Derek K. Miller's memorial service

in case they found this and had a good record player, to understand everything they could about humanity. So it had famous musical pieces, it had photographs of people, it had stories, it had poems. And I was thinking that little did those engineers and scientists realize that if they wanted to, they could have just replaced the Golden Record with Derek's blog, and probably aliens would have understood us a lot better. So that's really what today is about, is for all of us to share stories about Derek. As a means of connecting with each other. I feel a bit awkward in the sense that I really can't possibly speak for Derek. I knew him for 25 years, but I guess what I will say is this: Probably there's 3 things he would have said. Because he loved his family first and above all, he would probably ask that everyone be gentle and compassionate and understanding with the family. Because all of the attention and wonderful things that have come recently in terms of people paying attention to what Derek said, is nice for us because it helps us all connect together, but it's also an added burden on a family dealing with something that is really hard for anyone to deal with under the best of circumstances. So he'd probably want to remind us that our first job is to take care of Derek's family. The second thing he'd probably tell us, because he was kind of an atheist, is that the purpose of this event isn't so much for us to remember Derek, It's for us to come closer to each other through the connections that we had with Derek. I think he would be most happy by the idea that everybody left a little closer together than when they came in. And finally, because he was both very well-mannered and a bit of a nerd, he would probably remind you to turn off your cell phones and turn on your Twitter feeds. So today's going to happen in 3 small sections. The first is, uh, in order for everyone who knew bits of Derek here and there, some Some of us knew him in different parts of his life, but none of us, except for his closest family, knew all of his life. In order for us to all know him a little bit better, we're going to bring up different people who knew Derek from his earliest childhood to his most recent life, and, uh, in terms of blogging and everything else that he did. And we're all going to share simple stories about that so that we can kind of build together a bit of a chronology. The second thing is that those of us that played with Derek the most in his band are going to come up. And play just ever so slightly out of tune some of the songs that Derek was quite passionate about. And then finally, we're going to open it up for anyone who wants to, to come up and share a story about Derek and his life and your relationship to him. And then we'll close off with a song, the one song Derek requested that was played, would be played at the end of his memorial. So to kick things off, we're going to bring out a close friend of Derek's, Dennis, uh, who's who knew Derek for, like a lot of us, about 25 years, who's going to read from a letter sent to us by one of Derek's youngest childhood friends, Rand Scullard. Rand can't be here, he's in New York, but he sent this wonderful story. Dennis is going to come up and read.

Thanks, Sebastian. Thank you all for taking the time out to be here today. I'm going to speak on behalf of Rand Scullard, as Sebastian said, he's in New York and couldn't be with us. But I'd like to read— Rand knew Derek from his early childhood, and I'd like to read what he wrote and sent to us a couple of days ago. I met Derek on the first day of kindergarten. My mom had just dropped me off for the start of the school day, and to put it mildly, I did not want to be dropped off. I didn't even know what this kindergarten thing was all about. It sounded foreign and sinister. Uh, if I remember correctly, I made it just inside the door to the classroom, and then I pitched a fit. I'm sure the grown-ups tried their best to calm me down, but no doubt it didn't do too much good. The details are pretty fuzzy now. The part I remember clearly is that out of this classroom of strangers all trying to go about their business and ignore the crying kid by the door, This one guy came right over to me. I don't remember what he said or did, but he was friendly and nice and apparently not put off by hysterics. He calmed me down and then he took me around and showed me that kindergarten, far from being sinister, was actually pretty cool. That was Derek. We had a lot in common at that age, but by far the biggest love we shared was science fiction. We were already dyed-in-the-wool Trekkers when at age 7 Derek and I went to see to see a little film called Star Wars together, and immediately saw it again. After that, we played Star Wars every chance we got. I loved to go over to Derek's house because it was all full of the kind of exotic gear that fit perfectly into our science fiction fantasies. His dad Carl, being an accomplished astronomer, had photos of planets all over the place. They had rocket-themed pinball machines. There was a leather easy chair that Carl might have thought was his, but I made a much better starship captain's chair.

