Summary of the 1st IEEE Workshop on the Next Level of Test Automation (NEXTA 2018)

NEXTA is a new workshop on test automation that provides a meeting point for academic researchers and industry practitioners. While test automation already is an established practice in industry, the concept needs to evolve to go beyond its current state to support the ever faster release cycles of tomorrow's software engineering. NEXTA implications for research and practice will include test case generation, automated test result analysis, test suite assessment and maintenance, and infrastructure for the future of test automation. The first instance of NEXTA was co-located with the 11th IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2018) in Vasterfias, Sweden on April 9, 2018. NEXTA 2018 offered an interactive setting with a keynote and paper presentations, stimulated by two novel awards to incentivize interaction and dissemination: a Best Questions Award and a Most Viral Tweet Award. The workshop attracted 15 paper submissions and about 50 participants. Based on the positive feedback, we plan to organize the workshop again next year.