An update on public speaking

This post was published on August 22, 2026

Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about increasing focus in my career. If you haven’t read and/or don’t feel like reading that post, the tl;dr of it is that for a couple of years, I’ve been working on too many things at the same time, which led to

• not delivering all of my work at the quality that I want to and can deliver, and
• not having enough time for things outside of work, most notably cycling

It is now five months since I wrote that post, and things have changed slightly for the better. I feel like I am working on fewer things in parallel, and, as I expressed, most of my time these days is spent on building my training business and on reading, writing for this blog and especially for my newsletter and studying.

I still do a bit of consulting, but my current engagement is ending soon, and after that, I’m aiming for the consulting that I will do to be solutions-based, instead of based on hourly billing.

One activity on which I expected to spend less time is public speaking. As I said in the blog post:

The public speaking will stay as well, but here too, I will consider and take what comes my way, instead of actively pursuing speaking gigs at meetups and conferences, especially those abroad. I do have a few in-company speaking gigs coming up in the next couple of months, as well as a keynote at an online conference. I enjoy speaking, so I will continue doing talks, but again, pretty much only when I am invited to do so.

I’m not actively pursuing speaking opportunities anymore, which means that it has been quite some time since I submitted a proposal to a Call for Papers. I have made and will keep making an exception and submit proposals for a very short list of conferences, namely

• EuroSTAR and AutomationSTAR - because they’re the largest and therefore provide me with a podium to showcase what I do in front of a large audience, and because I really enjoy their events
• KWSQA’s Targeting Quality - because I really like their community and because I’ll take every excuse to travel to Canada (I hope to be back in Cambridge, ON, soon)

Even then, my submissions will probably be workshops rather than talks, because workshops are what I do for a living anyway in my training business, and the compensation will often be much better, too.

However, even now that I’m really no longer actively seeking out speaking opportunities, those opportunities still present themselves on a regular basis. I might not do as many talks in 2026 as I did in 2025 (so far, I did 6 this year, where I did 21 in total in 2025), but still, every now and then people and organizations reach out to me to have me as a speaker at their event. And not just online, in person, too.

Now, this might sound strange to some of you, but I’ve never really seen myself as a typical conference speaker. I enjoy doing talks, sure, but I’m not the ‘conference tiger’ taking their talk from one conference to the next as some of my fellow folks in the industry do (and all the best to them!). So, every time people do reach out and ask if I can do a talk at their event, I’m honoured, and often a little surprised, too. Even more so when ask me if I want to do a keynote.

I’ve done a few keynotes so far (more than 5 but less than 10, I lost count), from my first one ever at the Dutch Testing Day in 2018, my first one abroad at UKSTAR in 2019, to the most recent one at the in-company developer conference at a large Dutch bank. And guess what? I actually enjoy doing keynotes. I never really thought I would, but I do.

That wasn’t always the case, by the way. In the past, after my first few keynotes, every time I thought ‘well that surely was the last one ever’. I’d seen so many other people deliver brilliant, inspiring, clever, moving keynotes, I thought I could never do that. Still don’t think I can. And that’s fine with me.

The talks I do, and enjoy doing, are about how we can and should do things better, mostly in test automation. Often, that will include some code or even a live demo. My talks are distilled from 20 years of experience in the field, and all the lessons I learned along the way. You might not get life-changing insights, but you’ll get practical advice, wrapped in ugly retro slides, with some references to 90s pop culture and bad jokes thrown in.

Turns out, there are events that are happy to have such a talk as a keynote. Next to the in-company developer conference I mentioned, I’m also doing a keynote at the online day of Testear.la and at this year’s CypressConf. I’ve even got my first keynote for 2027 lined up already, and I’m really looking forward to speaking at the inaugural Taqelah Testing Conference in Singapore in March.

Because I don’t actively pursue speaking opportunities, but will happily accept what comes my way, I have more time to create new, original, customized talks for these events, too. Two out of the three keynotes I do this year are developed specifically for the event. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I do in my training business as well: no off-the-shelf standardized courses and workshops, but tailored engagements pretty much every time.

And that’s exactly how I like it best.

If your event is looking for a keynote speaker bringing in a customized, brand new talk with practical advice and lessons learned in 20 years of test automation, and if you think your audience can deal with my ugly retro slides and lame jokes, let’s talk.

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