Jerry.

The best of all was the spaceship Derek and his dad built together. Now it's true that a grown-up might have mistaken the spaceship for a ping-pong table and a collection of cardboard boxes held together with tape and hot glue, but we knew better. It was the Millennium Falcon.

The thing was huge.

It took up the Miller family's whole rec room. It had multiple modules with connecting corridors, and the bridge had a control system adapted from an old arcade game. There was room for 3 or 4 kids to play in it, and play we did. When just imagining ourselves as Han and Luke wasn't enough, we even started planning our own Star Wars movie. We wrote a script and everything. It probably wasn't enough material for a full feature-length film, but maybe that's just as well since we never did get our hands on a movie camera. Of course, science fiction stories always have computers in them. And one day there appeared on Derek's dining room table a new high-tech decoration: an actual working computer. Okay, it was a Radio Shack TRS-80, but that was the first time I ever saw a computer in someone's home. The icing on the cake? It had a Star Wars game running on it.

The original Heaven.

The game was awesome, but Derek showed me something even more amazing. You could write your own programs. You could make the computer do whatever you wanted. Now to say this had a profound effect on me would be a bit of an understatement. I knew right away that this is what I was meant to do, and 30+ years later I still feel that way. And I have Derek to thank for that. Hanging out with Derek was the best thing about my preteen years. When we were crossing the galaxy together, I didn't want it to end. When we finally went home for the day, I'd immediately start planning our next adventure. Later, life took us in different directions, and I'm sorry I didn't know him better as an adult. But I do know this: for his whole life, he had the same kind of positive impact on people around him that he had on me that first day in kindergarten. Thank you, Rad.

So probably all of us had one or two small things in common with Derek. One of the things that most of us didn't have in common with him though is that unlike most of us, Derek actually really liked his high school, which was the strangest thing about him. But he went to quite a wonderful high school and he had some wonderful relationships there and he always prized those. And so we're lucky to have Cedric Ho with us, one of his colleagues from high school, from St. George's, Enzo Sitter, come on up.

I'm not a professional. My name is Cedric Ho, and Derek was my friend and high school classmate. I started at St. George's in grade 7, and I still remember what it was like to be the new kid. Derek arrived in grade 9, and I hope I tried to make him feel welcome. I really can't remember, actually, because it was about 30 years ago. So it's more than likely we actually acted like a bunch of 14-year-old kids and teased him about his glasses, and ran over him on the rugby field. But that's where we started to learn something about Derek. He was quiet, but he wasn't reserved. He wasn't a great athlete, but he had a great heart. He was willing to try anything, and he was funny. Dry, sardonic humor is not readily appreciated by 14-year-old boys. Derek's self-deprecating brand of humor won us over. By the next year, we were good friends, and we both became involved in founding and writing an underground newspaper called The Plague. A touch of silver dramatic. We sold a few ads and printed as many copies as we could afford, and we dropped a few thousand copies off at high schools to open You were writers.

You were artists.

You were rebels.

I wrote articles excoriating Bill Bennett and predicting the absolute failure of Expo '86. So that's why I'm not a professional writer. Derek became Dick Miller. Private Investigator™.

He was ahead of the curve on the intellectual property issue.

The one thing I could always remember from the series of Dick Miller PI stories was the signature line, "When I regained consciousness." So yesterday, after spending some time reading the blog and trying to remember some stuff from nearly 30 years ago, I dug into my library and pulled out a few copies of the plague to refresh my memory.

That's awesome.

I'm going to read you a typical excerpt from The Adventures of Derek Dick Miller, P.I. I finally got my gag removed when I was relentlessly attacked by a French poodle, which only desisted after I bit it. It didn't taste very good, something like fiberglass insulation. You've all read Derek's blog. You know he was a great writer. My memories from high school reminded me he was a good writer. My reading, circa yesterday, of his stories from 25 years ago— the writing was terrible. It was the Commodore 64 writing. It was immature, but it had the tendency Maybe it was a little ahead of its time. Yet, he was wildly popular. Because even when he was 16 or 17 or 18, he knew how to connect with the reader. We ran a "Win a Date with Dick" contest. Dick Duff in a chauffeur-driven AMC Hornet. Dine at leisure, she ate McDonald's.

