HUSTEF is a software testing conference held annually in Budapest that brings together testers, developers, and quality professionals from around the world. Starting in 2011 as a small local event, it has grown to over 700 attendees, with international participants making up between 40 and 50 percent of the audience. Its program includes deep-dive masterclasses, career coaching, and a structured first-time speaker initiative with coaching and slide reviews.
Key Takeaways
- HUSTEF grew from roughly 150 attendees at its founding in 2011 to 705 tickets sold in 2025, driven by community passion rather than a commercial backer.
- Between 40 and 50 percent of the HUSTEF audience is now international, a deliberate shift made after the pandemic to broaden the conference beyond its local Hungarian roots.
- About 10 percent of speakers at HUSTEF are first-time speakers, supported by online coaching sessions and slide reviews to break the cycle where lack of experience leads to rejection and rejection prevents gaining experience.
- The Career Clinic pairs technical coaching with HR expertise to help testers navigate career progression, including CV optimization for AI-powered screening tools that can drop applications before a human sees them.
How HUSTEF grew from a local meetup into an international conference
HUSTEF started in 2011 as a small local event, with no grand ambitions behind it. The original idea was straightforward: give Hungarian test engineers a place to meet and trade experiences.
Interest built slowly. As more people showed up, the organizers recognized they had to treat it as a real undertaking, which meant bringing in dedicated work on project management, sales, marketing, and finance.
The numbers tell the rest. The early editions drew around 150 people. This year the conference sold 705 tickets, roughly five times the original size.
Attila Fekete, program chair of HUSTEF 2025, frames the whole effort in personal terms rather than commercial ones.
It’s not a business for us. It’s a love project. — Attila Fekete
Why HUSTEF went international after the pandemic
The shift toward an international audience was a deliberate decision made after the pandemic. Before that point, the speaker lineup was already heavily international, around 95 percent, with only about 5 percent local presenters.
The audience side changed more dramatically. Today between 40 and 50 percent of attendees come from outside Hungary, not just the speakers. That mix is part of what gives the conference its current character.
The reach also creates a practical problem worth planning for. Most Hungarian testers do not travel much to conferences, so international names are often unknown in the local market. Selling tutorials with strong speakers becomes harder when the audience has no reference point for who those speakers are.
What makes a conference feel like coming home
A conference earns loyalty when people feel cared for, not processed. HUSTEF treats that feeling as its brand: speakers and attendees should arrive and feel like they are coming home, and return the next year like old friends.
The organizers live this out logistically. The team books the whole speaker hotel and is present from early morning onward. The reasoning is simple. Public speaking is stressful, and people want to perform at their best, so the surroundings are built to make that easier.
The selection process stays separate from the warmth. A review board scores submissions and decides objectively who gets in, with no favors. The conference is independent, which keeps the program free of company agendas.
How HUSTEF lowers the barrier for first-time speakers
HUSTEF reserves room on its program for people who have never spoken at a conference before. Roughly 10 percent of the program each year goes to first-time speakers.
This addresses a real trap in public speaking. Conferences reject newcomers for lacking experience, but newcomers cannot gain experience without being accepted. It becomes an endless loop of rejection that discourages good people before they ever start.
The support goes beyond a slot on the schedule. Since 2019, the program has included coaching for these speakers: online sessions and slide reviews ahead of the event. The point is to help them succeed on stage, not to let them fail in public.
The same logic extends upward through a Rising Star Keynote. Landing a first keynote can feel as impossible as a first talk, because conferences tend to reach for established names. The Rising Star format opens that door to first-time keynote speakers.
Why testers hit a ceiling, and how a career clinic helps
Testers often run into a glass ceiling in their careers, a point where the path forward stops being obvious. That blocked feeling, and the disappointment that comes with it, is common enough that HUSTEF built a dedicated response around it.
The Career Clinic grew out of that need. It pairs experienced coaching with HR expertise, so the advice covers both sides of progression: improving technically and managing your career path inside or beyond your current company.
Last year the clinic ran as a short slot during the lunch break and as a full tutorial on day one. The practical guidance includes writing your CV, acting on social media, building an online presence, and knowing what to expect from an interview.
One detail deserves attention if you are job hunting. Many companies now screen CVs with AI-powered tools, so the same way search engine optimization works, your CV needs to be written to clear those filters. If the tool drops your CV before a human ever sees it, your qualifications never enter the room.
Listening to feedback reshaped the program format
HUSTEF changes its format based on what attendees and speakers actually ask for. Senior attendees said the short session talks left them with too little to dig into, so the program grew to serve them.
Several concrete adjustments came out of that feedback. Regular talks gained an extra five minutes, moving from 20 plus five to 25 plus five, with the possibility of even longer sessions depending on future feedback. A 100-minute deep dive, called the masterclass, was added for senior practitioners and decision makers.
The masterclass content spans non-functional testing, AI, and leadership. Andrew Brown’s session on modeling sits in that leadership track, showing how modeling can improve processes and predict outcomes.
The Speaker’s Corner answered a different complaint. Sessions usually leave time for only three or four questions, which cuts conversations short. The Speaker’s Corner gives people a place to keep asking after the talk ends.
Here is how the format changes line up with the feedback that drove them:
| Feedback from attendees | Change made |
|---|---|
| Session talks felt too short | Regular talks extended to 25 plus five minutes |
| Senior folks wanted deeper content | 100-minute masterclass deep dives added |
| Too few questions allowed per session | Speaker’s Corner for extended discussion |
| Testers stuck in their careers | Career Clinic with coaching and HR support |
Building speaker brands for a local market
One plan for the future is to introduce promising international speakers to the Hungarian market before they ever take the main stage. The gap is real: strong names that mean little locally are hard to sell, simply because the audience has not heard of them.
The proposed fix is a series of short online mini-events, around 20-minute talks, to introduce potential speakers ahead of time. The conference would maintain a pipeline of people it wants to work with and help build their visibility in advance.
Growth brings its own constraint. Few venues in Budapest can hold a conference of HUSTEF’s current size, so the organizers are already in conversation about space and planning the next edition without taking a break in between.
