Sven Guckes

On February 20 Sven Guckes (archive) died. This is my personal story about meeting Sven.

I met Sven almost exactly 19 years ago when I flew to Berlin together with Franz, mika and Thorsten to join the Chemnitzer Linuxtage. I remember that I was quite surprised to hear that this guy I didn't know yet will not only guide us from Berlin Tegel airport (an airport he really loved, as I've learned later-on) to downtown.

My very first moment with Sven Guckes at Berlin Tegel in 2003. (click for a larger version)

He also let us sleep in his then large apartment in Berlin downtown where he resided together with his books and his cat.

Sven with his red signature-scarf in his office.

The next day, we boarded the community bus that Sven organized to bring a busload of geeks and nerds from Berlin to Chemnitz. On this bus, I had a very interesting chat with Harald Welte, not being aware of who he is to the community.

Back in Berlin, we had a few days to visit the city. Sven surprised with his profound knowledge on the interesting history of Berlin which he truly loved. Whoever was fortunate enough to meet Sven in Berlin got a free tour to remember. He was able to tell awesome stories about every corner you came across. He showed us hidden gems that most people of Berlin probably wasn't aware of.

Sven in a funny pose infront of an art. — Sven being Sven near Museumsgarten. (click for a larger version)

When Sven lived in Graz for a couple of months, he was able to show us - people living in Graz for a longer period of time - many interesting things in this town, explained events from the past and showed us cool places to eat. He was a true natural.

Sven was somebody who loved to talk about open source in general and tools like vim, mutt, GNU screen and later tmux (I wrote this article for Sven to migrate), zsh, OpenPGP and gpg, and many others. He was a well-known guest at many open source events, not only in Chemnitz but also in my home town here at the Grazer Linuxtage. He taught not only natural geeks but was also able to work with children and ordinary people from the street. His endless enthusiasm and patience was catching.

For the vim community, Sven was a key person. He was the one who created the web site https://www.vim.org/ before he handed it over to the project later-on.

With my personal GNU Emacs renaissance because of Org-mode about ten years ago, we both had an all-friendly "dispute", following the long tradition of The Editor War.

Although being more than just a vim-enthusiast, he was a frequent guest at my Org-mode workshops and talks at the Grazer Linuxtage. You have to believe me when I tell you that Sven actually wanted to learn GNU Emacs because of what I've shown him about Org-mode. Unfortunately, we did not manage to sit down and do a one-on-one workshop. He always wanted to do this in a group but for various reasons this did not happen any more. This is the biggest regret I do have: not insisting on a remote session and thus being the person who onboarded Sven Guckes to GNU Emacs.

Besides Sven's awesome tool demos and workshops he was somebody who loved to connect people. He did not only visit community events, he was quite active by organizing pre- and post-event social events where he was able to get many people together. He introduced all kinds of people with each other, being somebody who was the reason for friendships, projects, knowledge transfer, whole new universes of ideas and even marriages.

Sven and me at the Haarstation. (click for a larger version)

It was never about Sven. Although he was well-known, he always put others in the spotlight. You can get an impression on that while watching this (German) video where a community journalist tried to interview Sven. Sven said only one word and I was surprised to find myself being the interviewee myself. By the way, that video (with its horrible preview image where I look pretty stupid) was the highest ranking YouTube hit for my name for many years. Thanks, Sven. ;-)

Whenever there was an OpenPGP keysigning party, Sven was the main reason why the timeframe was far from being observed. He did not only exchange the necessary verification procedure. After the keysigning party, he had spoken to all participants in detail and introduced many different people with each other during the event - as always.

Every time I visited Berlin, Sven insisted to meet. And every time, he continued to show me his home town. Every time, he found new interesting parts I was not aware of before. He loved to go out for a brunch with many people. He loved to eat for hours while talking with his friends. And everybody was his friend.

Sven looking funny in the camera. — Sven at a brunch Am Weinberg. (click for a larger version)

He will be missed much. As a community member, an open source contributor, a must-see person at any open source event and as a true, selfless and honest friend. I hope he is pretty busy with connecting interesting souls of the afterlife.

Here are some obituaries I found (in no particular order):