference that publishes peer-reviewed proceedings also makes room for the experienced practitioner with an idea worth discussing, the student with a capstone project, the emerging speaker who wants to present to a few people before a room of 150, and the researcher with something incomplete but worth putting in front of a real audience. Both exist for the same reason: this community takes ideas seriously, wherever they come from and however complete they are.

The people who tend to find poster papers most useful are not one type. Some are experienced practitioners who did something interesting at work and have a lesson worth sharing, but no appetite for writing a formal paper. Some are explorers with a half-formed idea they want to road-test before committing to it. Some are emerging speakers who want to present to a few people at a time before standing in front of a room of 150. And some are students, with capstone projects or thesis research, or just a question they have been turning over that deserves a real audience. None of those is a lesser contribution. They are just different ones.

This year’s conference theme is Quality in the Age of Autonomy.

I’ve been thinking about what that phrase actually means for a community of people who spend their careers caring about whether software works. AI is changing the shape of work. Automation is handling more of the routine. What matters more now is judgment, interpretation, and the kind of exploratory thinking that doesn’t fit into a test case or a metrics dashboard.

That’s exactly what poster papers are for.

Not the finished result. The thinking in progress. The experiment you ran didn’t go the way you expected. The question you can’t answer yet, but can’t stop asking. The idea you want to put in front of people who will ask hard questions to make it better.

When the tools are getting faster, and the outputs are getting smoother, there’s something worth protecting about the messy human process of figuring things out together. A poster session is one of the few places in professional life where you can show up with something incomplete and have that be exactly the right thing to do.

I’ve watched a lot of poster sessions at PNSQC over the years. Some of the best conversations I’ve had at this conference have happened while standing next to someone’s poster board, a drink in hand, in deep discussion.

One presenter from a few years back told me their poster started as something they weren’t sure was worth sharing. The conversations at the session convinced them it was. The following year, they gave an invited talk based on what they’d learned from those twenty minutes next to an easel.

That’s what this program is for. That’s what this community is for.

I joined PNSQC for a free t-shirt. John Burley is still in my network. Moss is still collecting shirts. And I’m still here, trying to build the kind of conference that pulls people in and gives them a reason to stay.

That starts with making room for everyone who has something worth saying.

Not every great idea needs a 45-minute talk.

Some of the best conversations at PNSQC happen around a poster, a drink, and a question nobody has fully answered yet.

Poster papers are interactive, informal, and perfect for:
• work-in-progress ideas
• lessons learned
• AI/testing experiments
• student projects
• first-time presenters
• questions you’re still exploring

No formal paper required, just an interesting idea and a willingness to talk about it.

Accepted poster authors receive 50% off conference registration.

📅 Proposal deadline: September 22, 2026

Submit your proposal: https://pnsqc.org/conference/2026/poster

If you have something worth discussing, you belong here.

Meet Our Gold Sponsor: Keysight Eggplant

We’re excited to introduce our Gold Sponsor, Keysight Eggplant!

Keysight Eggplant provides AI-driven software test automation, performance testing, and monitoring to help enterprise teams validate real user journeys, improve quality, and release faster with greater confidence.

Modern software testing is fragmented, and traditional automation tools often struggle outside the browser. Eggplant helps teams test across web, desktop, mobile, Citrix, VDI, and cloud environments validating applications the way real users actually experience them.

🎮 See Keysight Eggplant in action with their interactive demo:
https://play.goconsensus.com/s3bb8dc1e

PNSQChronicles: Audacious Joy With Anne-Louise Sterry

New episode of PNSQChronicles is live!

“What if the secret to better software and a better life starts with joy?”

Michael Larsen sits down with internationally acclaimed performer and speaker Anne-Louise Sterry for a conversation about creativity, mindset, and bringing more humanity into tech.

In this episode:

• Why joy is a skill you can develop

• How creativity improves technical thinking

• Breaking routine to unlock your “creative engine”

• Bringing humor, energy, and connection into your work

Anne-Louise has inspired more than 400,000 people worldwide through her unique blend of storytelling, psychology, and music-driven keynote experiences.

