This is so sad. Dan always found time to talk to you, whether it was at the local NYC meetup or one of the monster Kubecons. No matter how small your company, he tried to get everyone to be active in the community.
I have a quick Dan story. I saw him after a Kubecon keynote and I joked that he should have sent me the slides for review, because the numbers for diversity grants he showed on stage were great, but the total was wrong. Later that day, I saw him again at the evening party. I think it was in Austin, the crazy one where it snowed. He told me, still embarrassed, that he had checked and the numbers were wrong. Then, he handed me a couple of extra tickets for drinks. I think I'll pour one for him now.
> I think it was in Austin, the crazy one where it snowed.
One my favorite memories of Dan is him going from venue to venue during this crazy "snowstorm" in Austin (it was less than an inch) trying to make sure that everyone got more drink tickets. And he would joke "If I don't come back from the next place send a pack of sled dogs after me" or something.
Out of all his duties he took giving extra drink tickets to attendees very seriously, that was his thing.
> this crazy "snowstorm" in Austin (it was less than an inch)
Coming from MN and NY, that was nothing, but I had only packed t-shirts. The first I was aware of any snow was when walking out of the conference and seeing a BMW covered with an inch of it (from elsewhere? there was nothing on other cars).
Like the other poster said, Dan was an influence in people's careers/lives and definitely on mine, even if I met him only a few times per year. I changed jobs and no longer have the original emails, but somehow he put me in touch with folks at CoreOS about a blog post, which led to a lot of networking that I probably would have never made otherwise, including a relay race in LA(!)...
After reading the comments here and on Twitter, it seems like many people had the same experience of Dan taking a personal interest in their work, career and projects.
It was impressive how he could have such a connection with so many people and remember details. The first time I met him was at the OSSummit in LA 2017 where he was presenting the CNCF Landscape in a small side-room. I asked him how to get a project listed and he helped me get openfaas on there and approved the pull request. After that he always seemed to have time for me and helped me in my career.
This is such a shocking and great loss for our community, he was too young.
That was a great Kubecon. I remember a couple of the sponsor swag items were beanie hats, which ended up being a big help, but was (hopefully) completely unplanned.
I am one of the people from small companies that Dan spent so much time talking to, even though I'm sure there were a billion people from Google/Microsoft/Amazon that would have paid handsomely for his time. We've truly lost someone special.
I have a quick Dan story. I saw him after a Kubecon keynote and I joked that he should have sent me the slides for review, because the numbers for diversity grants he showed on stage were great, but the total was wrong. Later that day, I saw him again at the evening party. I think it was in Austin, the crazy one where it snowed. He told me, still embarrassed, that he had checked and the numbers were wrong. Then, he handed me a couple of extra tickets for drinks. I think I'll pour one for him now.