In Memoriam - Marc Orchant - the true GTD evangelist

This is so painful. This is simply not fair. When I heard about Marc suffering coronary I was more than certain he would make it. He didn’t. He’s gone. Forever.

Marc Orchant will be missed as a friend, mentor, guru and a true GTD (Getting Things Done) evangelist and Nozbe supporter and user from day 1.

I read Marc’s posts when he was writing about TabletPCs (we both owned Toshiba M200 TabletPC back then) and later through his Office Evolution blog at ZDnet. On Februrary 10th he wrote a great article about Nozbe which and shortly after this we started keeping in touch through email.

It was Marc who convinced me to go to San Francisco for the Office 2.0 Conference and participate as a speaker at the GTD with Office 2.0 Panel moderated by him.

(Me and Marc during the GTD Panel at the Office 2.0 Conference – snapshot from a live-broadcast video courtesy of Veodia)

Marc and I celebrated the last day of the conference with a dinner in a great Chinese Restaurant in China-Town SF with Marc’s best friend Oliver Starr, Marc’s wife Sue and my wife Ewelina. Here’s a photo of Marc and his wife Sue waiting in the line to the restaurant – picture taken with my iPhone:

(Marc Orchant with his wife Sue, San Francisco, September 7th 2007 – shot with my iPhone’s built in camera)

It was a great outing, we shared lots of stories, laughs, and just had a great time – I will always remember these great moments and keep them in my heart. After I flew back home, Marc wrote to me:

"Thanks for your company – I know we all enjoyed spending the evening with you every bit as much. It was a great way to consummate our friendship by spending some social time together with the people closest to us.

I’ll look forward to keeping up to date on your progress with Nozbe and I’m certain we’ll find our paths crossing again sometime soon."

This is what struck me today so much upon reviewing our email correspondence – next time we’ll cross our paths will be in the other life…

This the funny thing about the Internet today – you meet someone in a "virtual life" through email, chat, blogs… and later you develop a great friendship – so when you meet, even when it’s only once, you make the best of it and you feel like you’ve been great friends forever. This is how I felt about Marc and this is how I will remember him.

Please help by donating to the Orchant Family

Marc was only 50 – he left his wife Sue and two teenage children: Jason and Rebecca. Please send your support to the Orchant family through a donation link on Oliver Starr’s blog – Marc’s best friend blog >>

PS. I’ve re-scheduled some of the Nozbe development and tomorrow a new Nozbe feature will be introduced – a feature Marc Orchant himself suggested me to develop.

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