Zeger Van Hese

Z-Sharp

Paul Gerrard, gentle host of the Eurostar Conference this year, challenged me. He challenged me good. Initially I was asked to deliver “Testing in the age of distraction”, my presentation from last year, but Paul got second thoughts and later on suggested that maybe I could do something around the conference theme, give my take on it.
“Think about it.” He said. “And oh, by the way, there’s one more thing… I need to have your title and abstract by tomorrow. Bye now”.

Frantic thinking ensued. Diversity, innovation and leadership were the three concepts that Paul wanted as the cornerstone of the conference, and they were intriguing enough – two years ago I even centered this very conference on innovation. The way Paul stated the theme suggested three independent, separate entities – hence the commas in-between – but my gut was telling me otherwise. I felt that they are connected, belong together in a way. I wanted to find out how, learn more, and immerse myself in the subject. Then and there, I wrote “everything is connected”, started exploring the theme and decided to document my search as I went along.

This was a different approach for me. But I guess that sometimes you have to jump off a cliff and develop wings on the way down.