Ah, the end of another test cycle! Wait, no – the end of another year, that’s what it is. It’s difficult to keep testing out of your head once you’ve realized that practically everything can be tested and improved if you take a good enough look – but right now, we’re going to take a look at what’s happened in 2019 and what’s coming up in 2020.

Sharing What We Know

2019 has been a year where we tried harder than ever before to make Philipp famous. Being one of our Co-Founders, Philipp returned to ‘the founders festival’, Bits & Pretzels, to talk about our customer-centric approach to projects and Crowdtesting. With the festival’s main speakers being none other than Barack Obama and Jessica Alba, Philipp was in fine company.

We also said ‘lights, camera, action’ for our video masterclass, in partnership with Business Reporter. Leading the masterclass, Philipp shares knowledge and experiences in QA, UX, and Crowdtesting. We’re determined to keep spreading and demonstrating the importance of testing, and the possibilities of Crowdtesting specifically. Unfortunately, Netflix said their budget isn’t big enough for content of such immense value. 😉

Find all the videos, blog posts, and more on our masterclass page!

On the Road to Success

As usual, our event schedule has been packed for the year and this coming year we’re looking to be a part of even more exciting events, trade shows, and meetups. Among the past year’s highlights you’ll find events like MWC in Barcelona and MobileOne in Paris. These are especially interesting to us as we continue to expand internationally and work to keep up with the demand for Crowdtesting. As mentioned – practically everything can be tested – so naturally, demand keeps growing.

We’re focused on testing digital products, so my statement remains essentially the same – all digital products can (and should) be tested. This is something we demonstrated at DMEXCO, which we attended together with one of the testers from our Crowd. This was an appreciated aspect of our booth, as it gave attendees the chance to have their product tested on the spot if they wanted to, or at least ask for some feedback on their digital experience.

Speedtesting, Oktoberfesting, and Crowdgrowing

Another interesting event this year was our in-house Usability Speedtesting Meetup, which also involved testers from our Crowd. We invited around 50 people, including five Crowdtesters and five companies, to our Munich office for an evening of interesting talks, networking, pizza and beer, and ‘speedtesting’. The testers rotated between five stations and gave their feedback on the companies’ products – like speeddating, but with test cases! This was a great meetup and definitely something we’ll be doing again.

Speaking of things we’ll be doing again – we also had our classic Wiesn event for Oktoberfest! For each and every year, Oktoberfest is always one of the best parts, where we invite clients to our office overlooking the Oktoberfest grounds a.k.a. the Wiesn. It starts off with a ‘Weißwurst-Frühstück’, as well as a few interesting presentations, before heading down to the Wiesn and testing a beer, or two, or five…

… or 400,000! No, that’s too many beers – unless we bring the biggest Crowd on Earth! One of our major moments, not only for this year but for our entire company history, was definitely when our Crowd passed 400,000 testers, with 900,000 devices and in 193 countries – maybe you’ve heard these numbers before. 😉

For us this is really special, as you might understand. Since everything we do is based in crowdsourced testing, it’s important that our Crowd keeps growing and evolving, to support us in delivering our services – with real devices and in real-world conditions.

Making New Friends

There’s another big happening that had its starting grounds in real-world conditions. In 2018, we tested BMW Motorrad’s Connected app for motorcycle riders, and that seed has now grown into a partnership with the BMW Group that we’re very proud of. We’ll be working together to keep pushing the quality and customer-centricity further for the BMW Groups’ connected apps and digital experiences.

We were also very pleased with our respective webinars with partners Qualitest and Cognigy. We strive to continue evolving our current partnerships, as well as building new ones like the one with Cognigy that we announced this year. These collaborations allow us and our partners to integrate into each other’s organizations and develop better products and services together – that in turn lead to a better digital world.

Looking into The Future

Obviously, we can’t just keep looking at the past. We’re a testing company so, while we do analyze and learn from previous development, we’re also always looking to improve, move things forward, and push boundaries. Like the boundaries of time! No, we didn’t figure out how to build a time machine (yet), but we can still take a peek into the future.

Given the positive experiences we’ve had at MWC previously, we’ll be hopping over to Barcelona once again. Who can say no to the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a chance to get some much needed vitamin D in the Catalonian February sun? After sun comes rain, and in order to satisfy our cravings for rain and witty banter, in March we’ll be at C+UX Expo in London. The Customer & User Experience Expo helps you take CX strategy to the next level and at Testbirds we help you take your digital products to the next level – what a perfect match! You can count on us showing up around the world to spread the Crowdtesting gospel, both in old places and new.

Thank You and See You in The New Year

In the coming year, we’ll keep iterating and developing our contributions for a better digital world, by driving improvements to our services and enhancing communication around Crowdtesting. To support our clients we want to welcome more testers to our Crowd, from all around the world. Who knows, perhaps we’ll already manage to reach our next big milestone of 500,000 testers this coming year! If we do, maybe we’ll show you our time machine that we definitely don’t have hidden in our office.

As a last note for the year, we’d like to wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and also throw out some thank yous.

Thank you to the biggest Crowd on Earth for your commitment and expertise. Thank you to our clients for your trust in us and what we do. Thank you to our partners for your support and capability. Thank you to our board members and investors for fueling our journey and advising us along the way. And a thank you and a big high five for ourselves for the continued dedication, persistence, and engagement for Testbirds and Crowdtesting.

Okay, just one last thing before we ring in the new year – it’s peak season for e-commerce and you should be prepared to welcome people to your customer experience. You can make sure your digital product is ready by running a test with our Crowd, and our Testbirds Cyber Weeks are in full swing, so seize this opportunity to win 2 free testers for your next Crowdtest!