Just One Thing.
All, I'm still writing and re-writing my talk for tonight's Odd Salon, (a few tickets left!) because why calmly review something with confidence when you can frantically self-edit and question why anyone would let you take the stage in the first place weeeee. So I was planning on playing Missive hooky today.
But late last night, we learned that Ted Rheingold (@tedr), founder of Dogster and Catster, investor, fantastic tweeter, mentor, entrepreneur, technology champion, ally, good neighbor, passionate progressive, father, husband, and all-round kind and lovely human, passed away from Stage 4 Carcinoma. He was a moral rock in tech, and if you want to understand an iota of the impact he had on our community, read his Twitter mentions right now, where folks from around the world are reacting to the loss in real time.
I worked with Ted when I did comms for the Say Media editorial team, back when Dogster and Catster were under the Say umbrella. He was great to work with: creative, accessible, funny, always up to discuss the tech industry and how it could be improved, fiercely defensive of his team and colleagues, and so very generous with intros into his (vast) personal rolodex.
I saw Ted a few weeks back. I was having an early lunch at the Cavalier, a boisterous and friendly one that involved a great deal of head-thrown-back laughter. Towards the end, Ted came up to the table, apologized for interrupting, but said he'd been sitting a few tables down and had heard my laugh, and had to come say hello. I jumped up, and hugged him - too hard, I quickly realized, but he hugged back nevertheless, with a smile on his face. We stood there, chattering away about something political we'd gone back and forth on Twitter about, when I realized that I was so already-engrossed in the conversation that I'd forgotten about my lunch date. We hugged again, and he went back to his table, where he was writing.
So do one thing today: go read Ted's words.
May his memory be a blessing.