🎧 Listen now on PNSQChronicles
🎤 And see Anne-Louise live at PNSQC 2026

May Meetup: From the PMI Floor - an honest conversation on AI

Join us for the PNSQC May Meetup on Tuesday, May 26, for an honest and timely conversation about AI, project management, and software quality.

This month’s discussion, “From the PMI Conference Floor: What the PM World Is Saying About Quality, AI, and Getting Work Done Right,” will be led by Jahzeel Ormeño, Founder and Principal Consultant at SimplexityPM. Fresh from the PMI Portland Annual Conference, Jahzeel will share insights into what project managers are really discussing around AI adoption, delivery challenges, and the practices that quietly improve quality before issues ever reach production.

Whether you work in QA, testing, development, leadership, or project management, this hybrid meetup is a chance to compare notes, exchange ideas, and continue the broader industry conversation around AI and delivery teams.

Join us in person at Steeplejack Brewing in Portland or online from anywhere.

📅 Tuesday, May 26 · 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM PDT

We hope to see you there!

Register here:

• Meetup

• Luma

PNSQC June Meetup: Tech Talk Team Up with Portland AWS User Group

PNSQC is teaming up with the Portland AWS User Group for our June Meetup at ProFocus Headquarters!

Join us for an evening of networking and technical learning with cloud, security, and quality professionals from across the region.

🎤 This month’s talk:
Trevor Gudeman, Senior Software Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, will explore how AWS-native tools like CodeBuild and CodePipeline can improve code quality across CI/CD workflows through automated linting, testing, security scanning, quality gates, and more.

📅 Monday, June 15
🕠 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM PDT
📍 Hybrid event: attend in Portland or online
RSVP through Meetup and join us!

Subscribe now

Join us October 12–14 in Portland, Oregon, for three days of technical talks, hands-on workshops, networking, and conversations with software quality professionals from across the industry. Whether you attend in person or virtually, PNSQC 2026 offers practical insights, emerging ideas, and real-world experiences from leaders in software quality, testing, AI, engineering, and beyond.

Take advantage of Super Early Bird pricing now available for in-person registrations, along with group, student, and Oregon resident discounts. Virtual attendance options are also available, including live-streamed sessions and on-demand access.

We can’t wait to welcome the community back to Portland for another year of learning, sharing, and connecting. Secure your spot today!

https://pnsqc.org/register/

The Call for Proposals for PNSQC 2026 is officially closed

We want to thank everyone who submitted a talk, workshop, paper, poster, or idea for this year’s conference.

We received an incredible number of proposals covering a wide range of topics across software quality, testing, AI, leadership, engineering practices, and emerging technologies. The program committee is now hard at work reviewing submissions and building this year’s program.

The hardest part is choosing because there are so many strong proposals. We’re grateful for the time, expertise, and creativity our community brings to PNSQC every year, and we can’t wait to share the final lineup with you soon.

PNSQC & PLUS QA: Celebrating a Long-Standing Partnership

PNSQC is proud to recognize PLUS QA as a longtime supporter and sponsor of our community.

Based in Portland, PLUS QA has been delivering 100% onshore software testing services since 2008. Their team of more than 70 U.S.-based analysts supports organizations with functionality, compatibility, accessibility, automation, and e-commerce testing across a wide variety of platforms and products.

With an in-house library of 600+ real devices and experience working with startups, digital agencies, and enterprise teams, PLUS QA helps companies scale quality efforts to meet evolving project demands.

PLUS QA has supported PNSQC for years, and we’re grateful for their continued partnership and commitment to the software quality community.

May Meetup: From the PMI Floor - an honest conversation on AI

Join us for the PNSQC May Meetup on Tuesday, May 26, for an honest and timely conversation about AI, project management, and software quality.

This month’s discussion, “From the PMI Conference Floor: What the PM World Is Saying About Quality, AI, and Getting Work Done Right,” will be led by Jahzeel Ormeño, Founder and Principal Consultant at SimplexityPM. Fresh from the PMI Portland Annual Conference, Jahzeel will share insights into what project managers are really discussing around AI adoption, delivery challenges, and the practices that quietly improve quality before issues ever reach production.

Whether you work in QA, testing, development, leadership, or project management, this hybrid meetup is a chance to compare notes, exchange ideas, and continue the broader industry conversation around AI and delivery teams.