That kind of thing.

And the girl with the winning entry was pretty hot. So he had groupies. Well, Dick Miller, P.I., did. So even when— even then, Derrick certainly knew how to engage a reader.

He was entertaining, he connected.

And Dick Miller, P.I., eventually began Derek Miller Pen Machine. Senior year saw us draw closer as a class, yet further apart as we prepared for the rest of our lives. Derek was as busy as anyone. He continued to write, he was involved in drama productions, and he was lucky enough to go on a school trip behind the Iron Curtain to the USSR. Akademikli, he was proud to have made it into the upper-level math class that was ruled by the centric genius PJ.

He had to do that.

He was on his way to UBC where he assumed an airbnb. Derek had matured and his thinking and writing reflected a confident vision for himself and his life. His stated ambition from the yearbook was "to see things as they are, not as they appear to be." Most high school kids think existentialism is cool. Derek listed existentialism as one of his pet peeves. You'll recall that Derek wrote in his last blog post, "It turns out that no one can imagine what's really coming in our lives. We can plan and do what we enjoy, but we can't expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won't. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur." that we could never foresee. That's neither good, bad, but it is real. I was never too good at philosophy, so I'm not really sure what to call this, whether it's fatalism or realism or some other -ism. Regardless, he reaffirmed his abhorrence of existentialism that he crystallized at St. George's. We only saw each other a few times after high school. It was probably inevitable, given knowing that we ended up in different schools, different cities, different countries. We made new friends and we made new families. We did see each other in 2006 at our 20-year reunion, and we vowed to keep in touch, especially when we figured out that we now lived only minutes from each other in Burnaby. But we didn't really keep in contact. We spoke a couple times after his initial diagnosis, and I followed his Facebook Facebook posts about his chemo, but I failed to really reconnect. I felt it had been so long and we had built such complex, detailed lives in the interim. Where does one start in catching up? Life and death is part of my regular work in the ICU, in the intensive care unit, yet here I was plainly uncomfortable chatting with a friend about his cancer. So along with sadness, I feel guilt now as well. I never saw Derek's band rock the house. I never saw Derek— never saw Derek rock a beard. And I never talked to him about his illness. I know Derek believed there was no after in afterlife, so by his own logic, he's not looking down on us now. He's not sitting in with us now. He's not sharing laughs and cheers with us now. But just in case, let me say, Derek, that I'm sorry it's taken your passing to make me realize what a man, what a talent, and what a friend you were. Thank you for letting me share.

So long before there was what you call the internet, there was this other strange way in which strange people would find each other.

Yes!

He's starting his own foolish tradition, no intended. Regardless, there was a chapter of Derek's life where a lot of his life his longest friends connected with him. Um, he affectionately referred to it as the modem days. And to speak about that, we have Andrew Flockstrand and Steve Hillman, two of Derek's closest friends, here to talk about that period in his life.

I'd like to begin with a really quick something, and I ask everyone to take a quick look at the person on their left.

Just a quick glance.

Quick look at the person on your right. Okay, it is almost certain you have just looked at a nerd. It's no accident you, Derek's peers, are a pack of nerds because Derek proudly reveled in his own nerdiness. He actively sought out and bonded with like-minded nerdy people by diving into his nerdy hobbies and his nerdy interests with immense enthusiasm. As a teen, one such hobby, one such activity was to use his, I guess at that point, an Apple II Plus computer, with what was at the time a very exotic piece of equipment called a modem, to post and connect with other like-minded community. Jeremy, nice, bright, awkward young folk. We are two of the ¡Gracias!

My name is Skillman, and I'm a geek.

Hi, Skillman.

