Yesterday I witnessed a phenomenon. Through a scheme offered by our district authority, the Region of Waterloo, I participated in the annual Rain Barrel Distribution day. Through this programme local residents may purchase a high-quality rain barrel for a modest sum (about 1/3rd the cost of what you would pay in Canadian Tire or Home Hardware). The region has a single distribution day annually and, yesterday, it had three locations across the region where you could go to get your rain barrel.

Over the years the region has placed more than 34,000 rain barrels. That’s got to be having an effect. It reduces the amount of water that the local authority needs to process and that saves the residents money as well since we pay for our water use here. But it is also better for all the flower and vegetable gardens in the area to use fresh rainwater rather than chemically enhanced and purified drinking water from the taps. So, good for the region, good for the pocket-book, and good for the environment.

And yet the phenomenon I witnessed and have referred to was something else which felt very Canadian to me but perhaps is not unique at all. The distribution of the rain barrels was to begin at 7:30 am. I duly ensured that I arrived in the parking lot of the big mall north of town exactly at 7:30. I am nothing if not punctual (usually). But I was already late. When I joined the queue there were more than 800 people ahead of me. At 7:30 in the morning! More than 800 people had arrived before 7:30 am for their chance at purchasing a rain barrel. Nor did it take long for another 500 or so people to join the queue after me. And that was it. Once all of the application forms were distributed (you need to verify your address to participate in the rain barrel scheme) the organisers closed the line. And so we formed an orderly and friendly queue winding back and forth across the large parking lot of the mall. Children were laughing, friends were spotting each other at different points of the queue and waving, the ubiquitous Tim’s coffees were in the hands of the lucky few who perhaps had anticipated a bit of a wait. I chatted with the young couple ahead of me in line and the elderly lady behind me. The queue moved forward at a regular pace. And within 90 minutes I was up at the front receiving my new rain barrel.

I am left wondering what the motivating factor is that gets 1500 varied people out of bed to stand in a line early on a Saturday morning. It goes without saying that Canadians just love a bargain. So maybe that was it. Or maybe while I was out of the country living in England the environmental consciousness simply took hold. I hope that was it. But I have this feeling that we just love joining a queue.

Last night it rained. Just 11mm. But it’s a start.

I have actually had this blog for some time. At least I’ve had the title for this blog for a while. I simply haven’t done anything with it. The time has come to get started on this project. The project itself is, I suppose in one way or another, my life. And thus Transformative Explications could be a way of hinting at how these bits of prose might, just maybe, be part of a larger transformation. Well, that’s a good enough story to tell for now. I’ll think of something more clever later.

Prose pieces. Yes, that pretty much covers what you can expect to find in this blog as I go along. Snippets of ideas. Tentative meanderings of thought. Descriptions. Dialogues. Flights of fancy. Enthusiasms. Nothing too long, unless writing something long is what I am playing with that day. But also no content implications or constraints. Just the writerly explorations of writing.

I am not looking for readers. I am looking for the writer that I once imagined I might have been.

When my wife and I decided to throw caution to the wind and purchase our first house, I never imagined how much it would change my life. Apartment dwellers for the past 25 years, the transition to the responsibilities of home ownership is a bit scary. I’ve never changed the air filter in a furnace before. I couldn’t tell you what the main breaker for the electrical service looks like. And don’t even mention gardens – what do I know from gardens?

Fortunately we had the benefit of some fabulous assistance: a real estate agent with whom we really clicked; a home inspector (what we would have called a “surveyor”, I think, in England) who was incredibly professional, thorough and communicative; a bank with a heart (yes – can you believe it?); and the generous helping hands of brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews. So, on 30 October we took possession of the house that will be our home for some years to come.

Of course for someone like me the thing I see most no matter where I live is a computer screen. However situating that screen in a nice office can in fact make a difference. My new office has a long window that reaches all the way down to my desk. I’m located upstairs and can see for some distance out the back of our house. The snows have already arrived. In the distance are the beautiful Seagram’s lofts. Closer are the white covered back gardens that other homeowners like me are probably looking out on with an admixture of pride and fear.

For now the house is a delight. My wife is happy. I am happy. And I have a great new office with view. About the shovelling of snow…not so much.

When I moved back to Canada after 13 years in the UK, I had the luxury of being able to step back from things. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to think through what I might like to do with the rest of my life. But in fact I didn’t need any time at all. I’ve been heading in a certain direction, I think, for about 40 years. All I really needed time to discover was the next step along the way.

