Everybody, Michael here. This isn’t normal episode of the drunken UX podcast. And it’s not really an episode at all. As you might have noticed from the title, we lost a member of the web industry today that stings just a little bit for us. Fortunately, many of us got the news today that our friend Christopher Schmidt passed away, very suddenly had his home in Austin, Texas earlier this week, not have the flu, the plague that is going around, as it turns out, but from causes I think that are as yet to be determined. He was a friend to many of us and a mentor to I think even more than that, probably.

Chris was always somebody who advocated for accessibility and open web standards and his well loves CSS knowledge ran deeper than most people will ever hope to learn in their lifetime. And it’s unfortunate that that has to be cut so short for us. And I just wanted to say a few of those kind things about him.

And I know we were very lucky he and I met several years ago at a conference. I can’t remember now if it was Confab or HighEdWeb, but remember going out with a group that included him and Ari and sitting in a restaurant and discussing everything from you know, web, two beer, two shoes, and then beyond and I tried to keep in touch with them as much as I could. After that time, over the years and off and on, especially, you know, he’s, he was very passionate about education and some of the work he started with wasp interact that has carried over in many areas was something that I referred back to many times.

Not just for my But as I worked with kids and have helped in high schools and things like that, and there were many times I went back to him and asked, hey, what would you suggest these kids read? What would you hand off to them with what’s a good next step and he was always somebody ready to jump into those conversations and, and, you know, give advice. He was somebody that you could not ask for a kinder, gentler, more wholesome kind of person in that way.

We were lucky this last year, he and I had been trying for quite some time actually to have him come on the podcast and be on an episode and that, of course, he was significantly busy and he traveled, you know, frequently to conferences and gave talks and everything. So we were back and forth for quite some time on that and finally managed to secure a spot earlier this year, and And we’re able to record that episode that we were we kicked off the year with, actually.

And I feeling I just feel like that timing was auspicious, I guess. I’m glad we got the opportunity and that we were able to put that together. Because if it did take it any longer, I wouldn’t have got to have that conversation with him. So our, our hearts certainly go out to Ari and their family and I know tough days are headed for them and tough days are ahead for the community because like I say, he impacted a lot of people and more than he probably will ever realize through his writings and his talks and his books. And it’s a shame that we won’t get to benefit from more of that.

So I just wanted to share those thoughts and let everybody know that it’ll be okay and If you know if you’re troubled by it or you need somebody to talk to please feel free to reach out now, if not to me then somebody else or somebody you trust and can confide in, but it sucks and I could sure use the rest of 2020 to be a whole lot better. So a new episode will be coming. It will come out as normal on Monday. And but I wanted to slip this in beforehand because I thought it was important and our best to everybody out there.