Join us in person at Steeplejack Brewing in Portland or online from anywhere. Networking begins at 6:00 PM PDT, followed by the discussion at 6:30 PM.

We hope to see you there!

Register here:

• Meetup

• Luma

Subscribe now

You don’t need a finished paper to speak at PNSQC. You just need an idea

Submission deadline: May 4, 2025

Have you solved a tricky quality problem at work? Navigated a painful failure and come out with hard-won lessons? For more than 40 years, PNSQC has been the place where practitioners share those experiences. We’re accepting paper proposals for this year’s conference, and we’d love to hear from you.

How it works

Getting started is low-effort: submit a title and 3–4 sentences describing your idea. If your proposal is accepted, PNSQC will work with you to develop it into a short whitepaper. Accepted papers are peer-reviewed and published in our annual proceedings — a lasting contribution to the software quality profession.

Unlike many conferences, PNSQC papers are peer-reviewed and published in our annual proceedings, contributing to the body of knowledge for the software quality profession.

Who should submit

If you’ve never presented at a conference before, this is a great place to start. PNSQC actively encourages first-time authors, and the paper development process means you won’t be doing it alone.

Meetup recap — April 2025

AI-augmented manual testing: how PLUS QA built MaxAI without disrupting their team

Presented by Ryan Wilder (VP) and Gianni Zamora (Lead Dev) at PLUS QA, Southeast Portland

At our April meetup, Ryan Wilder (VP of Operations) and Gianni Zamora (Software Engineer) from PLUS QA walked us through MaxAI — an in-house tool they built to amplify manual testing without disrupting the way their team already works.

The core philosophy: don’t add another tool to the pile. PLUS QA works with many external clients simultaneously, each with different systems and timelines, sometimes starting testing on a Monday with a Friday go-live. Their answer was to embed AI directly into their existing Test Platform, so testers “come home to PLUS QA” to a familiar, consistent workflow no matter the chaos of the client project.

MaxAI handles the work that doesn’t require human expertise, checking broken links, page titles, image loading, DOM-level issues, freeing testers to focus on the nuanced, experiential testing that AI can’t do. Bugs are filed as drafts first, invisible to clients until a human expert reviews and approves them. As Ryan put it: “Max is our sous chef. We still need a MasterChef to make sure the plate is ready before it goes to the client.”

The tool uses domain-restricted crawling to avoid going off the rails on dynamic pages, GPT-4o for image interpretation, and passes screenshot + selector + DOM snippet as context to improve accuracy. Test cases are exported in a fully editable state, a rough draft, not a final product, so PMs can refine them just as they would anything written manually.

The Q&A surfaced some rich territory: domain knowledge and HIPAA-style rules, localization testing, testing for AI agents as end users, and how to handle the fact that correctness in QA is often subjective. On that last point, Ryan’s take was clear, human experts make the final call, because at least you can ask them why.

On the roadmap: deeper accessibility testing (Ryan was candid that the experiential side, does it feel “scratchy” or “nice” to use a screen reader on this page, is far beyond what AI can assess today), desktop application support via Playwright, and potentially continuous monitoring for clients.

Missed it? The recording will be available on our YouTube channel soon.

Subscribe now

Deadline Extended: Call for Proposals Now Open Until May 4!

The PNSQC-2026 Call for Proposals deadline has been extended to May 4, 2026.

This is your chance to share insights on software quality in the age of autonomy—where AI, automation, and trust redefine how we build and validate systems.

We invite practitioners, engineers, researchers, and leaders to submit and contribute to a community that has advanced software quality for over 40 years.

📅 New deadline: May 4, 2026 — don’t miss it.

Submit here: https://pnsqc.org/cfp/

New Episode of PNSQChronicles – S3E3

Better Together: Humans, AI, and the Next Quality Benchmark

What if the future of testing isn’t humans vs AI… but humans + AI?
In the latest PNSQChronicles, Maaret Pyhäjärvi shares why:
• Creativity is a tester’s hidden advantage
• Exploratory testing matters more than ever
• Better questions → better AI outcomes

The next quality benchmark belongs to those who collaborate with AI.
If this topic resonates, don’t miss PNSQC 2026 in Portland, October 14–16.

