Dear community and friends,
I thought it might be a good idea for us all to gather our thoughts, memories and stories of Carolyn and what she meant to us in one place. Please add your contribution below, via a pull request.
Carolyn Van Slyck, 40, of Palatine, died in a car crash on Thursday, April 27, 2023.
She is survived by her Husband, Mike Steder of Palatine. She is survived by her parents Bill and Mary Van Slyck; sister Elizabeth Willner (Keith); brother Joshua Van Slyck (Shannon) and nephews Hudson and Ryan; brother Ted Van Slyck (Lisa) and niece and nephew Abigail and Ozwald. She is survived by loving uncles and aunts, cousins, in-laws, and a host of long-time friends.
Carolyn was born in Elgin, Il. She graduated from Elgin High School, then Elgin Community College. She finished with Honors at the University of Illinois Urbana with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.
Carolyn was a gifted programmer working at Microsoft as a Principal Software Engineer.
While no funeral service is currently scheduled, a celebration of life ceremony will be announced at a future date.
Carolyn loved her cats: Silverbelle, Big Red, and Little Smokey. She believed strongly in supporting your local animal shelter. Her family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Anderson Humane.
via @K8sContributors on Twitter:
via @fuzzychef on the fediverse:
Carolyn was the kindest person that I have had the pleasure of knowing. We started working together in 2017 and I immediately realized how fortunate I was to be able to work with her. She was generous with both her time and knowledge, and she cared deeply about the people and communities she was involved in. She always worked to build up the people around her and to identify opportunities for all and worked toward healthy and inclusive communities. We worked on a number of things together, but starting the Porter project with her is one of the highlights of my career. Watching her welcome and guide new contributors was so inspiring. Her dedication to the community, especially through her service on the Kubernetes Code of Conduct committee and her contributions to TAG Contributor Strategy deserve to be honored.
Carolyn was an amazing friend, both at work and outside. 2020 was a really tough year for me personally and Carolyn was always there to check in on me and play Animal Crossing. Her friendship meant a great deal to me and I'll miss her very much.
Rest in peace, Carolyn. 🌈 ✨
Carolyn was a great friend and colleague and will be dearly missed. Carolyn's dedication to the open source community was inspiring. She worked tirelessly to make sure that everyone felt welcome and included. Simply put, we have Carolyn to thank for open source communities being as inclusive and welcoming to contributors as they are today. I have no doubt that her legacy will live on through cloud native projects and communities. It's been my honor to work alongside Carolyn; she was one of the best engineers I've ever had the opportunity to work with. Her technical acumen, dedication to process, and thoroughness were things that I always admired about her and am thankful that I was able to be part of. She was always willing to help out and was a great mentor to many. I will miss her dearly. My thoughts are with her family and friends through this difficult season.
Carolyn and I were on the same team during the worst of the covid pandemic. Mid-lockdown, we were all emotionally spent. Carolyn worked hard to create an online environment of support for the team. She was quick to be there for her teammates (including me) even when she was herself drained and dispirited. We chatted about favorite ramen at our team virtual lunch. She whooped everyone during team trivia. And she modeled and invited vulnerability as the team walked the covid path together.
Carolyn was an exceptional engineer. I have often told the story of how she came up with the idea for Porter in the middle of a team offsite. While the rest of us were all going down another path, she hit a moment of insight and shared it. It was brilliant. And we pivoted. Carolyn also displayed a profound passion for community. While she built more than a few successful ones, her real passion was making community building into a repeatable practice.
Thank you, Carolyn, for all you did for me, for your team, and for the community.
Carolyn is the best human I know; for me that present tense will last a long time. I met her when she was on another team working on svcat; -- a way of binding cloud services into a cluster as a crd in a coordinated way that didn't quite hit the sweet spot for one reason or another -- and her passion for making it easy to do the simple thing was acres beyond anyone I'd ever met. She'd ask me what I'd done, and why, and what was I thinking, and then she'd change it that night with an insight into what my mind wanted to do but with a modification that wasn't "for me" -- it included intuitive obviousness for others to one side of my brainspace or the other.
Later, she joined the team I work with more directly. What I discovered was a caring, intelligent person who believed not that "I" as a dev or PM should be able to use these tools; she cared that anyone, literally anyone at all with the motivation could use those tools. And even more, she cared that anyone could enter the tool community and learn how to use and build and contribute and even just chat about the tools. Carolyn wasn't a gifted ux person for software; she was a gifted ux person for people. I used to think I was the most open-minded, welcoming person to new tools, new ecosystems -- the user is always right!
