rivervox

My colleague and mentor passed away. He had a minor stroke and went to the hospital where he had a major stroke and never regained consciousness. It was a sudden and terrible loss. Last time I saw him we spent an hour and a half in a conference room talking about knowledge management; the data, software, information architecture and how to get people to use and appreciate it. He was an expert in the field but so humble and supportive of my efforts. His enthusiasm was contagious. More than anything technical, I learned from him how to manage the demands of working with people and their data. We commiserated over limitations and got excited about possibilities. He was so enthusiastic, so curious and persistent. It was contagious and working with him boosted my skills to the next level. I don't know how I'm going to go forward without him. After years of trying to explain to others how I think about data structures and how they should be organized, here was someone who understood. Information architecture was in his bones and he had that sense of where things should be best placed in the system. So often in meetings, when our users would be suggesting some new field or categorization scheme, he would look at my face, curled up in a sour expression, and laugh. He would be the one to explain why this wasn't a good idea in a friendly, articulate way, while I could barely contain my impulse to say it was a priori WRONG. I will miss his counsel, his good humor and the comfort of a like-minded soul. At least I still have the system that he built, in some ways a map of his mind, which will sustain our organization for a long time. And I hope to catch glimpses of his ghost in the machine.