I was sad to learn today about the death at age 47 of Dave Freeman, co-author, with Neil Teplica, of "100 Things To Do Before You Die," the quirky and popular travel guide.
One of the things I got to do before I die was to work with Dave and Neil way back in the internet 1.0 era, around 1997, when I was director of City.net, owned by Excite.com. City.net at the time was the most popular travel site on the web according to PC Meter (later Media Metrix). We had tons of traffic and were looking to bulk up our content offerings.
I can't remember how Dave and Neil came to us but their website, WhatsGoingOn.com, provided the perfect, original antidote to the standard travel guides that anyone and everyone could license for the web. With their original take on offbeat events and their unique set of icons indicating "danger," "risk of vomiting" and the like, we loved what they added to our service.
And Dave and Neil were such nice guys, we were really glad to send our traffic their way. It wasn't hard back in those days for Excite to drive a hard bargain with a small content producer -- and we often did -- but there were times when you helped somebody out too, and that's how we felt with Dave and Neil. At least that's how I remember it today and I hope they'd remember it the same way.
Of course many web 1.0 dreams did not work out, and WhatsGoingOn.com eventually fizzled out (so did Excite, for that matter). I kept in touch with Dave and Neil only occasionally, usually through some address book update.
Reading his obituary was not a happy way to be reminded again of Dave. But I was glad to realize how he and Neil had ultimately turned their website into a best-selling book that captured the public imagination as much as their website had captured ours more than a decade ago. And reading the tributes to Dave made me realize how many people he had reached, and inspired.
If there's one thing any of us would like to do before we die, it's to inspire others and be remembered for it. Dave pulled that one off. I'm happy for him.
Comments