Gnome Man's Land: Jesse Good and Doug Bastien

Jesse, Todd, and Doug

Recently, I appropriated the wrap-up portion of the inaugural Government of Canada Wiki Community of Practice group for an inaugural event of my own: presentation of the very first GCPEDIA 1K Club Award "Gnomies"—little tokens of my personal appreciation, recognizing users who have made 1,000 edits to the wiki.

It was a wonderful experience, if not a bit surreal, but I couldn't have asked for two better gnomes to kick off this award with.

Jesse Good has a pre-eminently polite and unassuming manner than belies his own indispensability to the GCPEDIA project.  I've never met anyone who worked so hard to improve both the code and tool infrastructure of the wiki and the education and satisfaction of its users, while remaining staunchly opposed to holding designated administrative access.  He's determined to experience GCPEDIA just as other users do, and be guided by that experience to discover how the platform can improve.

Doug Bastien was already a dedicated toolsmith and community builder before I was even a glint in GCPEDIA's eye.  A distinguished blogger who recently relaunched in June, Doug has been spearheading the Web 2.0 Practitioners (W2P) group mixers for over a year, bringing public servants together to mingle and network.  More recently he rolled out a series of Bootcamps to teach Google Analytics, Twitter, Open Data, and other important and emerging topics.

To borrow a quote from Richard M. Stallman, me giving an award to Gov 2.0 luminaries like these felt "a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance."  I was touched that they were genuinely excited to attend and gratified by the gesture, which only reinforced my appreciation for them and all they contribute to GCPEDIA.