If 2025 was my year of rebuilding, reconnecting, and rediscovering momentum, then 2026 feels like the year where everything accelerates at once. Not in a chaotic way, but more like a well‑timed montage where every scene nudges the story forward. And somehow, I’ve ended up in the middle of it, juggling conferences, chapters, books, and airplanes. Literally.
This year, I’ll continue presenting at familiar stages like Test Automation Days, where the coffee is strong and the hallway conversations even stronger. But I’m also stepping into new territory with conferences I’ve never visited before, like PeersCon, and who knows where my abstracts will land. That’s the beauty of this craft: you never quite know where your ideas will take you, or where someone suddenly decides, “Yes, we want that talk.”
And then there’s the part I never thought I’d write:
I’m doing webinars. Two of them.
Against my natural preference for real rooms, real people, and real energy, I’ll be appearing online at Quality Week for Colombo Quality Camp in February and the A4Q Testing Summit in May. If you hear a faint sigh in the distance, that’s me accepting that growth sometimes means stepping into formats you didn’t choose and making them your own anyway.
Meanwhile, the Dutch testing landscape is buzzing. In April, my own conference TestMass returns for the Third time, and in October I’ll be co‑organizing the Dutch Testing Day, a celebration of everything our community stands for. Add to that the ongoing MoT Netherlands Chapter meetups, which continue to surprise me with their warmth, curiosity, and willingness to experiment and the calendar starts to look like a colourful patchwork of shared learning.
But 2026 isn’t just about events. It’s also the year I want to finally get cracking on my side project:
My book on Fun Driven Testing.
Two chapters are already alive, breathing, and slightly mischievous. This year, I want to give them siblings. And while I’m at it, I’ll continue translating the brilliant work of a good friend, because some ideas deserve to travel further than their original language allows.
And then there’s the next professional adventure: a new assignment at Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM). A place where complexity, scale, and human impact meet in fascinating ways. I’m excited to bring my curiosity there and equally excited to learn from the people who keep a national icon in the air.
But if I strip all of this down to its essence, my goals for 2026 are actually very simple:
* Have fun.
* Share knowledge.
* Work with great people.
* And stay part of the nicest community there is.
Everything else, the conferences, the webinars, the book, the projects, they’re just different stages for the same mission: to help others grow, to keep learning myself, and to make this profession a little more joyful, one talk, one chapter, one conversation at a time.
Here’s to a year full of stories worth telling.
