David Singer retired . He’s been at Apple since 1988, and my colleague since I joined in 2011.
At this year’s TPAC, during the plenary session, David was recognized for his many contributions to the W3C over the years. Seth asked some of us to speak. Here’s what I said:
Hi everybody. I’m Tess, Apple’s AC rep and David’s colleague. We’ve worked together for the last fourteen-ish years.
When Seth asked me to say a few words about him tonight, I very quickly realized that it would be impossible for me to summarize his impact on our industry, both in the world of media standards and here at W3C. So I’m not even going to try.
I will simply say that I have learned more from David about how to do this sort of thing, how to engage in standards work, how to find consensus where none is forthcoming, than from anybody else and I know that’s true for many of you as well.
If you’re only familiar with David’s work here, I strongly encourage you to chat him up tonight. Ask him about MPEG. About Unicode. About ISO BMFF. About late nights, last-minute compromises, getting the most stubborn engineers in the world to actually listen to each other (you know who you are), building bridges, and all the many friendships he’s made across countries, languages, and continents along the way.
If you do, you won’t regret it.
In fact, I bet he’ll even recommend a restaurant or two in your hometown, wherever that may be.
David, It’s been my honor and and absolute pleasure to work with you.