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title: Points mean prizes
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image: 
    feature: header_olh_prize.png
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This morning I gave the third of my keynote talks this week at the Janeway conference: The Lower Decks. It's been quite a week and I am exhausted with my kidney failure.

Indeed, today is a macabre one year anniversary, precisely, since I had the kidney biopsy that revealed my BK Virus Nephropathy and that my kidneys were going to be totally destroyed. Of course, I didn't know that quite at that time. The nephrologists had never seen BKVN in a native kidney before. We tried everything we could to stop it, but I still ended up with just a few percent functionality left and needing permanent dialysis. It felt good to be able to do the talks this week, because, at one point even very recently, I thought I would not be well enough.

So not the happiest of days in some ways. Or so I thought. My very kind colleagues at the Open Library of Humanities, it turns out, had conspired to present me with an award for the ten years I spent building and running OLH. I basically had to retire from this, earlier this year, due to extreme ill health and a desire to get back to research work in a scholarly comms context, working at Crossref.

I can't say how much this kindness overwhelmed me. I got to work with such great people at OLH -- and I don't doubt that they will do just fine without me -- but the thoughtful kindness behind this, at a time of such personal difficulty, really meant the world to me. Without meaning to show off: I've won quite a lot of prizes. But the ones that mean the most, personally, are those that I know were driven by friends and colleagues who value what I have done and for which I did not apply. Demmy Verbeke comes to mind for nominating me for the KU Leuven Medal of Honor. Everyone who put me forward for the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute's Open Scholarship Award. And now, this, from my OLH colleagues and friends. I was quite overcome with emotion when they presented me with the prize and a lovely carved trophy.

I also had a small epiphany, as my friend Caroline introduced me at the conference, about what matters in how you are described and remembered. The things that matter are not how clever you are. Lots of people are clever and there will always be people who are brighter than you. But if you are described as kind or generous, well, that's as positive an impact on the Earth as you can hope for. I remember once my colleague and friend Mauro who put it well: "it's so nice to encounter an academic who isn't an asshole". I think living up to this is a higher priority for me from now on.

Thank you so much, again, friends.