RIP Chris Lightfoot

[denny]

http://www.mysociety.org/2007/03/05/rip-chris-lightfoot-1978-to-2007/

Chris was one of the core coders involved in MySociety, TheyWorkForYou, FaxYourMP, and many other incredibly cool website projects, culminating in the PM's petitions website. I would guess a number of the Cambridge people on my friends list probably knew him... I met him once, very briefly, he was a nice guy. I didn't realise what a phenomenal amount of stuff he'd done until I started reading the links from the linked post though.

Comments

[easternpromise.livejournal.com]

Wow, and so young too! Crikey.

[innocent-irony.livejournal.com]

Hm.

The name rings a bell and i recognise over 2/3 of the friends he has linked. However i do not recongise the photo.. i think.
His works are astounding. Much impressed. Clearly a wise man.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

More photos of him: http://flickr.com/search/?q=chris+lightfoot&m=text

You may well not have run into him: I can't think of any clique of friends that includes the pair of you. He was a pretty amazing guy, in any case.

[adjectivegail]

Pledge Bank was his, too. That was the one that really made me go "OMG, that's so cool".

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

I have to admit to it being something of a shock when I got told about it on my way back from the Scottish Juggling Convention on the evening of that Sunday.

Having helped with sending the emails for MySociety and for the traveltax petition specifically was somewhat awe-inspiring. It is certainly the most public project I've been involved in. It's a pity that Oggie never got to rewrite the bits of petemaild that he felt needed rewriting, but we couldn't use it in that mode anyway.

It all started off with him taking 2 weeks out of his PhD (never completed, of course!) to do his "political compass" survey.

It's still weird to think that he's gone.