alan taylor

The last time I saw Alan, I was wishing him well on new endeavors post-Amazon.com. I remember his warm personality, sincerity and enthusiasm to try something new and interesting.

The last time I saw Alan, we were having a beer at the Elysian and talking about audiobook addictions, commuting, and Robert McCluskey.

i just read your thing on god, and it just got me hooked cause i agree! there’s so many things we just don’t know, and as much as we wish we knew i don’t think we will until our time has come.

I met Stewart in Real Life (as opposed to a few random prior emails) at O’Reilly’s ETech 2004, where he and Ben Cerveny were sitting behind me, madly working on keeping up a sleek little chat application called Flickr. They (Ludicorp) had opened it up to conference-goers, and it was having some initial problems. I remember him being gracious enough to take the time and say “hello”, even though it was a apparent his attention was elsewhere. Oh yeah, Flickr (the Flash-based chat app) could also handle uploading and sharing images, a neat little add-on, which eventually became a Very Big Deal indeed.

I’d like to ask him why my brother was born with autism. I’d like to ask the purpose of human suffering. I’d like to ask the meaning of everything, and I’d like to ask for a sightseeing trip to the faraway universe.

I’d also prefer to meet him while still living, if possible (and if he exists).

They are the essence of being human.

A fellow named Derek Powazek started an online project called Citystories.com – and put out a general call to others to set up local versions. Erik and I independently asked Derek to set up a Seattle chapter, and both were okayed (Derek forgot that he’d already given one of us the greenlight). When we discovered that we were both working on the same thing, Derek suggested we meet and sort things out – an excellent idea. Erik’s citystories site was way ahead of mine, so I joined in as a collaborator and we became friends.

Shortly afterwards, I was laid off from a dot-com startup, and sent mail to some friends saying “Help I’m out of work”. Erik responded within a few minutes, and had his supervisor call me and set up an initial interview – which eventually led to a great job at amazon.com

I ran into Jeff a number of times while working at Amazon.com for a couple of years. On my last day at work at Amazon (in 2004), I happened to bump into Jeff one last time – as it happens, at the urinals (5th floor restroom). There are only two, and we ended up side-by-side. Breaking the inevitably awkward silence – he spoke first, asking how my website was doing. I said “fine”, and let him know I was moving to Boston. His last words to me, as we left the restroom together were “Oh, Alan… that’s so disappointing”.