I discovered the online community in 1983, a few months after I built my first computer. I was 16 years old, and once I got online to these things called bulletin board systems, or BBSes, I was hooked. It was all I would ever use a computer for after that. Here was a world that was filled with people who were pretty smart, really geeky, and maybe just a little bit socially awkward. They were just like me. I, uh, I was online for probably 2 years before I actually met any of these people in person. It was 1985, and it was a modem meetup at Embleside Beach organized by Warren Sykes. There would be many more meetups like that afterwards, including a lot at Expo '86, and that was actually where I first met Derek. There was a group of us that we called ourselves the Excursionists because we went off and did wacky things in our spare time, like running through storm drains and jumping on trains and things like that. And we all had various wacky names. I was Gilman and Derek was the Grodd. That's all I knew of him as until I met him in person in about 1986. He later explained that the Grodd was an evil gorilla from the Superman comics.

Flash!

Our excursionist group was a little bit elitist, which is kind of funny considering we were a bunch of really awkward geeks. But we were all around the same age, around 18, 19 years old. Anyone who was more than a couple years younger than us was an ankle-biter. And anyone who was much older was an old fart. And the old farts we respected, the ankle-biters we really had no time for at all. Derek was actually towards the younger end of that group, since he was about 2 years younger than I was, but he was probably more mature than most of us, and he certainly looked older. In fact, we often nicknamed him Ross Shaffer because he looked exactly like the late-night comedian. And I remember one evening when we were getting into Punchlines Comedy Club, and it was about 8 or 10 of us, something like that, and we were all getting ID'd. And they went through us one by one, ID'ing all of us, and Derek just kind of skulked around the back with his trench coat and Indiana Jones hat on. And somehow, through all of it, he was the only one who didn't get ID'd, and he was the only one who was underage. We also made a few camping trips out to Long Beach, which was a fun time. That group gradually grew from 6 people to over 30 people. But unlike most people who go camping, we took hard drive platters and used them as frisbees. It was our way of geeking out. Razor-sharp 14-inch steel blades. I gradually lost touch with some of these people. I still see them occasionally, but even though these people were only— we only spent probably 3 years of our lives together, I didn't know it really at the time, but this group of friends would become the best friends I would ever have.

Yeah, I also met Derek in person after knowing him for some time through his online persona on the BBSs. And it was at some large event that wound down with 10 or so of us 16-, 17-year-old little geeks at a Denny's somewhere in the middle of the night. After about an hour of coffee, chocolate, and grease-fueled childish behaviour, we as a group began to talk. Dissolved and went our own ways. And it was Derek's unfortunate task to have to drive me all the way back up to Kokuaipu, because he had use of a vehicle and I didn't. Now, he'd been comparatively quiet in that group through the dinner and— or through the coffee, and so I hadn't really formed a personal understanding or impression of who he was prior to getting in the car with him. On pulling away from the curb, He very casually reached over, turned on the tape, turned up the volume, and about a second later, the opening chords of Bach's Toccata and Fugue began to play in the car. It was that moment where I realized that it's an exceptionally interesting person, certainly as a teenager, to use Dracula's theme song as their preferred driving music. Søren was an exceptional person.

About 3 years ago, a friend of ours passed away very suddenly, Martin Sykes. And after Martin's memorial, Derek wrote on his blog about Martin. Martin was, by any measure, an extraordinary man. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been 400 people —from relatives to co-workers to high school and university chums, to those who only knew him from the parties he organized—out to remember him on a sleety January Sunday afternoon. More than one person told me they were quite surprised at how many different directions, into what they thought were completely unrelated groups of their acquaintances, they discovered his influence had reached.

Right back at you, Derek.

So Derek loved university, um, probably because his degree in marine biology would be so formative in his career. Actually, it does play a role in his career, which I hope you'll discover later when we play songs highly themed by marine life. But one of the best parts about university, I think, uh, for everyone and for Derek as well, is it's where the things that make you different start to become the things that people recognize that make you great. And to talk a little bit about that is one of Derek's best friends, Johann Thornton.