No, I discovered, that wasn't enough. For her, the good-faith humans are always right. And that approach extended to every conversation I eventually had with her, about the world, this crap we call living, family, friends, you name it. I will carry Carolyn with me everywhere I go, because she fundamentally changed who I am for the better by being the model she was. It's hard to bear her loss. I sure I'm one of many.
Carolyn was a great friend and mentor. We started working as a team since 2022 during the pandemic. She was always there to cheer up the team and share her happiness with us. Her care and support for the open source communities were inspiring, especially her dedication to create an inclusive and open environment for everyone. I still wear the Gopher shirt that I ordered online from Women Who Go which she ran. I watched many of her talks at CNCF on YouTube and they were all great and taught me a lot on public speaking. I enjoyed every minute of the casual and non-work related talk with Carolyn on the Faces meetings. Carolyn helped me to understand how community meeting works, how to write a great proposal for talks, and how to become a caring and supportive community member. More importantly, she taught me how to be a better version of myself.
I will miss her dearly. Rest in peace, Carolyn.
When I think of the Cloud Native community, I think of Carolyn. She was incredibly kind, and also quite funny. She was a tireless cheerleader for good documentation and for women in computing. Her impact will make a difference for years to come. We are all the poorer for her loss, and the richer for having known her. Carolyn, may you rest in peace and rise in glory.
Thank you for the time you spent with me Carolyn. For the encouragement and support. For speaking up for those around you. For helping me through complicated times. For your compassion and your strength. For your intellect, your enthusiasm and your energy. I learned so much from you that I carry with me still. I hate that I am typing this and I'm sorry you were taken too soon.
Carolyn named the Porter logo after me. She sent me a link to the website one day out of the blue and on it was a whole paragraph about me. I was floored. She encouraged and supported me in public and in private. She was there for me during multiple uncomfortable situations. She had a great ear and gave sound, balanced advice. She was a sweet and kind person. She was funny and incredibly intelligent and generous. I am grateful I got to know her and work with her.
Rest in peace Carolyn.
I just talked with Carolyn a couple weeks ago about building the Chicago cloud community - I suppose that's a fitting ending with someone that was always committed to supporting others. She was a consistent, helpful partner when we introduced Go on Azure. Her commitment to helping others and supporting the broader community inspired and taught me a lot. She will be missed.
I first met Carolyn at GopherCon, where she helped make me feel welcome in the Go community. And that's what she did for many, many others for the years afterwards: make people feel welcome. From helping create TAG-CS Contributor Growth WG, her work in Kubernetes, and building an exemplary contributor infrastructure for Porter, she was all about helping other people make their best contributions. I'm going to miss her; her ideas, her relentless optimism, her presence, her fun conversation.
Carolyn had a heart of gold and kindness that was on another level. It shined through her work on Porter, Kubernetes SIG Service Catalog, TAG Contributor Strategy, and bootstrapping the Kubernetes Code of Conduct Committee. We first met while she was working with the SIG Service Catalog group and asked me for advice on growing their contributor base and attracting new contributors. I knew then that I had an advocate and future friend. Same team, same mission. As the years grew, I asked Carolyn along to most things I got into that had a mission of contributor strategy and community growth. Anytime I needed a "plus one" or a co-leader, Carolyn was there for both. Even if I left the project like retirement from Chairing TAG Contributor Strategy, I knew she was part of the strong leadership team and trusted that she would rise to the occassion. She did so gloriously and in ways I didn't even imagine.
We had some deep personal and professional conversations over the years that I will cherish forever. I love open source because of people like Carolyn. I will never stop advocating for the maintainer; Carolyn didn't intend to stop either. I'm still in disblief that I'm typing this. She was far too young and just not done yet. In honor of Carolyn, lets all take care of each other, be kinder to the newcomer in open source, mentor people around us, and write those docs. So much love, Carolyn <3
Carolyn was a tour de force when it came to welcoming new folks in the cloud native community on top of being a strong project maintainer awarded for her amazing efforts. Her work in growing TAG Contributor Strategy is something I deeply admired and reflects the best of the cloud native community in my opinion. I always appreciated conversations with her she will be missed dearly.
Carolyn embodied what an open source community should be. She was always kind and welcoming no matter who you are. I met her years ago when she was working on the service catalog and she welcomed new contributors like myself to OSBA. I learned alot from her. It was then she introduced me to Women Who Go and other open source community initiatives she was deeply involved with. She really cared about the developer experience and her work reflects that. She always made an effort to make sure the solution is easy to use both for new contributors and end users. She was also a great speaker giving talks at GopherCon, KubeCon, FOSDEM and more. I will miss geeking out with her.
