I had a meeting this morning with Chip Oglesby, who hosts this blog, and he happened to mention that he had set up a special Rally page to the memory of his fellow social media guru Rick Stilwell (better known to many as @RickCaffeinated), where folks can leave words of tribute, and also make contributions to help out his family. Chip said that last time he looked, there were about $2,500 in contributions.
Here’s the page. Here’s a comment that exemplifies what is found there:
A real superhero doesn’t wear a cape and “smash.” He is a warm and caring person who helps where help and encouragement where it is needed. Rick was a superhero to so many people and will forever be a champion of social media to all. May God hold you, Rick, in the palm of his hand forever, and may he provide comfort to your family now and always. #LiveLikeRick
I also notice that, on the day after he died, someone used his Twitter feed to share again something he wrote last year, headlined “Working Together,” about the social aspect of social media, and of life. It’s fairly communitarian stuff. An excerpt:
For the past few weeks, I’ve been noticing negativity more and more online. It’s been on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram even. And my first self-judgment is that I’m noticing it because it’s welling up in me more than normal, too. My own judgmentalism and negative reactions are leading to me noticing it more all over – so I’m to blame more than anything for the “noticing” part of the equation.
So hopefully it’s without pointing fingers that I am now looking at this from the perspective of relationships and being together in the good stuff of life. We cut each other off in negativity. I cut others off when I’m looking through mud-colored glasses. And we/I end up losing more than we gain when we/I do that. One of the areas we/I lose out on is working together, letting each other influence and impact the whole separately and collectively.
I guess it’s the knowledge that I’m not perfect and that I don’t know everything that leads me to want to get more cooks in the kitchen. I want to know what you think. I don’t want to miss out on your addition to our experience…
So this week, I’m looking for more ways to work together with those around me. Whether it’s in the office or in various extracurricular get-togethers, how can I be a part of something collaborative and more truly representative of everyone together? That’s what I want to be a part of. That’s some of the meaningful stuff that’s been missing in my own recent descent…
Sounds a lot like what I consider to be among the highest aims of this blog, when it is at its best.
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Wow. I mistakenly said, “someone used his Twitter feed to share” that piece from last year.
As it happened, Rick did that himself, which caused his wife to react thusly:
After several others commented, she added:
Rick would usually schedule a tweet like that when he was ready to have a discussion about the post. It’s an older post but obviously something was on his mind that he was ready to talk about that weekend.
I went to school with Rick at USC. He was a year or two ahead of me in school. I knew him because we both hung out at the Bapist Student Center that was then located on Pickens Street (now on S. Main).
Rick was Rick. What you saw was what you got – and that’s a good thing in Rick’s case.