Digital Echidna is Proud to Support One Book One London

Today Digital Echidna was invited to the launch of London Public Library’s One Book One London reading initiative. We hope you’ll join us in this community activity, designed to be part of the Canada 150 celebrations, and help us put London’s best foot forward as we “walk” together through the year.

One Book One London celebrates reading and experiencing one book together as a community. Starting today, all across the city, Londoners are invited to read, listen to, and talk about the same book. The novel selected is Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper.

We also have some photos of the launch event available on the Digital Echidna Facebook page.

When the Library approached us about sponsoring One Book One London, we were intrigued. As the Library described its idea of a walking challenge and a map whereby a person could follow the book’s character as she walks from Saskatchewan to Halifax, it really captured our imagination.

The story is about an 82-year-old woman, Etta, whose life’s dream is to see the water of the ocean. So she sets out from her farm in Saskatchewan to walk to the waters of the Atlantic. A coyote, James, befriends her and becomes her walking companion. Together they share and describe the Canadian landscape as they walk and meet strangers through towns along the way. Her husband, Otto, at home waiting for her on their farm, reminisces about his Canadian WWII experiences and writes her letters. Etta in her lifelong quest walks over 3,000 km from Saskatchewan to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In helping bring their map idea to life, we developed walkonebook.com. The site, built on Drupal 8, lets individuals create an account, enter time spent walking, running or reading, and translates this time to a number of kilometres. People can register as an individual or as a team.

The challenge is to walk the 3,000+ km distance Etta walked, between today and the close of the campaign on Oct. 2, 2017.

Adding this layer of technology to the reading initiative has been a great experience for us and we’re extremely happy to be able to contribute to this unique, city-wide, barrier-free activity -- one that everyone can enjoy.

Furthermore, it came as no surprise that Digital Echidna -- a privately owned, young technology company -- and the London Public Library -- an established, much loved public institution -- share the same core corporate values of innovation, leadership, and transparency.

We hope that Londoners enjoy One Book One London. We are so happy to be supporting London Public Library along the way with walkonebook.com.