📅 TODAY! April Meetup: AI-Augmented Manual Testing (with PLUS QA)

Learn how AI is being integrated into real-world manual testing workflows enhancing human expertise.

Hosted by PLUS QA, this session features:

• Ryan Wilder (VP, PLUS QA)

• Gianni Zamora (Lead Dev, PLUS QA)

Expect a live demo + discussion on integrating AI into QA tools, refining workflows, and amplifying human expertise.

🗓 Wednesday, April 22 · 6:00–8:00 PM PDT

📍 Portland, OR + Online (Hybrid)

RSVP:

• meetup.com

• luma.com

Subscribe now

New Episode of PNSQChronicles – S3E2

Inside Tesla: The Software-Defined Vehicle (feat. Florian Rohde)

In this episode, Michael Larsen talks with Florian Rohde about the shift to software-driven cars, why features come pre-installed but locked, how over-the-air updates change ownership, and what this means for drivers and the future of mobility.

From Tesla insights to the broader impact on product lifecycle and customer experience, this conversation challenges what it really means to “own” a car.

🎧 Don’t miss Florian’s full talk at PNSQC 2026.

Thinking About Writing a PNSQC Paper?

If you work in software quality or testing, consider submitting a paper to PNSQC. It may feel challenging at first, but it’s a great way to reflect on your experience, structure your knowledge, and share something meaningful with the community.

Watch this short video for inspiration:

Don’t wait too long—the deadline is approaching (April 20)!

https://pnsqc.org/cfp/

Got a Topic? Start with a Meetup

If you don’t have a full conference talk or your idea is better suited for a shorter, more focused format, consider presenting at one of our meetups. It’s a great opportunity to share your insights, try out new topics, and engage with the community in a more informal setting.

Interested? Tell us about your topic and contact us at program@pnsqc.org. We’d love to hear from you and help bring your ideas to the community.

📅 Upcoming Events

April Meetup: AI-Augmented Manual Testing (with PLUS QA)

🗓 Wednesday, April 22 · 6:00–8:00 PM PDT
📍 Portland, OR + Online (Hybrid)

Hosted by PLUS QA, this session features:

• Ryan Wilder (VP, PLUS QA)

• Gianni Zamora (Lead Dev, PLUS QA)

Learn how AI is being integrated into real-world manual testing workflows enhancing human expertise.

RSVP:

• meetup.com

• luma.com

Subscribe now

PNSQC Wants Your Paper

If you are The Visionary

The age of autonomy is here, and the quality community needs your vision to help shape it. If you have bold ideas and groundbreaking perspectives on what quality means in a world driven by AI and automation, now is the time to share them. Submit your paper and let your voice lead the way.

If You Eat, Sleep & Breathe Tech

PNSQC 2026 featured track: “Architecting Autonomy: Tools, Agents, and the Future of Productivity.”

Submit your papers on self-healing CI/CD, multi-agent orchestration, and intelligent tooling. Skip the theory, bring the lessons learned, tradeoffs made, and outcomes we can all apply.

If you are the Engineer Who Lead from the Front

Share your real-world experience in:

• Quality Engineering & Systems Reliability

• Organizational Leadership & Governance

• Testing AI & Intelligent Systems

• AI-Native Developer Tools

No speaking experience required — if it works in the real world, we want to hear it.

⏰ Deadline: April 20, 2026 | 📝 www.pnsqc.org/cfp

📅 Upcoming Events

April Meetup: AI-Augmented Manual Testing (with PLUS QA)

🗓 Wednesday, April 22 · 6:00–8:00 PM PDT
📍 Portland, OR + Online (Hybrid)

Hosted by PLUS QA, this session features:

• Ryan Wilder (VP, PLUS QA)

• Gianni Zamora (Lead Dev, PLUS QA)

Learn how AI is being integrated into real-world manual testing workflows enhancing human expertise.

RSVP:

• meetup.com

• luma.com

• Gmail Mic Drop (2016)
  Google launched a prank button that sent a mic-drop GIF and muted threads. A bug made it replace the normal “Send” for some users leading to accidental mic drops in serious conversations. Disabled within hours.

• The 🚀 Emoji Crash
  A single emoji caused a consistent app crash due to a Unicode handling issue. Temporary fix: no emojis allowed in production.