My name is Joh, Derek's been in my life for 26 years. I started reading his His writing's in the play in my high school. And then I'd go on to meet him at these excursion meetups when we met online. You know, you guys are online now, you don't know how awesome it is. Back then we basically used computers and we dialed each other, and if it was busy, we'd all try to get online. And we didn't even have touch tones, we were like pulse tap going.

So we had that weight, it's like—

That was Twilight Zone.

So basically, Derek worked really hard to write in those notes, because the only way to to get online was that way. I'm going to talk a bit about the 3 key times when Derek's and my life intersected in key ways, in critical ways. The first way was through this modeming, and we met some lifelong friends that we still have today, as has been explained, because we were geeks and it was the only way that you could meet other geeks at the time. The second way was through music. Derek and I both have this lifelong passion for music. And I get to take credit because Derek discovered drumming in my parents' laundry room on my brother's $100 drum set. And that ignited a lifelong passion of drums, music, guitar, recording. And in various incarnations, Derek's band was the house band at the legendary Lionsgate parties. So thanks for that. Yeah, and then the third way that that we intersected was through this awesomeness that we had at UBC. So Derek and I both arrived at the time when it suddenly became really easy to make newspapers. Computers and printing. And so Derek started this thing called The 432, and basically campus had never seen anything like it. This thing was immaculately typeset, had consistently funny articles, it was always out on time. I can tell you at the same time I was trying to do similar things for engineering, but I didn't get anywhere close. And to this day, the 432 stands out as the best publication that UBC's ever made. Another story I just heard from Tod Maffin and Karen about the kind of person Derek was— she asked him when she was getting started, Derek, I I don't know, there's all these courses and I don't know anything about the courses and all these profs, I don't know anything about it, can you maybe give me some advice? And Derek said, "Ah, you know, I'm really, really sorry, I'm just about to finish compiling this." So for 2 months he'd been working on this thing called Black and Blue Review, which compiles all the information on all the teachers and all the courses in one place. So Derek's the kind of guy that you ask him something and it turns out that he's been extensively researching that topic.

Recently.

Derek was a man who was impossibly passionate about everything in the universe, and it was impossible for him to stop sharing that passion with everyone around him. Derek, so long, and thanks for the fish.

So I was asked to say something about Derek and music, and I was trying to think of something that I could add that you wouldn't have already known from other parts of what he did and the music that he created and the other folks that are going to come and talk about him. And the only thing I could think of was this: Derek and I always sort of thought of each other as performers almost more than musicians, and the origins of Derek's performance were actually in an air band contest. It was also the most money we ever made as a band in the first 5 years. So there was an air band contest at UBC. It was pre-karaoke, no one had thought of that invention yet. And we had to go up and do 2 songs and there was a competition. And Derek, who most of you know him as a pretty reserved professional gentlemanly kind of guy, suddenly would go absolutely ballistic, and he looked like a cross between, you know, a fish having an epileptic fit and some kind of space alien that was about to eat your face. And so we won! So we won the Mary Van contest. But there was something about that way of performing that was always part of Derek. We used to kind of do terrible things to him in the band, like we would tell him he had to play the song even faster, and so he tried to play these hi-hat moves we called the helicopter hi-hats. Because it sounded like the whole drum kit was going to take off. Or we'd be on stage and we'd say, "You've got to hit the drums harder, harder at the opening of this song," and he would just keep doing it. You wouldn't even notice anything until afterwards, his hands would be bleeding. When it came to performing, for whatever reason, Derek had this absolute commitment. He would go to the ends of the earth. He would go past where anybody else would in order to be in that moment. And so I think that was one of the things that kind of made him wonderful as a musician. I think one of the things you'd be happy about today is that it's not every day that you kind of get to have one of your favorite bands come and talk about you. But we have that today. We have Craig Northby and Doug Elliott from The Odds come to say a few words.

Hi. Hi everyone. He's Craig. He's Doug.