We will miss you, Carolyn.
I met Carolyn when she came over to Microsoft in 2017. We quickly bonded when I noticed that she named her NUC kubernetes nodes after My Little Pony characters and I told her about my kids shared obsession. Anytime we talked she would ask about them. Carolyn was always the kindest soul on any call we were on and ALWAYS took the time to mentor me when I needed some help. She didn't care that you knew how great an engineer she was and she was a great engineer. It is a sad day. :(
Carolyn always advocate OSS community culture and cloud native community events to the world. She is enthusiastic about his work in the OSS community. She helped Porter and other cloud native projects become inclusive and welcoming to contributors as they are today. Carolyn was an inspiration to others, and her memory will continue to inspire those who knew her.
I was just reviewing some reimbursed reciepts from you yesterday while filing Operation Dvoretskyi's taxes, so I'm not quite sure what to say right now. This all a bit sudden, so I guess I'll keep it brief: I didn't know you that well beyond Operation Dvoretskyi's business. If someone asked me what your favorite food - or color - was, I'd have no idea. I've been guilty of not stopping to smell the roses, so maybe that's my fault. What I do know is that you helped us out of the kindness of your heart, and that speaks to your character and told me all I really needed to know. I think everyone meets their judgement day in some form, where they're reminded of the good they did in the world, or the hurt they've caused to others. You helped a lot of people - some that that you'd never even met yourself - I have about $800.00 in Windows 11 licenses that you bought with your employee discount to prove it. I hope you were reminded of that. Thanks for being there, Carolyn.
I enjoyed every single interaction I ever had with Carolyn. She was endlessly enthusiastic, friendly and interested in both technical problems and the best way to build things that others would find useful. In other words the ideal member of a team and of the broader open source community. I've known here from the early days of service catalog all the way through her recent work on Porter and CNAB. I'm grateful for all of her contributions to cloud native and open source on Azure. You will be missed.
Carolyn deeply understood the importance of "how" we do things. The news of her passing affected me not because she was a great developer (which she was), but because her approach to software was people-oriented, enthusiastic, and compassionate. This community has suffered a great loss. Thank you Carolyn for showing us the way things could and should be. May we honor you by following your lead.
I had the chance to work with Carolyn in the Go community where she went out of her way to help folks get started, check in with folks on how they're doing and ensure that people felt like they were equipped and empowered to do things like write up talk proposals, give talks and share experiences. I feel fortunate to have worked with someone like her, who truly emobodied the open source and community spirit. I hope we can follow in her footsteps.
I just now realized how much of a privilege it was to call Carolyn a friend.... She was an amazing person who despite everything continued to bring wholesomeness to our community in her work in many communities. She had a dedicated drive to make open source a truly open and welcoming space for everyone involved.
She was a true leader of Women Who Go where she was there to support everybody in every way. From proposing an awesome emoji set to getting financial support for setting up a chapter she did it all. A driving force that will be greatly missed…
We will all miss you very much Carolyn 🌈🦄✨.
Carolyn so deeply cared about every single community she was in. She brought empathy, inclusivity, and access to an open source ecosystem that needed it. A true heart of gold.
A little known fact about Carolyn: she would spend her own money helping many people to travel to and attend Go conferences who would otherwise not be able to afford it. Many of the individuals she silently sponsored were able to get access to opportunities as a result. She also didn't want to be publicly commended for this, at it was just her way. I commend her now, and will endeavor to honor her memory by embodying that same spirit of generosity and selflessness.
Thank you Carolyn. You will be missed. 💛💛💛
My interactions with Carolyn were only just starting and I admired her activities within the community in so many ways. I felt inspired by her drive to make the community a better place and her ability to bring people together.
Thank you for everything, you will be missed.
Carolyn always had time to welcome people to the CNCF community and teach them the ropes. She was the consummate contributor's contributor and passionate about building onramps to open source for anyone who wanted to contribute. Carolyn took on the hard work of community building and did it with aplomb.
It was wonderful bonding with you over cute CNCF project logos (Porter is still, objectively, the cutest), community work, and everything in between. Your presence influenced how I contribute to open source. You will be missed.
Carolyn was brilliant, kind, and an incredible engineer. I had the privilege and joy of working with her on the same team for a few years, and that had a profound impact on me. Fostering welcoming and inclusive communities and focusing on building an amazing UX are two things Carolyn always prioritized, and was always happy to help, mentor, and spend time helping people.