• The Phantom Mouse
  A “ghost bug” with random clicks turned out to be a low-battery wireless mouse interfering with input. Not all bugs are in the code.

• Burger Emoji Debate 🍔
  Users noticed that Google placed the cheese under the patty in its burger emoji, while Apple (and others) placed it on top. The internet debated which was “correct,” and the discussion went viral—prompting Sundar Pichai to joke that he’d “drop everything” to fix it. A small visual detail turned into a public QA moment.

Got a story like this?

📣 PNSQC Call for Papers is open — deadline approaching

Whether it’s:

• a failure that taught you everything

• a fix that saved the system

• or a lesson others shouldn’t learn the hard way

This is exactly what the community wants to hear.

Why submit?

• Peer-reviewed and published paper

• Support and feedback for first-time authors

• Real technical depth (no marketing fluff)

• Travel stipend + Best Paper awards

Bottom line:
If you’ve solved a real quality problem, you already have a talk.

The PNSQC 2026 Call for Papers closes in just one month.

🗓 October 12–14, 2026
📍 Portland, OR + Online

If you’ve been thinking about submitting, now is the time.

Submit your papers

🎙️ PNSQChronicles – Season 3, Episode 1

With Great Judgment Comes Great Responsibility

In the Season 3 kickoff, Michael Larsen talks with Paul Grizzaffi (FreedomPay) about what it means to be a quality professional in the age of AI.

Key idea: Automation is powerful but judgment is irreplaceable.
From hidden AI risks to testing systems we don’t fully understand, the “human in the loop” matters more than ever.

📍 See Paul live at PNSQC 2026, Oct 12–14 in Portland, OR.

Register to Attend

📅 Upcoming Events

Fireside Chat with PNSQC Authors

🗓 Thursday, April 2 · 5:30–7:30 PM PDT

📍 Virtual (Zoom)

Thinking about submitting a paper but not sure where to start?

Join Ying Ki Kwong and Gwendolyn Avington, along with experienced PNSQC authors, for a casual session designed to:

• Demystify the proposal process

• Explain what reviewers are looking for

• Walk through the journey from abstract to final paper

Register for Fireside Chat

April Meetup: AI-Augmented Manual Testing (with PLUS QA)

🗓 Wednesday, April 22 · 6:00–8:00 PM PDT
📍 Portland, OR + Online (Hybrid)

Hosted by PLUS QA, this session features:

• Ryan Wilder (VP, PLUS QA)

• Gianni Zamora (Lead Dev, PLUS QA)

Learn how AI is being integrated into real-world manual testing workflows enhancing human expertise.

RSPV:

• meetup.com

• luma.com

Subscribe now

PNSQC 2026: Keynotes Announced

We’re excited to share the first look at keynote speakers for PNSQC 2026—bringing together thought leaders shaping the future of quality, AI, and software engineering.

🎤 Keynote Speakers

• Jonathon Wright
  The AI Assurance Imperative: Quality Engineering for the Agentic Era

• Paul Grizzaffi
  With Great Judgement Comes Great Responsibility

• Maaret Pyhäjärvi
  Better Together: Humans, AI, and the Next Quality Benchmark

• Florian Rohde
  Inside Tesla: The Birth of the Software-Defined Vehicle and Quality in the Age of Autonomy

🌟 Invited Speakers & Special Guests

• Kristine O’Connor
  Signal Before the Storm: How Quality Intelligence Can Stop Harm Before it Becomes Irreversible

• Anna Sharpe
  My Year of Living with AI

• Millan Kaul (TBA)

• Jason Arbon (TBA)

• Tariq King (TBA)

• Anne-Louise Sterry (TBA)

📣 Call for Papers — Deadline Approaching

The PNSQC 2026 Call for Papers closes in just one month.

🗓 October 12–14, 2026
📍 Portland, OR + Online

If you’ve been thinking about submitting, now is the time.

Submit your paper

📅 Upcoming Events

Fireside Chat with PNSQC Authors

🗓 Thursday, April 2 · 5:30–7:30 PM PDT

📍 Virtual (Zoom)

Thinking about submitting a paper but not sure where to start?

