# About Me
My name is Nick Dickinson-Wilde(he/him). Professionally a senior Drupal engineer, I live in Sooke, BC Canada/T'So-uke lands and am a father, environmentalist and engaged community member.
I've been a father since 2023 and it is amazing even if exhausting at times and I prioritized it over almost all politics for pretty much a year. Despite decreased involvement in politics temporarily, having a son has if anything made me more determined to make the world better than before.
I've lived on/around Vancouver Island my whole life - ranging from Pacheedaht lands (Port Renfrew) to Tsawout/Tseycum lands (Pender Islands) although mostly in the Sooke area. When not being a computer nerd, I can generally be found hiking, biking, gardening or at community events.
I'm an avid cyclist and keen hiker of all our local parks and used to cycle as my primary solo transportation modality. A lot less biking since becoming a father due to the unfortunately very unsafe nature of many local roads - I am comfortable biking on many roads that I'm absolutely unwilling to have my son in a trailer on some roads and unfortunately my closest secondary road is unsafe in that way.
Depending on your precise definition of millennial used, I'm either exactly in the middle or to the slightly younger side - born in 1990. My earliest news memories are the War in the Woods (Clayoquot Sound anti-logging protests), and Kim Campbell being Canada's first female prime minister - although I didn't expect her to be our only female prime minister 30 years later.
# Work
Although both palaeontology and veterinary sciences were very appealing as a youth, I instead have pursued another interest of mine - specifically, computer sciences. I've specialized in software engineering and am a Drupal 10 Triple Certified Developer.
During the day, I'm the Drupal Manager at Taoti Creative.
Working at Taoti since 2018, I'm also head of the dev-ops practice area and was majorly responsible for the shift to composer usage internally. Taoti has been a top 100 Drupal company for contributions for multiple years primarily due to my involvement.
I contribute quite a bit to Drupal - both core and the contrib ecosystem, often that is directly related to my work but sometimes no connection. Taoti specifically has at times given me time for DrupalCon so the barriers are quite often vague. Sometimes "yes this is my own time" but also "I'm able to contribute because I learnt about this bug at work and it interested me" and "Taoti's money is what gives me the free time to contribute".
# Politics
I've been politically active from a young age - leading (with my twin) student vote for on the Pender Islands. We were also environmentally active being involved with conservancy association, speaking at the UNEP International Childrens' Conference of the Environment at UVic in 2002 and serving on the Youth Round Table on the Environment (Environment Canada advisory body).
Provincial/National
I have long felt that political parties are a blight on the political landscape as they by nature tend to compress political debate and encourage negative partisan behaviours. Total acceptance of leader's faults is a great example of the negative behaviours. Despite that - or in some ways because of it - I'm a lifelong Green Party of Canada member (since 16) and BC Green Party. As far as platforms go, they align the closest - although not perfectly - but the most important part is that neither the BC Greens nor the GPC are whipped parties which means that unlike every non-independent MLA in BC or MP in Canada they can actually follow their conscience and local issues rather than being forced to vote party lines.
Local
Local politics is in almost all cases the most important and easiest to make positive change. I've been involved in local politics most of my life from non-profits such as Pender Island Conservancy Association to governmental committees involved in land use and extremely frequent council attendee/watcher and sometimes speaker. With being a father, this is the area of politics I expect to be prioritizing in the near future, especially as regards safety and equality.