Whether it was talking about our favorite dumplings and ramen, or trying to solve difficult engineering problems, she was always there to help, uplift, and make things better.
You will be missed, Carolyn. ✨
Carolyn was an active and beloved member of our community. Dedicated and hardworking, she was always willing to lend a helping hand. Her commitment to providing open source projects with the tools they need to succeed played a crucial role in developing the TAG-CS Contributor Growth Working Group. Despite her many accomplishments, Carolyn remained humble and always eager to share her experiences and lessons learned with others. She was a wonderful human being, and her passing is a great loss to the entire community. We will greatly miss her 💔
Carolyn embodied people and community. Her talk on designing CLIs for people at GopherCon 2019, my first Go conference, changed my perception of how we should be building software. Focus on the people, and everything else will fall into place. I had so many questions after the talk, too many for a single interaction that she invited me to a dinner that she and other Gophers were attending. She made me feel so welcome in the community, and it's something that I have never forgotten. You will be greatly missed, Carolyn. 🌈 ✨
Carolyn and I have worked on the same team for the past year and a half. I had admired her work from afar long before we ever had the opportunity to work on the same team. What I didn't realize from afar was Carolyn's immense gravity of personality. Teams adopt personality traits and behaviors of members, but not in equal amounts. Ours was influenced profoundly by Carolyn's kindness, equity, and love of community. She willed it to be through smiles, infectious laughter, cat pics, positivity, and boundless optimism.
As so many others in this memorial have attested, Carolyn was a uniquely talented engineer. She was the type of person to see the path from A to C without going through B. That is to say, she intuitively sensed solutions that were both pleasing to users and elegantly implemented. Carolyn was not just talented, but also driven. When she committed herself, you better help or get out the way, because Carolyn could not be stopped when she applied herself.
It is with profound sadness I say goodbye, Carolyn, but it has been a privilege to get to know you. Thank you, and we will all be missing you.
My heartfelt condolences on Carolyn's loss. She was a fantastic developer who made significant contributions to various projects, including Kubernetes, CNAB, and Porter. We say farewell to such a talented and dedicated individual with tremendous sadness.
Carolyn's inventive and boundary-pushing work left an everlasting influence on the IT industry throughout her career. Her love of her work was contagious, and she was a great inspiration to many.
As we reflect on Carolyn's life and accomplishments, let us remember her and the lasting impact she has had on the industry. For many years to come, her efforts will continue to impact and define the future of technology.
I extend my heartfelt sympathies to Carolyn's family and loved ones during this terrible time. She will be greatly missed, but her contributions to the tech community will live on. ✨
I met Carolyn at my first KubeCon in Austin at one of the women networking events. I'm new to the community and I didn't know anyone. I put my extrovert hat on and walked up to this group of 3 women and started chatting. They were all technical and brillian engineers. And they talked to me! A 'marketing' person.
Carolyn and I would run across each other occassionally and I'm sad to say I lost track of her (and many people :() during the pandemic. I will always remember her for her welcoming nature, smile, laugh, brilliance, and being part of the community.
My hugs and strength to Carolyn's family during this time.
Carolyn possessed keen engineering acumen and paired it with a powerful drive to build sustainable human-centered open source systems. Simply put, she saw the opportunity to make the world a better place, and she said yes.
I’ve appreciated working with her for years, sharing our days from collaborating on conferences to commenting on each other's cat pictures, while bonding over Great Lakes regional weather and being Central Time denizens of a Pacific Time world. Every day Carolyn brought encouragement to learn and share and laugh.
Carolyn’s enduring legacy lies in her mindful support of new participants in our technical endeavors via inclusive communities, welcoming documentation, and joyful emoji.🌈✨
Carolyn truly embodied the best of open source. Kind, patient, always willing to help and an amazing engineer. We first met back in the SIG Service Catalog days when I was just coming back into open source world and she went out of her way to make me feel welcomed. We bonded quickly exchanging pictures of our cats and memes...I'm dearly going to miss the random dm from her.
She was an inspiration and will forever be remembered. Her legacy will continue through the hundreds of people shes helped and guided.
