Re: Henry Story

Dear Community,

I feel very sad, because of Henry's sudden and premature departure,
and at the same time uplifted thanks to the beautiful response from the 
community.

I met Henry in person for the first time at WebID session during the
Federated Social Web Europe on June 3rd, 2011. I recall very well he and 
Dan Brickley
discussed various challenges of requiring too many RDF serializations.

He also gave a presentation on WebID during that summit (in the video it 
starts at 22:25)
http://web.archive.org/web/20110725215428/http://d-cent.org/video/fsw2011-4jun11-2-W3C-Architecture.mp4

Afterward, we crossed paths during a couple of Chaos Communication Club 
congresses and events,
while still participating in online group exchanges related to WebID and 
Federated Web.

In 2014 we both joined Social Web WG, where our online interaction 
became even more regular.
Social Web WG had its third F2F on May 3&4, 2015 in Paris (photo: 
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg/2015-05-04)

When I was looking for a place to stay Henry and Gordana generously 
offered to host me in their living room.
I remember enjoying various technical conversations over a bar of dark 
chocolate. At some point,
we wondered into details of recent changes in RDF 1.1 When 
rdf:langString data type came up, Henry opened his
laptop and right away adjusted his Scala code to correctly handle it.

Later that year, when I was staying in a nomadbase/indiehouse in Berlin, 
together with my wife-to-be.
Henry, and Gordana with their first child visited us one afternoon. We 
had a chance to hang out and enjoy a meal
all together. I believe Gordana helped us to make proper 
Kartoffelpuffer, while Henry was playing with the toddler.

I will miss Henry, and we all will.
We will continue our work but it will never be the same.

Gordana, please accept my deepest condolences to you and the kids.
I hope you are surrounded by family to support you in this difficult 
time <3

Yours truly,
elf Pavlik

Received on Monday, 11 September 2023 14:14:33 UTC