European Testing Excellence Award from EuroSTAR to Kari

I feel very honoured, humble. I'm awarded for my work over the few decades but certainly especially for my work in the past few years with the Dragons Out book and trying to get the software testing message across to children and schools through this ground-breaking approach of fantasy book storytelling.

I feel that the world has noticed the great initiative to bring the testing message to children. Feedback from children is of course most touching. I especially remember that the son of a friend of mine said after reading my book on his own: "Mom, I want to be a software tester when I grow up!" Many adults have read the Dragons Out book, too, and describe it as fantastic! It is so rewarding to hear this praise.

The EuroSTAR conference explains on their award page that "The EuroSTAR European Testing Excellence Award is the highest honour bestowed by our community. It is driven by peer nominations and is the ultimate recognition for those that continually give to the testing community." I am really humbled to learn that so many have thought of my initiative and my career as an inspiration to themselves and for the software testing community. It is also very humbling to be listed among the other giants of software testing that you can see on the award page.

My employer Knowit was of course very delighted with the award, as a lot of the testing work I've done has been for the company. They released news about the winning and also about the release of Dragons Out English edition.

Finnish Software Testing Board FiSTB have congratulated me too and commented very correctly that the award is also praise for the whole Finnish testing community. That is so true. Nobody works alone but always in the context of and together with his community. My communities are many, but the main one is FiSTB. Also Finnish Association of Software Testing, ISTQB, TMMi, Agile Finland and DASA DevOps are my communities.

I thank everyone for their kind words, support and congratulations which I hold very dear.





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