Rest in peace, Carolyn. 🦄🌈
When I heard the news, I felt sick. I still do. Carolyn was a brilliant engineer, as so many have noted, but more importantly, she was a true friend. I had the privilege of working directly with her at times, but we spent many years in the same orbit. Even when not collaborating directly, she was a reliable confidant and sage source of advice. I could always count on Carolyn to back me up when I needed it, but I could also count on her to challenge me at times when I needed to see things from a different perspective. Sometimes, she was even a shoulder to cry on. I'm a better person for having had her in my life. Reading through all the tributes on this page, it's heartwarming, but not the least bit surprising, to see so many feel the same. Perhaps the thing that I admired most about her was her flare for building inclusive communities whose members not only felt safe, but also felt seen, heard, and inspired. On both the technical and human level, Carolyn was the very embodiment of open source ideals. (On that note, I cannot help but smile at how fitting it is that our tributes to our friend and colleague take the form of PRs.) I will miss my friend dearly, but I know that I will be hearing her echoes in our community for years to come, especially in the form of the countless engineers she inspired and mentored... and every time I sense one of those echoes, I'll remember her warmly and smile.
Rest easy, my friend. ❤️🦄🖖
I only had the pleasure of meeting Carolyn once, when we hosted her on Go Time in 2021. She was so kind, so thoughtful, and so downright interesting (as both a technologist and as a person) that I later asked her to become a regular panelist on the show. Unfortunately for us, Carolyn declined the offer because she was already overcommitted. I wish I'd had the opportunity to get to know her better. She was special.
Carolyn lit up any conversation. On many occasions I would see her surrounded by smiling faces at conferences where she was working hard to uplift and empower others. Her work in OSS and the Women Who Go group has touched countless lives, and unlocked new careers for many of those lucky enough to cross paths with her. Carolyn stands out as one of my favourite people, and I feel like the world is a little darker without her shining light.
Carolyn welcomed me to the Cloud Native like no other. Back in 2018, I heard about Porter and wanted to test it "in my way". Carolyn helped me by answering basic questions, never getting mad or impatient, rather she was always motivating me to reach for the next level in understanding and encouraged me to make a demo on how I used Porter to the whole team. When I did it, she was actively pushing for me to come to KubeCon and with the help of close friends, I did attend my first KubeCon thanks to them.
During that KubeCon, she guided me, whenever we had a session in common, she would seat next to me and we would talk about the session and also on how a friend of the speaker would always seat front row as a support. And that's what she was, even if it we were far away, she was my friend, my mentor and I became a better community member thanks to her.
2 weeks ago, I was at KubeCon and she was not there, but our close friends were there. We made a picture and they send it to her. The next day they gave me her message: "I miss you very much". I replied I missed her too, a lot... Tu vas me manquer énormément mon amie ❤️
May you rest in peace, your legacy definitively lives on 🦄🌈
When I first joined the Steelthread team, Carolyn was the very first person to set up a meeting with me to welcome me to the team. She said that starting to work with a new group of people can be overwhelming, and just want to make sure I knew she would always be around to help me with anything I needed. Just recently, with most of our team being at KubeCon, I had the pleasure of having another meeting with her where there was only the two of us. This time, having worked together for over a year already, we went beyond the superficial and got a chance to talk about our lives, cats, ordering bulk assorted nuts, and a ton more, but, just like back when I had first joined the team, she reminded me she was always down to have 1:1s like so to catch-up and chat. I wish I had had the chance to do that more. Carolyn was a kind, and thoughtful person, who was very committed to making any place she passed by a better one.
You were taken too soon, Carolyn. I miss you very much.
I'm devistated to hear the news. Carolyn was a rare force of kindness, engineering, and personality. I didn't get the pleasure to work closely with her save for occasional Porter workshops and other CNCF events, but every time she brought an undeniable energy to every occasion. It's a sad day for us all to have lost someone who set a high bar for human compansion coupled with great engineering talent. My condolenses especially to the family.
Let us all try a little harder to be kind to each other in her honor.
The chance I had to contributing to Porter and to know Carolyn was one of the best time I had in life, the one that I will always treasure for the rest of it. She was the kindest and the best of open source there is. She shaped the lives of so many people for the better. The interaction I had with her didn't just make me a better software engineer, but as Ralph said, she gave the example on how to be human and how to treat others. She made sure there's room for everyone which then she greeted with smile and welcoming hands.
I hope her kindness and warmth lives on. Let's make sure her kindness and warmth lives on through each and everyone of us. In open source community, and in life.
You will be dearly missed, Carolyn. Thank you for everything. Rest in love.
