English | EN 
In this blog post, I will share my short summary of attending RoboCon 2024 and the interesting talks I saw.
It was a cold February morning, and the tram was full of people, but I made it just in– time for RoboCon 2024’s opening ceremony, which was held in Scandic Marina Congress Center. When I got in, the first floor was bustling with people moving around the sponsor stands. A room full of Robot Framework professionals,; this is going to be great.
RoboCon is organized by the Robot Framework Foundation and its community, this year for the 7th time. The foundation’s executive director, Miikka Solmela, board chairman René Rohner, and developer Mateusz Nojek gave exciting speeches about Robot Framework’s future. The community and the number of members are growing, and so is the number of ecosystem projects. The creator and the current lead developer of Robot Framework, Pekka Klärck, had time to explain the biggest changes in the just-released 7.0 version, like the new listener interface, which opens lots of opportunities for extending Robot Framework capabilities during test execution.
Mateusz mentioned that his role was to be the CFO, Chief Fun Officer. I think this role should spread to other organizations. And this message of fun was creatively shown in the gamification of the conference – on the backside of conference lanyards, there was a grid of tasks, that, when completed, gave you a holographic sticker. These tasks varied from rating a GitHub project to having your photo taken at the photo wall. This was a great excuse to get to know other conference goers and strike up a conversation.
It was an intense two-day ride of presentations, talks, and networking. And sticker collecting (I made it to 13 stickers and got free sunglasses). And lots of snacks and coffee on the breaks. There were so many interesting talks that it is difficult to pick just a few to name, but I think these talks will give you a good idea about what is going on in the Robot Framework community.
- The Pros and Cons of Generative AI in Robot Framework:
RF CustomGPT and upcoming RF AI-library for ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-ri6myEfNB-robot-framework
- Do Robots Dream of Pickled Cucumbers? Gherkin with RobotFramework:
GherkinParser POC for feature descriptions: https://github.com/d-biehl/robotframework-gherkin-parser
- Fuzzing for vulnerabilities in REST APIs:
Fuzz testing library for APIs: https://github.com/g3rda/robocon2024-fuzzing
- Test reporting@UnionInvestment:
Infrastructure test results reporting: https://github.com/MarketSquare/robotframework-reportmodifier
- Using RobotFramework for Embedded Driver Testing – A field report
How to use RF in embedded system testing
- RFSwarm how it came about and where it’s going:
History and future of the performance testing tool: https://github.com/damies13/rfswarm
- Database Library update:
Now supports new Oracle databases: https://github.com/MarketSquare/Robotframework-Database-Library
- Project Aurora – Energy meter:
Interesting proof of concept about energy consumption: https://github.com/TheProjectAurora/energy-meter
There were so many other interesting speeches given. What became clear to me was the sense of community, people really believing in Robot Framework, automation, and open source. Especially, the Style Guide discussion was very enjoyable for anyone who has an opinion about coding styles. And the surprise Robot Framework Jeopardy game was a total highlight of the conference and really put everyone’s Robot knowledge to the test.
The best part about the conference was, of course, meeting your colleagues and other Robot Framework enthusiasts. RoboCon truly is the place to hear the latest Robot Framework news. Thanks to everyone I met and spoke with, and for all the others I didn’t, hope to see you next time!
P.S. And if these picks were not enough, the RoboCon 2024 online conference is held 28-29th of February.
For more information about RoboCon,
RoboCon.io, https://robocon.io/