We first met Derek 20 years into the last century, I guess, so the Roxy, when his band mates and himself, Sebastian Elster, the lot would come down the Flue to see us play and check our kooky shtick in the Gong Patrol, which was our moonlighting gig, and they kind of— that something resonated obviously with someone like Derek.

Yeah, so lucky for me, uh, I got asked, I can't remember, Seb might remember, I got asked to play in— the Flute had a cover band called the Neurotics. And, uh, has anyone seen the Neurotics? You know what it's all about, but I didn't know what it was all about. So did you call me Seb, or was it Derek? Derek called me and said, "Hey man, we got this band, and you know, do you want to come and play some tunes with us?" I was like, "Sure, well—" What's it all about? You know, he said, well, the concept is to play the music as great as you can, sing as great as you can, we dress up like buffoons, and we act like complete idiots.

Todd has a lot of experience in this regard.

Thanks so much.

So I can't, you know, I don't know, it's one of those gigs, bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, corporate gigs, weddings, I don't know what the first one was, you probably remember. Do you remember where I played the first game?

Bowling alley in Vancouver?

Was it the Hotel Vancouver? So we show up and Derek, being the great guy he is, was usually the one who had packed all the gear up into his car.

He does the gear packing as well.

So I connected with him right away. He loads all the gear and what we have. But he, you know, he's always packing gear. Great guy. We start playing and For those of you who aren't musicians, there's quite a real great connection between the bass player and the drummer. There has to be, and it's usually the drummer who's kind of driving the vibe of the band. But you start playing, you go, "Yeah, this guy's pretty good." I know we played this before. You look back, and there he is. You can probably see him in some pictures somewhere. There he is with his wig, and he's just smiling. Just right there. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And he's always smiling when he's playing, eh? Like, he probably knows that too. He's always having a ball. I'm like, I just fell in love with him right there. He's just such a great— um— the vibe— there you go. His vibe would come out, his personality, his positive spirit that all you people talk about at the Living Wake. Everyone's just going, what a great, positive person. People from when he was in kindergarten to, you know, to his adult life, that comes out when you're a musician, and you have to have that if you're gonna be good. I was very instantly connected with this guy Derek. It was really, really cool. We had a good dynamic going on there instantly.

He was a team player and captured the spirit of the music, and when we were in the Dawn Patrol, that was sort of what we did. We went and took the the piss out of it, but at the same time we loved that music, so we put all of our souls into it, and Derek and his pals and his posse really connected with that idea and took it up another notch with the neurotics, and it's definitely something that's rare in a musician. You don't see it all the time, especially the drummer who can take over and blast you off the stage and wreck the music.

But he never did that.

He also came with all the gravy because he told us about this thing called the internet, which we decided was like 8-track, it would be gone pretty quickly. responsible for us having things like websites that don't crash, telling us about MyPage and Face— Face thing. He set all those things up for us.

No, no, no, we don't do that, that kind of stuff.

And Sebastian helped out a lot with our fashion and hair. Thanks, guys. On all these gigs, one thing I got a chance to talked to Derek about too was, as everyone has said, his family is just, uh, I, I love that too. It's the most important thing in your life is your family. I just really fell in love with the guy instantly. Talk about that, that's the top of the mountain. Family, most important thing. And, um, I'm just happy to have known the guy for 20 years.

He always shared those things, the important things, love.

And I was just— I got an email, I love all his— I didn't really get into Pen Machine that much until the last 2 or 3 years, and I go on every now and again. I'm kind of one of the— I still don't have a cell phone. So I didn't think I had a laptop until 5 or 6 years ago. So anyway, I didn't really go and look at Pen Machine, but this— you guys are probably— some of you might know about this already, but I will always remember Derek and Laura and Marina and everybody here. Some of you might know this already, but this will emblazon him for the rest of your life. I sent him an email. Email came back, "Doug, please check out— I don't know what— the top 10 things to improve your grammar or something." And he said to me, "At the end of a sentence, you put a period. When the next sentence starts, you put a comma." There is only one state.