Join Ying Ki Kwong and Gwendolyn Avington, along with experienced PNSQC authors, for a casual session designed to:

• Demystify the proposal process

• Explain what reviewers are looking for

• Walk through the journey from abstract to final paper

Register for Fireside Chat

April Meetup: AI-Augmented Manual Testing (with PLUS QA)

🗓 Wednesday, April 22 · 6:00–8:00 PM PDT
📍 Portland, OR + Online (Hybrid)

Hosted by PLUS QA, this session features:

• Ryan Wilder (VP, PLUS QA)

• Gianni Zamora (Lead Dev, PLUS QA)

Learn how AI is being integrated into real-world manual testing workflows enhancing human expertise.

RSPV:

• meetup.com

• luma.com

Subscribe now

Call for Papers Closes in One Month

The Call for Proposals for PNSQC 2026 closes in just one month.

🗓 October 12–14, 2026
📍 Portland, OR + Online

If you’ve been thinking about submitting now’s the time.

https://meetinghand.com/e/pnsqc-2026/abstract

Workshops Are Here

PNSQC 2026 workshops are designed as hands-on, practical sessions—focused on skills you can apply immediately in your work.

AI & Modern Systems

Learn how to test systems that are no longer predictable, static, or fully human-controlled.

• AI Agentic Testing: AI Augmented Testing — Jonathon Wright

• A Quality Engineering Introduction to AI and Machine Learning — Tariq King

• Testing the Next Generation of AI-Based Software — Jason Arbon

Collaboration & Engineering Practices

Explore collaborative testing and scalable automation beyond “works on my machine.”

• Social Software Testing Approaches — Maaret Pyhäjärvi

• Testing Beyond Your Laptop with GitHub Actions — Juan de Dios Delgado Bernal

Strategy, Models & Leadership

From lightweight modeling to leadership in AI-driven organizations.

• Using Models to Define Test Plans — Wayne Roseberry

• Integrate The Model Context Protocol (MCP) into your workflow — Joe Petsche

• Quality Leadership in 2026: A Managers’ Forum on Today’s Hardest Problems — Philip Lew

🌐 Workshops details: https://pnsqc.org/conference/2026/workshops/

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Software systems are evolving faster than our quality practices. AI agents generate code, pipelines deploy without human approval, infrastructure heals itself, algorithms make business decisions, and systems adapt in production. Software is no longer just a tool, it is becoming an autonomous actor.
This raises a critical question: what does quality mean when software acts on its own?

That question is at the heart of #𝐏𝐍𝐒𝐐𝐂 2026: 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲.

You don’t need to be a professional speaker or academic researcher. If you’ve been wrestling with questions about AI, automation, software quality, security, processes, or testing pipelines, your perspective could be valuable to the community.

You can submit two types of proposals:
- 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 & 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 — an 8–10 page peer-reviewed paper and a presentation at the conference.
- 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 — share an emerging idea, experiment, or question and discuss it informally with attendees.

We’re looking for practical experience, experiments, and case studies from people working with modern software systems, including AI, but not limited to it. This can include building, testing, and maintaining large and complex codebases, using AI in development, or adapting quality practices as systems become more automated and autonomous. Topics range from testing adaptive software and AI-assisted development to governance, security, and defining the role of human oversight.
If autonomy is changing how you build, test, or deploy software, your experience could help the community navigate this shift.

October 12–14, 2026
Portland, Oregon
Submit your proposal: https://www.pnsqc.org/cfp

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We’re excited to share that INTERFACE Portland will host Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) on the exhibit floor this year.

INTERFACE Portland is a one-day technology conference bringing together experts and practitioners in cybersecurity, infrastructure, cloud, AI, and IT leadership. PNSQC will have a space on the exhibit floor to connect with attendees and share more about our community and upcoming conference.

📅 March 2026
📍 Portland, Oregon

PNSQC members can attend for free and earn up to 7 CPE credits.

If you’re in the Portland area, this is a great opportunity to network, learn, and represent the PNSQC community.

👉 Register here:
https://f2fevents.com/register/?att=PDX&ref=Association&par=PNSQC

Learn more about the event agenda:
https://f2fevents.com/event/pdx26/

Quality in the Age of Autonomy - Submit your Proposal!

The Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2026 is now accepting proposals.

