Arena life

In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.

At the European Testing Conference in the ArenA. Our workshop goes well and the day has an interesting structure. I particularly like the speed meet session, where everybody starts by creating a personal mindmap with the same three starting nodes: work, personal, last year.

The conference party is in the Palladium, a restaurant in the centre of Amsterdam. I guess it’s nice to get into town, but the vast majority of conference attendees don’t bother. And we all head back to the hotel early, so we don’t actually profit from nightlife on offer.