So in amongst there, Doug told you probably the single most important thing you could know about Derek. Um, Derek had an incredible number of passions in his life. He loved writing, he loved computer nerdery, he loved science fiction, he loved music. Um, but there was absolutely nothing he loved more, there was nothing he was more committed to, there was nothing that gave him more joy than his family. To come and speak about that, we have his cousin Jasmine Morell.

Hi, my name is Jasmine Morell. I'm one of Derek's two cousins, and I want to thank you all here on behalf of our family for coming here to pay tribute to a wonderful, amazing man, Derek Carl Miller. We're a small, very close-knit family, and Derek's struggle with cancer, and his death has really made a huge void in all of our lives. He will be greatly, greatly missed by all of us forever, and our family will never be the same. Derek was the first grandchild in our family. He was cherished by everyone. As my sister and I came along, we rapidly formed a strong loving bond with Derek. From an early age, Derek demonstrated his strong love, attachment, and loyalty to all members of his family, with a special relationship with his grandparents, Bako and Mary, and with his oma and opa. I remember so many wonderful times we shared at our family's lakeside property, our Christmases, and all our family functions. Growing up together, we got to see Derek's passions and interests his interests flourish. Common interests such as computers, music, and astronomy helped him form a very special bond with his father Carl. His mother helped out, watched, and cared for the both of them with all the love that a mother could provide. As the years went by, we looked up to Derek because of his superior intelligence, his easygoing manner, his respect for others, and the inspiration that he provided to the rest of us. Derek and I share a love of music. I loved going to his house to hear the band play. As I got older, I became a front row fan, and I was at every, every event that I could possibly be at to see him play. I also loved to dance with my Uncle Carl, and there was really no No happier moment than being able to dance to Kurt's hand-playing, and I will always remember that. In his music, that's where I really saw him shine. He transformed from a somewhat shy and private person into an outgoing entertainer who played and sang with real passion and real love of life. In 1995, Derek's wedding to the love of his life, Erdre, brought a new dimension to the capacity for— to his capacity for loving and caring. She was his best friend and his soulmate. I have never seen Derek happier as I've seen him since he came to be with Erdre. We welcomed her wholeheartedly as a wonderful addition to our family. Within a few years, their love was rewarded with the birth of their two beautiful daughters, Marina and Lauren. Derek and Audrey's love for the girls was legendary. As Marina and Lauren stated, Derek was the best dad in the world. They have inspired me as a mother, as well as my sister Talia and her husband TJ, who are now expecting a child of their own. We all look up to Derek and your dream, Marina and Lauren, and we hope to have our families modeled in the same way that you guys have yours. Um, it's— you're a very solid, encouraging, and lovely, loving family, and that's all we could ever dream of. I feel very blessed to be a part of your amazing family, and I cherish all of you forever. Derek really loved our family functions, dinners, and holidays. This Easter we were especially blessed. You know, Derek was able to really enjoy the festivities, and he had connected with a man from France. This man was diagnosed with the same type of cancer that Derek had on the same day, and they had emailed back and forth and connected, and this man, Jacques, Sean Hughes flew here from France knowing that Derek was very ill and was able to spend 3 days here just to tell him exactly how much hope and faith he had given him to keep going when he really didn't have the strength to keep going with his own treatments. And we were blessed enough to be able to share Easter dinner with Sean. To me, that, that says everything Derek right there. It shows how many people around the world he's touched. It shows the type of person that Derek was, and I feel really blessed to be a part of that. Um, you know, Derek has so much strength, and we watched him suffer through so many surgeries, so much of his illness, and he did it all with positivity. With integrity, with a way about him that, um, I don't know if I would have the strength to do. Life will never be the same in our family without Derek. Um, you know, we love you, Derek, always. We will never forget the lessons that Derek has taught us. Your optimism and belief that good things people on this planet will forever help us. You are in our hearts forever and our thoughts. And just to finish off, I just want to say thank you to everybody for being here. And on behalf of our whole family, Carla, Milka, Erdre, Marina, Lauren, Mom and Dad, Toddy and TJ, Angelina and I, we are very blessed to have you as our family. We are here for you always. Derek, I love you, I miss you, and you have taught me never to give up on my dreams, no matter how big or how small.

