Fourth in a series of tributes.
Dan Lynch was a visionary. When I was first getting into the conference and trade show business, the Internet was the realm of military personnel and elite nerds in academia. Dan Lynch saw the imperative to make the Internet commercially viable. He took on the job of creating a live event to bring together the software engineers who ultimately set the standards—the networking protocols—that made it all possible.
I learned so much working with Dan on his Interop conference. He was unapologetically curious and absolutely fearless, a bulldozer on a mission. He acted on the strength of his convictions, which rubbed some people the wrong way. He could be loud and brash; he didn’t back down. But with Dan, it wasn’t about ego; it was about being productive. It was about achieving outrageous goals in record time. He assumed that if he was wrong, someone would set him right, and that was okay. But you’d have to catch him first, because he wasn’t slowing down to chat.
Dan taught me that by bringing people face-to-face and giving them the right tools, they could leapfrog obstacles and jumpstart the future. In many ways, the Internet as we know it was born in a Monterey ballroom. Dan passed in 2024; the last time we spoke (when I interviewed him for background on a project), he was 80 and still had that fire in the belly. He was as curious as ever, and just as impatient. And that’s why I love Dan Lynch.
