A while ago, there was this little announcement on the Eurostar blog:
“As a new addition to the EuroSTAR community, we will be interviewing prominent testers from across the globe”
I thought that was pretty cool. There is lots to learn from experienced people. It’s nice to hear all these different takes on the sofware testing craft. They already published interviews with Isabel Evans, Mats Grindal, Tim Koomen, Michael Bolton, Martin Pol and Anne Mette Hass. Interesting stuff.
Several months later, I received an email from Kevin Byrne from the Qualtech/Eurostar team asking if I would be interested in doing an interview with them on testing (and other things as well). It took me a while to properly connect the term “prominent tester” with my own name. But I was honoured of course, so I accepted their offer.
And there it is. They even call me a ‘prominent Belgian tester’ in the introduction, which made me smile because it reminded me of the phrase “being big in Belgium” – often used interchangeably with being “big in Japan”, meaning as much as “totally unimportant”.
In the 1992 movie Singles, Matt Dillon plays in a band that claims to be “big in Belgium” – subtext: “what a bunch of forgettable losers”. Similarly, the legendary rock group Spinal Tap (the 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap is hilarious, by the way) ended up being big in Japan, which basically meant “pathetically uncool and ridiculed at home”.
But I digress. I might not be all too prominent, but I am a Belgian tester allright. Here’s the interview:
http://www.eurostarconferences.com/blog/2010/5/18/an-interview-with-zeger-van-hese.aspx