The book which Beth co-authored with Allison Fine has deservedly become a bestseller (has your CEO read it yet?). There are many reviews of the book, but among the most thought-provoking commentaries is this write-up by Ethan Zuckerman.

On 22 November, Beth will be speaking at the offices of The Guardian (an event we hope to stream) and again later that day at an event hosted by my friends at JustGiving. This evening event has been very popular (to say the least), but one or two places may become available, so do add yourself to the ‘waiting’ list. You never know.

In other news… I spent a couple of days up in Scotland the week before last (time flies, etc.). I had been invited to speak at the Institute of Fundraising’s Scottish conference in Glasgow, and the following day I jumped on a train to Edinburgh (my first time on that route) to take part in the inaugral BeGoodBeSocial event, which turned out to be a stormer. Check out my old friend Hugh Wallace’s reflections on the evening.

Unfortunately, I had to make a dash for the airport half way through the evening, but not before catching up with wonderful people like Ross McCulloch (@thirdsectorlab) – to whom I salute for being Organiser-in-Chief – Stuart Glen (@stuglen), Martin Keane (@onekindMK), Lauren Currie (@redjotter) and Sarah Drummond (@rufflemuffin) of Snook (@wearesnook), and Marc Bowker (@marcbowker) – all for the first time.

If there’s one thing I was keen for people to take-away from my talk (and it’s a theme I’m continually barking on about these days, so please forgive me if you’ve heard this before), it’s this…

the more we remain in our silos and feel constrained by our job descriptions, the greater the disconnect between us and our supporters

Here’s the deck (more ‘bullets’ than usual; optimised for sharing). Many thanks to all those who have tweeted / faved this already.

View on slideshare.

Picking up on from my last post (We get the return on social media we deserve), I encourage people to duck out of one meeting a week (you know, one of those of little real value)… and instead use that time to ‘be’ a community member.

On that score, it’s well worth making time to listen to Euan Semple doing what he does best at the ‘Do Lectures’ back in mid-September… before the leaves turned and fell.

The plan had been to save enough to put down a deposit and first month’s rent on a flat in London, and start the next chapter of our lives together here, where we paint our houses the colour of bad weather. But the crippling peso devaluation in December 1994 kicked that idea – and our immediate aspirations – into touch. We had to start all over again.

So there we were, in Taunton (where my parents live) on a wet and miserable January morning. Gicela picked up what must have been Issue 5 (or thereabouts) of Internet magazine from the shelves in WH Smith. The rest, as they say, is history. Faster than you can say World Wide Web Consortium, we were both enrolled on the EU-funded electronic publishing course at Hoxton Bibliotech. I was whisked along by Gicela’s enthusiasm for technology, as I have been pretty much ever since.

In early 1996, Gicela started work at The Guardian New Media Lab, which was led then by Bill Thompson. She later joined the small team at Microsoft who launched Expedia in the UK, before moving to a web start-up called e-garden, which faded and died as the dot com bubble burst. I’ve fished out this interview in Computer Weekly, from that time.

Gicela was born in Toliman, high up in the heartland of Mexico. As a young girl she used to gather up an armful of avocados and chillies harvested from her parents’ garden, to sell in the town plaza every Sunday morning. Some years later, just before we met, she graduated as an electronics engineer – the only woman in her year. She stayed on to teach, and I recall that she later shared her lab (on the very jungly edge of a Pacific coastal town) with tarantulas, as well as many less handsome male colleagues. Take my word for it, teaching electronics to a class full of young men in Mexico is no beach holiday.

So here we are, a decade and a half later. Gicela, thank you for the journey and happy fifteenth wedding anniversary. I’m so proud that in their mother, our two daughters have such a wonderful role model.

Love and respect. Forever.

Follow @gicela on Twitter.

Find out more about Ada Lovelace Day.

Don José is one hundred years old, or thereabouts. Nobody knows; not even Don José. His birth certificate, along with countless other documents, was destroyed by fire during the Cristero War in 1920s Mexico.

All of his adult life he’s lived in the small town of Tolimán, in the state of Querétaro. It used to be so green here that every year they held a festival to celebrate the advocado. This has since been re-named the “semi-desert festival” as the land has become arid and the top-soil has turned to dust the colour of ochre. On a small plot of land half way up the hill they call “Calvary”, Don José built a tiny house of adobe and surrounded it with a prickly-pear cacti fence.

From that spot Don José has seen it all. Like the day the first motor car pulled into town causing one poor old soul to drop dead with the shock of it all. He is fond of telling how around the time of the Mexican Revolution (which cost a million lives) people used to hack the silver coins clean in half for want of small change.

When he was a young man he built spectacular castillos - firework-towers. He lost half of one of the fingers on his left hand, a hazard of the job if you were a cohetero. He then worked for my wife’s grandfather, and long afterwards continued to look after the house, tend the garden, and harvest the nuts when my in-laws were away for long periods.

Don José is honest to the bone and fiercely loyal. He has very few material possessions, but is hugely generous of spirit. In his own words he is a “a good servant”.

He attributes his longevity to the occasional sip of rough tequila and a smoke – one cigarette in the morning; another just before bed para el alma – “for the soul”.

During a call ‘home’ over the weekend, my wife learned that Don José had passed away on Wednesday. According to tradition, he was buried the following day. So we lit a candle for him, and remembered.

I hope this doesn’t sound trite or patronising. I wanted to write something about him, so you can understand why I feel so lucky to have known Don José.

Que en paz descanse, Don Josécito.