On working and contributing to conferences abroad
This post was published on February 6, 2025This blog post is another one in the ‘writing things down to structure my thinking on where I want my career to go’ series. I will get back to writing technical and automation blog posts soon, but I need to finish my contract testing course first.
One of the things I like to do most in life is traveling and seeing new places. Well, seeing new places, mostly, as the novelty of waiting, flying and staying in hotel rooms has definitely worn off by now.
I am in the privileged position (really, that is what it is: I’m privileged, and I fully realize that) that I get to scratch this travel itch professionally on a regular basis these days. Over the last few years, I have been invited to contribute to meetups and conferences abroad, and I also get to run in-house training sessions with companies outside the Netherlands a couple of times per year.
Most of this traveling takes place within Europe, but for the last three years, I have been able to travel outside of Europe once every year (South Africa in 2022, Canada in 2023 and the United States in 2024), and needless to say I have enjoyed those opportunities very much.
To give you an idea of the amount of traveling I do: for 2025, I now have four work-related trips abroad scheduled, and I am pretty sure at least a few more will be added to that before the year ends (it’s only just February…). That might not be much travel by some people’s standards, but for me, it is. And it seems the number of opportunities I get for traveling increase year over year, to the point where I have to say ‘no’ to several of these opportunities.
Say no? Why? I thought you just said you loved to travel?
Yes, that’s true. I do love to travel. But I also love spending time at home with my family, and that comes first. Always.
Now, my sons are getting older, and being away from home for a few days doesn’t put as much pressure on them and on my wife as it did a few years ago. Still, I always need to find a balance between spending time with them and spending time at work.
I am away from home for work not just when I’m abroad. I run evening training sessions with clients here in the Netherlands on a regular basis, too, as well as training sessions in my evenings for clients in different time zones, mainly US-based clients.
And all that adds up. I try to only be away from home one night per week, but often, it’s two. When I travel abroad, it’s even more than that.
Again, I’m not complaining. Not at all. It is an absolute privilege to get to travel for work and get paid to do that, but I cannot do that indefinitely, and that’s why I have made a decision:
With a few exceptions (more on those below), I am going to say ‘no’ to conferences abroad from now on.
This is a tough decision for me to make, but sometimes that’s exactly what you need to do. Tough, because I have very fond memories of all the conferences and meetups abroad I have contributed to. My first one, Romanian Testing Conference in 2017. My first keynote abroad, UKStar in 2019. My first one outside of Europe, Targeting Quality in 2023. They were all amazing, because of the travel and sightseeing (when time allowed), but also because of all the people I have met at these conferences.
Yet, I can meet at least some of these people at conferences here in the Netherlands, too. Test Automation Days, the TestNet events, the Dutch Testing Day and TestMass all provide a great opportunity for me to catch up with my network. Sometimes, international conferences come to the Netherlands, too, like AutomationSTAR this year. And then there are plenty of smaller meetups here in the Netherlands (and Belgium) where I can meet and catch up with people as well.
Plus, the money. I am not going to be a hypocrite and say that money doesn’t play into this. For the reasons mentioned above, I have a limited number of opportunities to travel every year, and I prefer to spend those on in-house training sessions with clients abroad, simply because the pay is much better.
Even when a conference compensates flights and hotel (as they should) and offer a speaker or workshop facilitator fee (a nice bonus), it will be significantly less of a payday than when I run a training session with a client.
That’s not the fault of those conferences, not at all, especially when they’re compensating their speakers fairly, but this is simply a matter of numbers and budgets.
At the moment, I have one, maybe two contributions to conferences abroad coming up, and I gave them my word, so I’ll be there. That’s the SAST 30-year anniversary conference in October, plus one other conference that I’m talking to but haven’t received a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from yet. Other than that, if conferences reach out to me, it’s likely to be a ‘no’ from now on, unless:
- the event pays a fee comparable to my rate for in-house training
- I can combine the event with paid in-house training (for example with a sponsor)
- it is a country or region I really, really want to visit, either for personal reasons or because I want to grow my professional network there
I don’t see the first one happening soon, and the list of destinations for the third one is very short (Norway, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, that’s pretty much it), so unless we can arrange paid in-house training alongside the conference, the answer will be a ‘no’ from me.
Will this reduce the number of travel opportunities for me? Maybe. Maybe not. Again, I see the number of requests I get for in-house training abroad growing, too, and if that dies down, it’ll be a sign for me that I’ll have to work harder to create those opportunities.
For 2025, things are looking pretty good, with trips for training to Romania, North Macedonia and Denmark already scheduled, and several leads for more in the pipeline.
And if the number of opportunities does go down, that’s fine, too. I’m happy to spend that time with family, working on other things, or riding my bike. And I’m sure there will be a few opportunities to speak at online meetups, events and webinars, too.
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