Michael Bauer, a good friend and a colleague at Open Knowledge for nearly 2 years passed away a month ago. I’m still finding it hard to process that he’s passed away. He’d congratulated me on my run just the day before. And this is the final tweet from his Twitter account.
@nigelbabu well done btw! Now kick it tomorrow as welll!
— Michael Bauer (@mihi_tr) September 12, 2015
I met Michael for the first time in winter of 2013. It was my first summit after starting at Open Knowledge. Michael, Friedrich, Lucy, Tryggvi, I, and a few others were holed up in Rufus’ kitchen getting briefed on Openspending from Friedrich. Over the years, we’ve worked together to deliver trainings and we met each other at the Open Knowledge summits and events. I sat through one of Michael’s trainings last year in Tanzania on cleaning data. I learned quite a lot about cleaning up data from him that day. He got the entire room comfortable about learning new things. I could see their joy in understanding how to use the right tools.
After Michael left Open Knowledge, we kept in touch on #running on irc.freenode.net and Twitter. I’d just started running this year and he encouraged me to do longer distances. As I continue running, I’ll surely be thinking of Michael every day.
At the last summit we both attended in Cambridge, Michael had brought Pink sunglasses and he coaxed me into having this hilarious picture taken. I miss Michael’s infectious energy and silliness.
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