I am having trouble processing how it is possible to lose someone who was such a light, with so much accomplished and yet so much more to do. I am devastated. Her thoughts were always around 'how can we do more, how can we do better on behalf of those with less time, less opportunity, less visibility, less priveledge'. Most recently I had the absolute honour to work with her on a small group dedicated to helping Open Source projects at Microsoft get better at onboarding, uplifting and empowering diverse contributors. I always left my conversations with Carolyn having learned something - she was SO SMART, but in ways you also cannot teach. She had a strong intuition, which she was able to articulate and teach in ways that brought others in, empowered and uplifted them. She was a friend, an inspiration. I will miss Carolyn terribly, and will take it as a personal goal to teach others, what I learned from her so that forever on, her impact will continue. Thank you Carolyn, and to her family - we never took her for granted, I am so sorry for your loss.
I can't believe I am having to write this and am devastated to have lost such an incredible, welcoming, kind individual that I was slowly starting to call friend! I only had the pleasure of knowing Carolyn for just around 18 months and that is not enough time to spend with such an amazing human being! To see the passion she approached her job and the joy she lived her life with is something to aspire to.
Carolyn, thank you from the bottom of my heart for introducing me to the wonderful community you were a part of. I will forever be grateful for the impact you had on me. I was looking forward to working with you for the foreseeable future and learning everything I could! You were a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm and will be so greatly missed by everyone whose life you touched. We will see your legacy moved forward and never let the memory of what you brought to us be lost.
I met Carolyn when we both worked on Service Catalog. We worked on subprojects toegther, we gave talks at Kubecon together. She worked tirelessly to better the communities she was a part of of and herself. I hadn't spoken to her much since she moved on to better and brighter things with the CNCF TAG. I wish I had. I don't know what else to say. Goodbye Carolyn.
I have worked on the same team as Carolyn for the past 3 years. Much has already been said above about her qualities. I knew her as someone who was deeply passionate and caring, this applied to everything she did, the technology she was using, the technology she was creating, the people that she wanted to benefit from her innovation, the people she wanted to help and the people that she worked with in our team , in Microsoft and in the community. She was always willing and able to give sound advice and insightful feedback. To say she will be missed is a massive understatement. Rest in Peace Carolyn, my deepest condolencies to your family.
I had the good fortune of meeting Carolyn in 2017 when she joined Microsoft, and we became fast friends. Over the years, we talked about life, work, open source, and many other things we had in common. I got to work on several projects with her and got to know her as an outstanding engineer, compassionate community leader, and all-around great person.
One of the recent highlights of my career was going to get ramen with Carolyn and David after GopherCon 2022. That day stands out in my mind because it represents some important things Carolyn valued - finding room for human connection and taking the time to experience life to its fullest, even when we're busy.
Carolyn, I'm lucky to have called you my friend. Thank you for being there for me during difficult times, and thank you for being a role model. I, like so many others, will miss you dearly. Rest in peace.
I met Carolyn back at KubeCon EU 2018 where her and Jonathan Berkhahn gave a talk on Kubectl plugins. We both worked at Microsoft, but I never met her beforehand. After their talk, I found her in the speaker's lounge, where we brainstormed on how kubectl plugins could be applied to other pieces of technology in the CNCF ecosystem. Her focus on building a community and the user experience were both awe inspiring and thoughtful. She made me feel welcome, valued, and enthusiastic to see how the work could be expanded. Even though I never got around to an implementation, our conversation left a lasting impression on me; how could someone could be so friendly and accomodating to a total stranger on the conference floor, especially someone who just interrupted her break time at the speakers lounge? Oops.
Later on she joined the DeisLabs team where we worked together on many open source projects. She came up with the name of several of those open source projects (including artwork and logos!), and became known as the "Chief Emoji Officer" for all of the fun and creative emojis she added to our Slack channel. My personal favourite she added to the channel was :salute:, which was Rainbow Dash giving a small salute. When I left the team to join another company, I made sure to export all of the custom emojis from that channel and I still use :salute: to this day, and it always reminds me of her. I'm attaching it here in memoriam of her contribution to the team's fun and welcoming culture.
You will be greatly missed, Carolyn.
I met Carolyn in 2018 during my first ever GopherCon, with a full-ride scholarship. Never in my wildest dreams I could imagine writing here for you. Carolyn, thank you for touching the lives of many in your lifetime, my friend! Your unwavering dedication to Women Who Go was genuinely inspiring, and your memories have profoundly impacted my life, to say the least.
Thank you for motivating me to start the Women Who Go Delhi chapter and your encouragement that led me to volunteer to set up new chapters globally and organize conference scholarships; without your clarity, support, and warmth - that shone through every interaction, this would never have been possible. You have left a lasting impression on all those fortunate enough to cross paths with you.
