Social Impact Award: Thank You TM Square and SYNICT'26

Receiving the Social Impact Award from Neeraj Kumar Singh in SYNINCT'26

Recognizing the Recognition

I thank TM Square and SYNICT'26 team humbly with gratitude.  

TM Square and SYNINCT should be recognized first for breaking the biases and nominating me for this award.

The community and industry is biased.  I'm part of this.  When I say biased, it is biased with certain names for its visibility, crowd they pull in, for appearing in multiple events, and more.  Is this right or wrong?  Nothing is right or wrong here!  It works and benefits that way.  

SYNICT, you broke these biases and nominated me for the Social Impact Award.  Isn't that surprising!  Yes, it is.  At least to me. 

For the last 17 years, I am in consistent efforts to keep myself better, upskill, conscious, aware and informed to share with fellow test engineers and community.  This is the first recognition I have got in a conference from the community.

This recognition makes me much more responsible and accountable on how I should function with the community and what I should be doing for the community.  

Thank you team TM Square, SYNICT and the jury panel.

What Is Social Impact Award?

Here is what SYNICT says for Social Impact Award,

Celebrating someone who has made a strong impact through consistent content related to the QA industry on social media with maximum count.  Your posts continue to educate, engage, and connect the community.

Social Impact Award, SYNINCT'26

Social Impact Award Memento, SYNICT'26

My Experiences with SYNICT'26

 

This blog post shares my experience of the software testing conference SYNICT'26 held on 11th April 2026 in Bengaluru.

I got down at Silk Institute Metro Station and walked to the venue.  I reached the venue on time and met Neeraj Kumar Singh.  Later, I connected and spoke to other conference team members.  I met Soham and thanked him for creating me a window to attend this conference.

Entering the conference hall, I saw Santosh Tuppad.  We met in person after close to a decade.  I'm happy meeting him!  

I networked and introduced myself to others.  While I did this, my mentee Chidambara and his wife wa;led in to the conference hall -- both are SDETs.  To me, this is first -- seeing the husband and wife attending a software testing conference together.

I met Christy Henitha and a couple of people from RelQ attending this conference.  I'm glad to see people of RelQ -- the first software testing service company from India which is not operational today.

I took my seat and got ready to listen!

I see this conference is a well executed experiment from TM Square.  It happened in silence with no noise and buzz.  My experience is not all meetups and conferences can create the space as I saw here.  It is well hosted and concluded.  

Now, one of the next challenge to TM Square is -- How to have the same engagement between audience and speaker and the activities when more and more audience come in?

Read the below for details in brief.

SYNICT'26, Speakers and Audience

The conference organizer kept each talk interactive.  The audience could jump in and ask questions or share the insights.  The speaker added more details to it.  

The sessions remained interactive.  Such interactivity is not a common sight in the conferences, and the meetups as well.  To me this is the key highlight and experience of this conference.  I thank the conference organizers and speakers to keep it this way.

In the other way, the audience engaged speakers with their questions and by sharing the experiences.

You will not believe this right away.  But, let me tell.  The audience challenged the speakers in certain points.

Team SYNICT'26,

This format and space to have such healthy conversation between the audience and speakers is your success!  Not all meetups and conferences can do this.

SYNICT'26 Stage

Talks and My Take Back

The talk from Santosh Tuppad was highly interactive.  He presented, "The Human Firewall Security, AI & Our Shared Future".

• Santosh started his talk to be interactive.
• The audience jumped in by sharing their insights, experience and questions.
• The talk extended beyond its timeline, but the engagement from audience to the speaker continued.
• My understanding is, the talk aimed to say -- we human should be the first firewall to safeguard ourselves in the AI era and future.
• It made sense to me
• The awareness that we should be constructing consistently in this time and future with AI in place is critical
• In all I understand, he said, keep the humanity in center and then use the technologies.

The talk from Ajay Balamurugadas was well strategized as a hook to both time keeper and the audience.  He presented, "Building Quality Together - How AI Connects Craft, Context, and Collaboration".

• To get the better benefit from an AI Agent in place, it needs context.
• The importance of context was explained and he illustrated it through PostQode.
• Should I say this is a demo of PostQode?
• Not in whole
• But, he used PostQode to explain what can AI Agent can do as collaboration when connected to one's work with context.

To me the highlight of this talk is, the hook he created  -- to complete his talk in 19 minutes and use rest of his session time discuss.

You see the two above talks in two different styles yet remaining interactive.

The talk by Geosley had the examples of showing the ML algorithm to the solution implemented with Agentic AI for automation.  This helps one to map what is behind this automation using AI Agents.

The Fun and Activities

We audience were engaged with quiz after each session.  Arjun BM and Prathibha TN were running close to win it.  Arjun BM won it at the end.

There was a crossword and it was compelling to think.

We had got sketch pens, pencil and eraser.  But, why sketch pens and eraser?  Finally, we were asked to draw -- how do I want to see myself with testing.  Christy Henitha's sketch got the reward.

Here is what I drew and I gave it first.  I want to keep simple and be simple.  I want to see and work as in White Box notion wherever possible. So that the debugging is easy to make a fix on knowing the problem.

My Sketch at SYNICT'26 -- White Box and Me

Recognition and Awards

TM Square recognized the people from community.  This is needed for the community.  I thank wholeheartedly to TM Square and its people for doing this.

• Community Champion Award -- Mukesh Otwani
• Digital Humor Award -- Nishant Gohel
• Social Impact Award -- Ravisuriya Eswara

Meeting and Catching Up

After a decade, we all three met and sat for a few minutes talking, ranting, laughing and smiling.  I enjoyed this moment filled with happiness, silence and peace.

From Left to Right -- Ajay, Ravi, and Santosh.  Photo Credit: Santosh

Soham, Neeraj, and Gandhali

My experience with Soham Majumder will go for a long time and I will cherish it.  He helped me to attend this conference.  Thank you, Soham.

My experience with Neeraj Kumar Singh is -- He is behind it!  I see, he stood and assisted his team wherever he had to.  I could see it as I entered the venue.  The first thing that sensed to me is -- he is approachable and trying to be aware of what's happening.

My experience as an audience with Gandhali Karmarkar is unique.  As a anchor she has got something magical in her voice.  She engaged the audience!

For SYNICT'27

I request one track of tech talks in Software Testing.  While the other track(s) can run in parallel on the other dimensions of the craft and practice.

Why I expect it from TM Square?  A conference run by community can do it.

What is TM Square?

Neeraj Kumar Singh and I discussed in the lunch break.

I was curious to know what is the meaning or abbreviation of TM Square.

He said, it is "The Metrics That Matter".

I'm looking forward to SYNICT'27.