📅 October 12–14, 2026
📍 Portland, Oregon

Software systems are no longer just tools — they are becoming autonomous actors.

• AI agents generate code.

• Pipelines deploy without human approval.

• Systems learn and adapt in production.

• Infrastructure self-heals.

• Algorithms make business decisions.

Autonomy is accelerating.

So the question becomes:
What does quality mean when software acts on its own?

**Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference invites practitioners, researchers, and engineering leaders to help explore and define quality in this new era.

📣 Submit your proposal: www.pnsqc.org/cfp
Help shape Quality in the Age of Autonomy.

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Join the PNSQC Slack Community

We’re building an active and engaged quality community on Slack and we’d love for you to be part of it!

Whether you’re in engineering, testing, DevOps, AI, leadership, or academia, this is a space to:

• Connect with peers

• Share ideas and resources

• Discuss quality challenges

• Stay up to date on conference news

👉 Join us here:
https://join.slack.com/t/pnsqc/shared_invite/zt-3qa2mbvwy-BYqF1~0UVg9vg3O2Q6qrmw

Let’s grow the quality conversation together.

Call for Proposals Is Open!

The Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) Call for Proposals is open!

https://meetinghand.com/e/pnsqc-2026/welcome

Why Submit a Proposal?

PNSQC is not a typical commercial conference.

If your proposal is accepted, you will:

✔ Speak at one of the longest-running quality conferences in the U.S.
✔ Work with experienced reviewers to refine your paper
✔ Publish a peer-reviewed paper in the permanent PNSQC Proceedings
✔ Receive free admission to the 2-day technical program
✔ Build professional credibility

This is a supportive environment for both first-time and experienced speakers.

We welcome voices from:

• Engineering

• Testing

• DevOps

• Security

• Architecture

• AI/ML

• Management & Leadership

• Academia

• Independent Consulting

If you’ve been thinking about sharing your experience, lessons learned, or research, this is your opportunity.

February Meetup Recordings Now Available

The recordings from the Job Hiring Talks at PNSQC’s February Meetup are now available on our YouTube channel!

Jeremy Elwood presented “The Paradox of Plenty” and shared insights from the hiring side of a job posting.

Heather Wilcox delivered “Build Your Resume to Stand Out!” with practical advice on getting past AI resume screening systems.

Watch the full recording here:

If you’re in IT, you may want to check out Interface Portland on March 19 at the Oregon Convention Center.

IT infrastructure is evolving fast, ransomware, security threats, AI, bandwidth, and storage demands are keeping all of us on our toes. This local conference offers a full day of presentations, panels, and exhibitors covering security, cloud, disaster recovery, communications, and more.

✅ Free admission for IT professionals
☕ Coffee + lunch included
🎓 Up to 7 CPE credits
💵 Chance to win $1,000 in the attendee drawing

PNSQC will have a booth there! Stop by, say hello, and connect with fellow quality professionals.

Register here:
https://f2fevents.com/register/?att=PDX&ref=Association&par=PNSQC

Feel free to share with your colleagues!

📝 Article Spotlight: Quality in the Age of Autonomy

In the blog post, What Is Quality in the Age of Autonomy?, Moss Drake explores how trust, judgment, and responsibility evolve as software systems become more autonomous.

As AI-driven and self-directing systems take on greater agency, quality is no longer just about defects — it’s about intent, risk, accountability, and the balance between human and machine decision-making.

If you’re thinking about how autonomy is reshaping testing, leadership, and responsibility, this is a thoughtful place to start.

Read the article:

PNSQC Blog

What is Quality in the Age of Autonomy?

Software systems are becoming faster, more interconnected, and increasingly capable of acting with reduced human oversight. At the same time, teams continue to rely on proven quality practices - testing, collaboration, judgment, and governance - to manage risk and deliver value…

Read more

3 months ago · PNSQC

🎤 Call for Proposals: PNSQC 2026

That conversation continues at PNSQC 2026 with our theme:
“Quality in the Age of Autonomy.”

We invite you to submit a proposal sharing practical experience, hard lessons, or bold ideas about testing, automation, AI, leadership, or risk management in an increasingly autonomous world.

Help shape the dialogue — submit your abstract and join us in Portland this October.

Submit here:
www.pnsqc.org/cfp