In July, I was invited to a meeting in Italy by the folks at eIFL.net: electronic information for libraries. I was being asked to take a fresh look at a proposal for a new program area for eIFL, one that would advocate the use of free and open source software (FOSS) in libraries across their member countries. The aim would be to raise awareness and understanding of FOSS, to facilitate eIFL.net member engagement with FOSS development communities, and to undertake projects of special significance to eIFL.net members. In fact, this was a call to do nothing less than build a new community of FOSS champions in university libraries from southern Africa to eastern Europe and beyond.

How tempting is that, eh?

Of course for me it was also a bit terrifying. First, I am not a librarian, so nearly everyone involved would have specialist knowledge that I do not. Second, I am neither a systems administrator nor a professional software developer, so I have very little of technical worth to offer this proto-community, least of all first-hand experience deploying the integrated library systems (ILS) Koha or Evergreen, which would be the foci of our initial project. Third, building sustainable communities is hard. Really hard.

Sounded like just the sort of challenge I was looking for 🙂

And so I signed up at the beginning of September. (I spent much of August with my parents after my father discovered he was in urgent need of a triple by-pass operation; completely successful, I’m glad to say.)

You might be wondering what I have to offer such a program given my list of shortcomings above. The truth is that I don’t believe in shortcomings. In fact, I will be treating each of those shortfalls as pluses.

First, I will be learning something new every day, and every member of this new community will have something they can teach me. Second, my focus will be on exploring the Koha and Evergreen development communities and sharing what I find. Everyone else will no doubt be focusing on the software itself and sharing what they find. Together we’ll take the steps necessary for positive engagement with these development communities. Third, of course building sustainable communities is hard – that’s why it is so rewarding!

Funding for the eIFL-FOSS proposal was secured from the Open Society Institute in mid-October. Since then I have gradually begun putting a public face on our new program. But they are early days. One aspect of the new program I can point you to, however, is my new work blog. I will be posting there on all aspects of the program and of our ILS pilots. It promises to be a grand adventure.

So is this what I want to be doing the rest of life? If by “this” you mean facilitating the growth of new sustainable communities, then yes, that sounds about right.

I have been in Canada now for about a month and a half, enough time to have got my bearings and to make some decisions about where I’m headed.

First off, let me say that it is good to be home. Home, I know, is a state of mind. While I lived in Oxford and London, I quickly settled on those locales as home. Because I really need to feel like home is where I’m living. Maybe that’s just me. I don’t function well with divided loyalties, the constant longing to be somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t here. I always want to be precisely where I am. And that’s why home is a moveable feast for me. So I can say again, with as many layers of meaning as you like – it’s good to be home.

Home is now Waterloo, Ontario. It is half of the Kitchener-Waterloo conurbation. The Waterloo half has two universities (University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University), the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Research In Motion (RIM), an excellent repertory cinema – The Princess and its sister cinema The Princess Twin, and enough Tim Hortons coffee shops to make me think I might be back in Hamilton again. It’s a nice town. It has a thriving Uptown area of shops, an excellent public library, a vibrant arts and music scene with plenty of free festivals throughout the summer, and a scattering of parks and cycle routes. All this and yet mere minutes drive to some of the most lovely countryside in the province, complete with an industrious Mennonite community about which I have much to learn.

There is a bit of an open source and free software community in the region. For example, I’ve already been to a meeting of the Kitchener-Waterloo Linux Users Group (KWLUG). But with plenty of universities within a short drive (e.g. the University of Toronto is only 90 minutes drive away) there are numerous opportunities for those with a background in open source development, free software deployment, and a bit of drive and determination. Even RIM periodically advertises for individuals with open source experience.

What there isn’t is anything like OSS Watch. Indeed there isn’t anything like the numerous significant advocacy groups that I knew in the UK. Maybe I just haven’t found them yet, but if I haven’t then they are well hidden.

What there is, however, is oodles of potential and buckets of opportunity. It’s a cliché, I know, but everyone here in Canada has been ever so nice. You get the impression that if you put forward a good idea, there will be lots of hands to help out straight away. It’s a place where community isn’t just a word.

And finally a word for family. I’ve seen more of my family (parents, sisters, nieces, nephews, etc.) in the past month than I have in the past 10 years combined. And that turns out to be a good thing too.

It’s nice to be home.