The San Francisco Selenium Meetup Group gathered last week for a meetup at Digg’s headquarters, and WOW! What a fantastic night it was.

In the hopes of learning how members were specifically using Selenium, and to foster informal conversations around this, we decided to have “Whiteboard Night,” where we invited #SFSE members to volunteer to share their Selenium testing structures, philosophies, best practices, etc. The setup was similar to a poster session, with different “whiteboarders” presenting 5-10 minute sessions simultaneously and then engaging in organic discussions with the “minglers” who circled the room.

With 70+ plus attendees and 10 great whiteboarders from companies such as Mozilla, Pivotal Labs, and PB Works (to name a few), the conversations that resulted were highly thought-provoking. Most whiteboarders shared their existing test structures, while others proposed new ideas to get feedback from the group. Even Sauce Labs made an impromptu whiteboard visit, with Developer Miki Tebeka sketching out our testing system.

The responses afterwards were widely enthusiastic, with one newcomer to the group writing on the meetup page: “Awesome event! Great to talk to folks working ‘in the trenches.’”

With the success of Whiteboard Night, we’d love to have more in the future. We just need a big enough space to make it happen. If you think your company would be interested in hosting Whiteboard Night, please let us know. (To note: Digg’s digs were perfect. Plenty of open room, multiple whiteboards, and a huge fridge to store our beer :-) Thanks, guys!).

If you haven’t joined the #SFSE meetup group, please do so, as it’s the best way to stay in the loop. Next meetup is August 24 at LinkedIn – details coming soon.

Below are some photos from Whiteboard Night. For more, check out our new Sauce Labs Flickr Page. We’ll hope to see YOU at the next one!