The QA Hackathon website is hosted by Birmingham Perl Mongers. The site is intended to be used as a holding place for links and news of forthcoming QA Hackathons. While the events are not decided by committee, if you wish to co-ordinate your efforts to ensure others are not planning a QA Hackathon at the same time, feel free to contact us to see whether a domain has been requested.

The first QA Hackathon event in 2008 was organised by the Oslo Perl Mongers in Norway, lead by Salve J Nielsen, following some very successful Nordic Perl Workshops. The event came about due to a desire to get some movement on the TAP specification for submission to the IETF. With 2 large QA/Open Source conferences also happening in Norway the following week, these were considered to be good incentives to attract some notable QA and Testing hackers to come along, and dedicate a weekend to working on various projects. The event was a huge success and started the foundation for several new projects.

After the 2008 hackathon, several attendees expressed a desire for the event to happen again. However, no-one had any idea where or when. After reading the reports and reviews, having not been able to attend, JJ & Barbie of Birmingham Perl Mongers, put forward the idea to the other members of the user group of host an event for 2009. Birmingham Perl Mongers had become incorporated in 2006, enabling them to host the 2006 YAPC::Europe Perl Conference, and had sufficient funds to host a QA Hackathon. The user group members voted unanimously to support the event, and at the 2008 YAPC::Europe Perl Conference, it was announced that Birmingham would host the 2009 QA Hackathon. Once again the event proved extremely successful and featured many improvements to several TAP, Testing and toolchain projects, resulting in a very strong feeling that the event should be an annual occurance.

For 2010, Vienna Perl Mongers, who had previously organised the 2007 YAPC::Europe Perl Conference, announced that they would like to host the event. The event takes place in Vienna, 10-12 April, and is expected to be as successful as the first two QA Hackathons.