“Constantly scanning the peripheral, always motivated by the desire not to miss opportunities.” Linda Stone
I remember the day I met him. He gazed up at me with those beautiful clear blue eyes, welcomed me with a glimpse of the Cheshire cat grin I would come to know well, and made a joke about my role at the Credit Union. It was clear that David was bright. Very, very bright. And he was funny.
I remember the last time we spoke, three days before he left. David emailed me following yet another of our sprawling conversations to let me know that we had spoken for 43 minutes and 27 seconds. He advised me that at his 9-5 EST grid (???!) $250/hr for on-call/off-site support, I owed him sushi and a Sapporo. I replied that I paid for tech support in rubles so the Sapporo might be a stretch. At either rate, it would have been a bargain.
David was a passionate and gifted teacher. Always kind. Always generous. And he had a way with words. Sometimes he’d email or tweet me and I’d have no clue what he was talking about. One day, catching my tweet of a song from blipfm, David tweeted back, “Spotify, silly wabbit…It’s the new black.” Say what?
We sparred with words and ideas. I’m the communications girl – it drives me nuts when I can’t understand someone. David drove me nuts frequently. His job description was “new media, technology, innovation and education” – I wanted his job! He described what he did as “figuring out where new “stuff” fit in with the older “stuff.” David didn’t research or network, he was “cool-hunting” in the CU system for “crowd-powered innovation”. God I had to run fast to keep up with him.
We first collaborated on an email presi for staff. We designed a cool broadsheet of email tips and David created a Keynote injected with neat graphics, cool video and lots of humour. That was the first time I got in trouble at work. Note to self: not everyone wants to know what LMFAO means.
I was determined to bring in the best communications tools and David was committed to ensuring we had the latest in Social Media, Web 2.0, and Open Source apps, and we were all going to work in Wikis. This proved a challenge. “Why is it,” he asked, “that when the wagon is broken and the wheels are square, peeps still try to push it uphill through the mud?” David had a gift for slinging a really good metaphor.
David was passionate about bringing “social/nu-media/network-ing” to the Credit Union. He saw change coming in the industry, and he was determined to make some of our own. He wanted to “empower the Gen-Y/next generation to become captains of the CU movement.” He was always trying to figure out where ideas can meet application.
But the world rarely moved fast enough for David. Communicating with him was like being at the epicentre of a tornado. Some chose to run for cover and dodge the fallout of scattered flotsam and jetsam. Their loss. I scrabbled to grab all that I could and there was always more to grab than I could hold onto – so more sushi, more Sapporo.
What’s the ROI of “pure win and awesome.” Where’s David? What’s a meme again?! He’s here… I catch fleeting glimpses of him from the periphery of my vision – he’s just outside of my grasp.
Gonna miss you, my friend.
Created by Oliver Swainson for the Marketing Dept.
What a wonderful tribute. I did not meet David face to face but I did have some of those conversations with David that you are talking about on Twitter and on my blog. He definitely left me with a thinking WTF and also had me LMFAO on more than one occasion.
I had blogged about the United Communities’ One Member One Vote initiative that David helped create last year and he left some of the most “inventive” comments I have ever experienced!
http://www.currencymarketing.ca/blog/shout-out-united-communities-one-member-one-vote
He ended one of his comments with this:
“Close speech, turn, trip off stage, exit right, no left, and stumble to the key grip for a swig of JD.”
Seems very fitting.
Thanks for sharing Tim…your quote is such a “David”.
Thank you so very much for remembering and honouring such a great young man. David was a dear friend of mine from teachers college. He will be truly missed by all whom were fortunate to have meet him. He really new how to touch the hearts of all he meet. We all believe he is out there in cyber space creating something wonderful. David will live in my heart forever!!!
David was so full of life and interesting. He could be a pain in the neck but his energy and laughter was infectious. He was always himself. I remember meeting him in the Boston airport on my way to BarCampBankNewEngland. He just bumped into me as I later thought how was he going to get to Manchester NH? Well we got the Hertz car at about 11:30 pm. I had the map and gave it to him. No way he said. We were going to use this GPS device. So off we drove. After about an hour we had arrived in Manchester but couldn’t find anything. It was dark and such a small town. I asked him to check his GPS. Well we were in Manchester all right but it wasn’t New Hampshire, it was Massachusetts! So off we went for another hour drive and finally got to our hotel a little after 2:00 am. We told the story the next day and had a good laugh.
The last time heard from him he was heading up here from Oregon and we were going to get together. But he ran out of time staying with some relatives. We thought there would be another time but sadly that is not to be.
It just seems so strange to think he is gone. I will miss him.
This came from Scott Schnaars:
So here is my David story.
As you may know, my wife is a cancer survivor. When she was diagnosed, I started a blog, hopeforholly.com, as a way (that was cheaper than therapy) to deal with everything and as a way to educate people about the disease.
One weekend, the site got hacked and someone posted a bunch of links that would make sailors blush. I tweeted about it, simply asking how it happens and what could be done. David called me on a Saturday morning about 5 minutes after my post explaining that he was on it, could I set up a temporary account for him to look at it and that he would look into it and, if he couldn’t solve the issue, he would get some friends on the case as well and not only stop it, but find them and mess with them a bit.
He offered some great suggestions for the site which I immediately implemented and to this date, it hasn’t been hacked again. More importantly it was so cool that David took this as an affront to him. That someone would do this to a site designed for an altruistic purpose was an attack on him and all things that were good in the world. That was the kind of person that David was. Someone who would go far out of his way to do the right thing to make the world a better place.
I’ll miss him.
Scott