The Earthquake’s Toll: Remembering Dan Fredinburg
News reports are rolling in of heavy hearts in the tech community, as many mourn the loss of a widely beloved friend, Dan Fredinburg. The headlines read of a 33 year-old “Google exec” who lost his life on Mount Everest during the tragic earthquake in Nepal yesterday.
Beyond the headlines of a relatively unknown Silicon Valley employee who died adventuring in the mountains, I wanted to share very briefly why the news was met with an instant outpouring of emotion. Dan was beloved because he was the kind of person so many of us aspire to be like. Dan had a delightfully infectious energy and used every resource in arm’s reach to make the world a better place.
My last memory of Dan is of his big heart. We ended up being surprise flatmates in a cabin during a large group weekend trip to Utah. One night I had come home loud (and probably obnoxious) demanding that I be fed chocolate, to quench my late night munchies.
Later the next day, I thought I should maybe offer friendly apologies for being so silly. Instead, when I returned back to the cabin later that afternoon, Dan was gone and my room was covered in chocolates — every corner of the room, even my bedsheets. I still don’t know where all that candy came from. I couldn’t eat of those sugary morsels myself and needed to share.
This was Dan: the kind of person that left you smiling. He saw the best in people and they forwarded it on, in return.
When Dan originally approached me with his idea of charting Everest for Google Maps, I decided to take him to the gym for his first training day. “I don’t even know what sprints are, but that sounds like great cardio,” he wrote to me. This was going to be a short session, I imagined.
So, after running him through a training gauntlet of sprints that would have taken down any ordinary man, Dan decided to use his excess energy to engage in a two hour conversation about the ethics of Google.
As Google [x]’s privacy guy (one of many positions), he occupied a unique ombudsman role inside the search giant. It was his job to make sure that the engineers working on some of the company’s most controversial technologies (like Glass) understood the concerns of a skeptical public.
Though Dan understood the dangers of a big information giant, he believed fervently that its powers could be used for good. Eventually, he died living that ethos, charting mother nature’s majesty in one of the most dangerous places on earth.
Dan brought good to the world and it is the world’s loss. But, I think our hearts are heavy for selfish reasons. Dan made us better versions of ourselves — people we cannot be without him. I hope his enduring gift to his friends is a reminder: doing good for others is the best way to live life while we’re still here. You never know when it could end.
Dan’s family has set up a charity for an orphanage he worked with in Nepal. Interested readers can learn more here.
*The Ferentein Wire is a syndicated news service. For inquires, email greg at greg ferenstein dot com.
