It is the end of the summer, the September rush starts (actually at the end of August) and on Friday I’ll be setting off on the ferry and be away from home for all of September and October 🙁 Of course I didn’t manage to accomplish as much as I wanted over the summer, and didn’t get away on holiday … except of course living next to the sea is sort of like holiday every day! However, I did take some time off when Miriam visited, joining her on cycle rides to start her training for her Kenyan challenge — neither of us had been on a bike for 10 years! Also this last weekend saw the world come to Tiree when a group of asylum seekers and refugees from the St Augustine Centre in Halifax visited the Baptist Church here — kite making, songs from Zimbabwe and loads of smiling faces.
In September I also hand over departmental personnel duty (good luck Keith :-)). I’d taken on the HR role before my switch to part-time at the University, and so most of it stayed with me through the year 🙁 (Note, if you ever switch to part-time, better to do so before duties are arranged!). Not sorry to see it go, the people bit is fine, but so much paper filling!
… and beginnings … in September (next week!) I also start to work part-time with Talis. Talis is a remarkable story. A library information systems company that re-invented itself as a Semantic Web company and now, amongst other things, powering the Linked Data at data.gov.uk.
I’ve known Talis as a company from its pre-SemWeb days when aQtive did some development for them as part of our bid to survive the post-dot.com crash. aQtive did in the end die, but Talis had stronger foundations and has thrived1. In the years afterwards two ex-aQtive folk, Justin and Nad, went to Talis and for the past couple of years I have also been on the external advisory group for their SemWeb Platform. So I will be joining old friends as well as being part of an exciting enterprise.
- Libraries literally need very strong foundations. I heard of one university library that had to be left half empty because the architect had forgotten to take account of the weight of books. As the shelves filled the whole building began to sink into the ground.[back]