During my first international conference talk at FOSDEM'2019 in Brussels, thank you for cheering from the audience, and your support was unwavering. Your dedication to inclusivity and community building was awe-inspiring, and your legacy will undoubtedly live on through the countless lives that you touched.
I wish that your spirit lives on through the warmth, love, and compassion you sowed in the Women Who Go community. Though I cannot hug you one last time, we can honor your memory by carrying on your work and embodying the values you held dear!
Rest in peace and infinite love, Carolyn. I will miss you dearly, but your impact will never be forgotten!
Carolyn and my paths crossed many times in Go and CNCF projects. She was an outstanding engineer and really cared about what she built and the people she built with. She had a deep impact on many people in her communities. She was truly a positive element in everything she touched. It's hard to process that she is gone so soon. Rest in peace, Carolyn.
Carolyn was my officemate as an intern at Microsoft in 2005. I will never forget her persistent positive attitude and joy, inspiring me to believe that anything is possible. She was there to onboard me, guide me through the logistics of working in a massive multi-national company, and how to navigate across organizations. She sold me on Microsoft as a great place to turn an internship into a career, to continue to work with more people like her – smart, passionate, collaborative, and supportive.
Our careers took different paths within Microsoft, then our worlds came together again in Azure in the cloud native space. My happiness of re-connecting with her last year is now reversed to sadness by learning of her passing. I’ll continue to find silver linings and drive with the positive and collaborative approach that Carolyn taught me.
RIP CVS. Keep smiling and laughing.
I had the chance to work with Carolyn on Porter for a while. Carolyn made me learn Go in order to contribute to Porter and other projects. No matter how stupid my questions were, Carolyn was always there and helped with whatever was needed. I had never met a community leader who was that welcoming, supportive, and inspiring!
I will always remember that night session where we put together a Porter demo right before a developer conference. Although her schedule was quite packed, immediately she put everything aside and assisted me in building an end-to-end demo that amazed the audience 💝.
Thank you, Carolyn, for everything you did for me and the open-source community. 🌈
I had the pleasure of working with Carolyn the past couple of years on Porter. She was so welcoming, inquisitive and just fun to work with. She taught me so much about working as part of an open source community. Always striving to find that right balance of doing something well and meeting the pragmatic requirements of the real world. All along the way showing kindness, patience and a thirst to understand more about how her work helps others. We were all looking forward to many more years working together. I hope it brings just a touch of solace to her family and friends knowing she had such a positive impact on so many people.
Rest in peace Carolyn
I feel lucky to have gotten to know Carolyn over the last few months. She was so welcoming and brought a wonderful energy to our team. She always provided an optimistic outlook and spread her joy to the rest of us. She will be missed dearly.
I met Carolyn at Kubecon Europe 2018. We had lunch together with folks around and I was so intimidated by how smart she was. I barely said more than a few words, but she was part of the CNCF crew that I looked up too. Those who were 'tech famous' in my eyes. It wasn't until I was joining Microsoft that I shyly reached out to Carolyn again to chat. She was so warm, friendly, and welcoming. She immediately treated me as a friend and equal. I was lucky enough to work with her on Porter and enjoyed being able to message her every day, say good mornings, and have tons of Zoom calls as we debugged things.
Carolyn wasn't just an amazing engineer, she was an amazing person. Her qualities as a person are qualities I desperately strive to have. I was so excited to work with her, to spend time learning from her. That will only continue, but in a different way.
The last message she sent me on Thursday, after helping me jump out of a meeting early was: "I am a thought leader 🦄💨" - and honestly, yeah, she was, she was one of a kind.
I miss you Carolyn.
Carolyn's dedication to the community was unparalleled. She embodied everything that is good about open source. She was generous with her time and talents including her deep involvement with Women Who Go and other open source initiatives. While known for her public contributions and talks, most of her contributions were outside of the public eye. She had deep empathy for newcomers and underrepresented people. A common thread throughout all of her work was paving the way for others. Helping a person new to the community feel included by listening to them and making them feel like they were as important as anyone else. Helping people to have opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise through encouragement and even sponsorships. Helping to elevate the interactions through her code of conduct work so that everyone felt included.
Carolyn was a gifted speaker. She had a rare talent for explaining complex topics in a way that was both informative and entertaining. I personally really appreciated her talk on CLIs. Not many other people share such a deep love for this somewhat obscure user experience. I very much appreciated how she added depth, experience and empathy to the conversation around CLIs. Her talk which she gave at GopherCon in 2019 is the definitive talk on CLI design.
