The QS Barcamp Hamburg is the only largely German-speaking barcamp for software testing and quality assurance, and in 2026 it marks its tenth anniversary. A barcamp is an open conference format where the participants bring and choose the topics themselves. There are no booked speakers, only a marketplace where anyone can propose a session.
Key Takeaways
- A barcamp takes the informal exchange that normally happens at the coffee machine during a conference and turns it into a full day of parallel sessions, with topics chosen by the participants.
- The QS Barcamp is the only largely German-speaking barcamp for testing and quality assurance. It draws people from across the German-speaking countries: developers, testers, HR staff, university professors and career changers from other industries.
- The community has deliberately capped attendance at 80 to keep the close-knit atmosphere that large, anonymous events cannot offer.
- The law of two feet explicitly allows participants to leave a session and join another one, because what they picked up in one slot feeds the discussion in the next.
- The ticket has cost 49 euros since the very first barcamp, and students attend for free, because the event is meant to stay open to everyone as a community event.
What Is a Barcamp and How Is It Different from a Conference?
At a barcamp like the QS Barcamp in Hamburg, the participants build the program. There is no fixed agenda and no speaker at the front talking while everyone else listens. People arrive with topics, and those topics become the sessions.
The idea comes from a simple observation. At most conferences, the best conversations happen at the coffee machine, not in the lecture hall. A barcamp flips that around: the conversation becomes the main event, and the day is organized around it.
“Think of it as one long, well-organized conference break. Because the breaks are always where you have the most interesting conversations.”
(Georg Haupt)
The QS Barcamp in Hamburg describes itself as the only largely German-speaking barcamp for testing and quality assurance. In 2026 it celebrates its tenth anniversary. It grew out of the Software User Group Hamburg, which still backs the event today.
How a Day at the QS Barcamp Works
The day opens with the marketplace. Anyone with a topic writes it on a card, pitches it in a sentence or two and picks a free slot in the schedule. If you want to talk about UI test automation at 11 a.m., you announce it, and whoever is interested shows up.
Sessions come in two kinds. In a push session, someone shares knowledge they brought along. In a pull session, someone puts an open question to the room, say, how to automate sensibly through the user interface, and collects the answers.
Four slots run in parallel. Each lasts 45 minutes, followed by a 15-minute break. The program sits between a shared breakfast, a lunch break at a large buffet and food and drinks throughout the day.
One unwritten rule shapes the whole format: the law of two feet. If you feel you have nothing left to give or to take from a session, you get up and go to another one. That is explicitly welcome, and nobody takes it personally.
When a Session Changes Topic, That’s the Point
“Whatever happens, happens” is one of the guiding rules. A session that opens with a question about exploratory testing may end up discussing how to equip a room as a working test environment. Nobody sees that as drifting off topic. It counts as a session that went well.
Moving between parallel slots adds value as well. Whoever walks from slot A to slot B carries the ideas from the first conversation into the second. Knowledge travels between the rooms instead of staying locked in a single session.
A second rule sets the length of a session by need: a session lasts as long as it lasts. If a group isn’t done when the slot ends, it hands the room to the next group and moves to a sofa corner with whoever wants to keep going.
Why Friday Night Makes Saturday Work
The QS Barcamp doesn’t start with the open space on Saturday morning. It starts on Friday evening with a talk on a chosen topic and a barbecue on the roof terrace, which turns into a long evening that sometimes runs until 1:30 in the morning.
You can feel the effect the next day. Many participants already know each other, have talked and have collected ideas, and those ideas go straight into the session proposals at the marketplace.
The Friday talks are picked on purpose to leave questions open. A topic that is wrapped up gives people nothing to discuss. Loose ends carry over into Saturday’s sessions.
The Mix of People Is What Makes It Valuable
The QS Barcamp brings together roles that rarely talk to each other. Testers, test managers, developers, students, university professors and HR people sit at the same table. One participant came from the food industry, where she does quality assurance for food.
The range of experience is just as wide. There are seasoned professionals with real deep-dive topics and newcomers who want to know which skills they need to get into testing. People from traditional projects meet people from agile teams, banking software meets the control software of a forklift.
That friction is where the good conversations come from. Someone working on embedded systems tests differently from someone who has a web application to deal with. Talking across those boundaries gives you perspectives you won’t find in your own team.
Two examples show what comes out of it. An HR employee had to write a job ad for a testing role without really knowing what the job involved, so she submitted a session called “Describe the ideal tester to me.” In another session, people started collecting the most important testing tools on a wall. Over several sessions, that grew into a sorted knowledge base, from automation and test analysis to data tools.
Why the QS Barcamp Stays Small
The QS Barcamp has 60 to 80 participants. The community set that limit itself, even though places sell out quickly. More people would destroy the family feel.
A core group of 40 to 45 people comes back regularly, some for the tenth time. Every year there are first-timers as well. If nobody told you, you wouldn’t be able to tell who is new, because newcomers are welcomed in so easily.
The size keeps the event from becoming anonymous. At 500 or 5,000 participants, the atmosphere turns impersonal. At 80, people know each other, strike up conversations more easily and find their place faster. The Hamburg community has made it clear that it does not want to grow beyond that.
A Launch Pad for New Methods
In the German-speaking testing world, the barcamp keeps serving as the first public stage for methods and tools. Some of them existed before, but this is where they reached the community for the first time.
Riskstorming first really showed up in this community here, and it stuck. Quality Storming was also played through in public for the first time at the QS Barcamp. Participants often witness a premiere without knowing it at the time. Only later do they realize they were there when something new began.
QS Barcamp Dates, Tickets and Practical Details
The barcamp traditionally takes place on the first full weekend in September. It kicks off on Friday evening with a talk and a barbecue. On Saturday, breakfast starts at 8:30 a.m., followed by the marketplace and the sessions.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Participants | 60 to 80, deliberately limited |
| Parallel slots | 4, each 45 minutes plus a 15-minute break |
| Ticket price | 49 euros, unchanged since day one |
| Students | free |
| Food and drinks | breakfast, large lunch buffet, drinks, barbecue |
The 49 euros essentially pay for the food, and the lunch buffet alone tends to cost more than that. The price is not meant to go up, because the barcamp sees itself as an accessible community event. Students attend free of charge.
The team makes sure there is a proper vegan option. Instead of leaving vegans with the side dishes, there is a separate vegan main course, and all side dishes are plant-based too.
The event is run by people from four different companies rather than by a single company. OSE provides the venue, because renting suitable rooms would otherwise be too expensive. Without sponsors, the barcamp could not be held at this price, and nobody makes money from it. If you’d like to support the barcamp with an idea or as a sponsor, get in touch with the organizing team.
