From Nick Feamster

I first met Gary through my wife, when Gary hosted her in the fall of 2010.  When I came to visit her there, I expected to just shake some hands and leave. To my surprise (and ultimate delight), Gary invited me to stay around for his group meeting; it was a wonderful experience.  It was really the first time I'd ever heard about ICT for development, and I was impressed by all of the interesting work Gary and his students were doing, but more importantly, I had a lot of fun and immediately felt welcome.   That year, Gary also invited us to his house for a braai, where I had the chance to meet many of his colleagues and students and fully appreciate the positive impact he had on so many people.  

Later that year, when Gary first told me about his courses on mobile application development,  his desire to get familiar with minute technical details, while never losing sight of the "big picture", had a real impression on me.  That conversation stuck in my mind, and I have since tried to emulate that same style in my own teaching.  

When I began to work on a research project to measure the performance of broadband access networks around the world, my student and I looked to Gary for help with a deployment of home routers in South Africa.  Without hesitation, he not only offered to help us with the project, but he hosted me for a talk in the department, and recruited his own students to help us with the deployment.  He also helped us by hosting servers that ultimately enabled us to complete the project.  Without Gary's help, we would never have gotten the first phase of our project off the ground, and much of the project's success today can be traced to his help in the early stages.

Finally, when I spent several months this past summer (winter) in Cape Town, Gary welcomed me as a visitor in his lab.  He gave me an office for the duration of my stay, but, more importantly, he came to visit me nearly every day to chat over coffee.  (I was impressed that Gary offered *three* choices for making a cup of coffee; Gary spent time showing me all three and describing the virtues and drawbacks of each option.)  We had a lot of memorable chats, ranging from travel to wine to university politics to the future of education.  No matter how busy his day was, Gary always took the time to drop by and chat.  I also had the good fortune to hear Gary give a talk to his research group on his views on the use of technology in the classroom, which he had become quite passionate about and was a topic we discussed at length.  He said that one way to inspire students was to encourage them to "follow their angst"; in other words, recognize aspects of a technology that could be designed better and then work to develop better solutions.  That advice sums up Gary's essence for me: He was a force for positive change, always using his talents to make the world a better place.  Although Gary isn't with us any longer, I will honor his memory by getting my hands dirty in both research and education and "following my angst" to make the world a better place.  

Thank you, Gary, for your smile, kind words, hospitality, and inspiration.  You made the University of Cape Town a home away from home for me.  I will miss you!