I will miss Carolyn. Her happiness and excitement was contagious as was her love for emjois 🌈⭐. You couldn’t be around her without feeling good. Carolyn believed in paying it forward. In her memory I rewatched one of her talks today grateful for all she stood for and the legacy she left behind.
Smiles, kindness, and a Gopher logo. Those are the first things that come to mind when I think about you, Carolyn. I think we must have met at a Write/Speak/Code event. We never got enough time to talk, but the few minutes here and there catching up at conferences was always a joy. All those times just seeing you across a hotel ballroom were feel good moments for me. You were a light for good. As with so many things in life, I took it for granted that I would see and talk to you again, and now we'll never have the chance.
It never occurred to you not to share your wisdom or your passion or your compassion. I have no idea how you were so consistently positive over the years. Starting things is hard. Building things is hard. Leadership that includes people instead of driving them out is a Herculean task. Yet you did them repeatedly. I am in awe of the strength that took. Deep technical skill and getting people to work together and being able to explain things - those traits almost never converge. And yet, there you were.
Carolyn, I think the news of your passing is so hard because I can't think of anyone else like you. There isn't another lighthouse that can be counted on. You gave of yourself selflessly. I hope with all that I am that you had moments where you stepped back and were able to internalize all the good you did and feel how unprecedentedly, remarkably, exceptionally, magnificent you are.
I am better for having known you. You will always mean so much to me. Peace.
I had the pleasure of working with Carolyn at Microsoft. She was amazing; resourceful and thoughtful in her work and she cared deeply about making things helpful, kind and accessible in everyday possible. She had ability to cut through the noise around her and get the honest, human truth of the matter, which was marvelous to behold.
Her work on Porter, and how she approached ways to simplify things and empower the end user was just great. Working on the cat mascot will always be one of my favorite memories. She had the perfect vision for it, we would discuss the optimal whisker length and the perfect level of cat 'chonk' to embody.
I'm so sorry Carolyn. You were a breath of fresh air and we miss you. I don't know what else to say.
Carolyn was an absolute gem to work with. Every time I interacted with her, she was kind, helpful, and extremely knowledgeable about the products she worked on. She was brilliant in patiently explaining various scenarios and responding promptly and professionally to our queries. Her strong work ethic was always evident, and it was truly inspiring.
Carolyn was the original definition of a real one. Her contributions to the software engineering discipline cannot be measured merely by the impact of her decorated engineering career. Much more than that, she has made an impact on those breaking into tech, especially in the female Go community. I met Carolyn through Women Who Go in Chicago, and I’m grateful for every second I got to spend with her. She made sure there is room for everyone at the table and greeted them with an affable smile and a welcoming hand.
Thank you, CVS. You made your mark here.
Carolyn, my dear friend, I'm having a hard time knowing what to say, and I'm sorry I've taken so long to write something.
We met through Women Who Go when I decided I wanted to open up a chapter in New Zealand. It wasn't until Kubecon 2018 when I finally had a chance to meet her in person. I wasn't aware at the time that I was about to meet one of my favourite people. We had a blast in Copenhagen touring the city, and meeting a lot of people along the way.
We kept in touch, and continued to have regular catchups via Zoom since we lived so far away. I was lucky to be able to see her once more in Toronto. She insisted that we visit the botanical gardnes no matter what, and had so many interesting things to say about all the plants there. I feel so fortunate to have been able to call her my friend.
Carolyn, I hope you know that you made a huge impact in my life, and that I will forever cherish having been a small part of yours. 💖🦄
I've let your absence sit with me for a few months.
This is good - I can tell how much I miss you.
This is bad - this now means I can put words to it!
I miss your humor, your ability to understand what's a technical problem and what wasn't - and who mattered to be able to solve it.
I miss your ability to be able to discern how, exactly, someone could use feedback to become a better contributor.
I miss your cooking journey storytelling and how you were finding your way through a part of life.
I wish we had so many more years together, I am sorry that we don't.
When I was contributing to Porter, Carolyn always guided me with issues and pull requests. I had a lot of confusion at the start, and she cleared it all up.
I was able to merge my first PR in Porter with her help.
I was also following her work and planning to understand more about Porter, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the time for it. I wish I could have made more contributions and learned more from her.
I will never forget this experience.
Rest In Peace, Carolyn.
Carolyn was nothing but fantastic while Radu Matei and I were working on CNAB Security, the implementation of which she also helped to maintain. I was shocked to hear the tragic news of her passing, and regret that I did not know her on a more personal level. I remember her as being warm, friendly, funny, and very receptive. RIP, Carolyn, you are missed.