Marc Orchant was a long-time Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIN) blogger. He was the first blogger I got email from when our servers were hacked during my anniversary trip in July 2005. Sadly, he’s not the first WIN blogger I knew who has died.
At our WINstock dinner two short years ago, Marc didn’t have a problem with my dev team pirating his company’s ssh client, SecureCRT. He even offered to get them legitimate copies and thanked my guys for spreading the word about the product.
He suffered a massive heart attack a week ago and died earlier today. According to the last couple of posts he wrote about quitting Facebook, he was only 50.
He left WIN for ZDNet in early 2006, sending us a message titled “So long and thanks for all the fish…er, fun.” I congratulated him on the move and he had nothing but positive things to say about his experience with us.
The fact that everyone, without exclusion, at WIN was completely supportive and understanding made the decision a lot easier to make. And it’s been a very positive move – I’m writing at a length that’s more comfortable for me and working from a platform much more focused on the level of geek/tech I’m passionate about.
I was really excited for him. A few months ago he made a similar jump out of ZDNet and into blognation USA in a post called So long and thanks for all the fish. (Do you see a pattern here?)
He was a talented, professional and prolific writer and we were lucky to have worked with him on our little blogging network as long as we did.
Brian Alvey 