Remembering Marc Orchant – gone one year today, very much in my thoughts…

marc_and_sue_by_scoble

marc_and_sue_by_scoble

I can hardly believe that it’s been a year since the world lost the irreplacable soul, friend, father, coach, mentor, husband and so much more wrapped up in the being of a man I knew as Marc Orchant.

My time knowing Marc was much too brief – barely two years, yet in that short time he had a profound influence on my life- an influence that carries on without him in so many ways both big and small.

Marc and I had a regular routine consisting of Skype, phone, twitter and email that carried on throughout the say comprising multiple cross threaded dialogs – we were very present in one anothers lives even though I lived in California while Marc had no intention of moving from his beloved New Mexico.

Anyone that knew Marc, even a little, knows that he was the consummate educator/geek.  He loved technology and he loved helping people discover how useful it was for themselves.  He was very much the Zen Master of technology – giving people just enough help that they could sort things out themselves and thus own the knowledge rather than fixing whatever it was and creating another dependent tech user.

Marc had an almost childlike love of things shiny – much like my own – however while one might see me as a person who refuses to grow up Marc’s delight was more sage – wiser somehow – he was wiser in so many ways.

A short time after meeting Marc and beginning to work with him at Foldera I knew that we’d be friends for life.  I had no idea that in this case that meant such a short, short time.

In any case I am rambling incoherently because I’m still not ready to accept that he’s gone and that in this lifetime I won’t have the gift of his friendship, the benefit of his counsel or the pleasure of his intellect in my own life. The world seemed darker the day Marc left us and there are still so many shadows were he used to light things up.

Later today I’ll be flying back from London to LA and hopefully will be able to share a few of my experiences with Marc from the prior couple of years.  If anyone reading this has anything they’d like to share please comment or send me an email (oliver at owstarr dot com) and I will post it for you.  If you are interested in sharing anything productivity or GTD related that originated with or relates to Marc, including content he published previously – I’ll be posting that sort of material to GTDtimes.

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2 Responses to Remembering Marc Orchant – gone one year today, very much in my thoughts…

  1. Rebecca O says:

    Thinking of you today, Oliver.

    How we all wish the Bat-Signal would work today, eh?

    Anyway. Love to you. Hope all is well.

  2. I still cannot accept he’s not among us anymore. Next year we’ll be all attending the GTD summit and he’s so much supposed to be there with us…

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