I love you forever.

Thank you for being my inspiration and being the brother that I've never had.

One interesting thing about Derek, which you can probably predict from some of the stuff you've heard, he actually really liked to work. Um, he really enjoyed the process of work, and everyone who worked with him always enjoyed the relationships they had. We have someone here to talk about that part of Derek's life, Bill Doby.

Hi everyone, thanks very much for the chance to talk today. I'm one to ramble generally, but today I'll try not to. I'm going to read from a prepared text actually, and Derek would laugh at that because he always said my best work came off the cuff. Tough, but this isn't about my best work today, this is about Derek, and I want to try and capture what those of us who worked with him, and knew him, and were his friends thought. That brings me to the frustrating part, of course, of all this, not being able to have Derek edit this. It goes back to the very beginning of how we became friends with the man. He actually offered to edit what I was going to say, or rather, going to post about him, the last time I saw him a few weeks ago, but I couldn't bring myself to write this. Selfish in a way, I know, as he was the one dying, so you'd think I could do it, but maybe I hoped that there would always be one more day where I could ask him to take a look. I promise you this much: if he had edited it, it would be shorter. We met at UBC, I think probably in 1992. I was a crazy, ambitious young student politician, Derek was writing for the science undergrad newspaper. He was a fascinating person in my eyes: smart, level-headed, open-minded, liberal in a way I had never experienced, and with a curiosity that seemed to know that the answers are never so easily found in absolutes. I remember discussing almost everything, as both of us were apt to do, but never arguing, and this was probably the most novel part of Derek for me: the idea that you could turn a topic around in a way that didn't involve a hardening of position. Transitions. It's a lesson I took too long in learning, and it's one of the most special things about him to me. In time, as Derek graduated and finished his creative writing program, he worked for the Student Society of EMS as a staff researcher. I was president for 2 years there and ran amok with various ideas, good and bad, and Derek was always there with perspective, research, editing, discussion, and counsel. His contributions can't even be listed here. They were beyond substantive and indicators of the impact his life would have on so many. Years later, when friends of mine from UBC and myself started a software business here in Vancouver, we worked with Derek nearly from the start, very early from the start. By then it was around 2000 and Derek was well advanced on his life today with Air and his family, and it seemed so natural to be working with him again. Eventually he joined us full-time as Communications Manager,, and we worked together closely until his medical leave 4 years ago. There's so much today about technology, software, interconnectedness, and the web that seems so obvious, so much a fact of our lives as if it has always been that way. We have to recall that even 12 years ago, internet businesses were still new concepts. Talking openly on the web about our business and its challenges was new. Derek wove his natural understanding of this medium, which is just really a more direct way of doing what we always do, which is talk to each other, into our business, even a boring old logistical business like ours. I remember the first time our system crashed and Derek helped draft up what we were going to say to our customers. It was lovely. It was the truth. Just the plain facts of why the servers stopped working and what we would do about it. It wasn't that we didn't want to say that, but it just didn't seem normal. Derek reminded us it was the most natural thing, and people will be glad for it. He was writing. Writing shapes who we become, how we see the world. So much of our business was written, documented, and blogged by Derek. But he shaped so much more of our business than I think I realized. I see so many faces from Maverick out there today. Many of us have jobs because Derek helped me and others understand what we could sell, articulate that simply, and why we were worth giving a chance to. Why it was okay to make something out of nothing, and that was a good thing. He gave voice to the possible in our business, and we are more prosperous for it. Derek was doing this on the web before so many others. He was truly a vanguard, a giant in my mind as to how the coming world of dialogue between us all unfolded. How wonderful to be present at the start of it, and see it practiced till even after the end of his life by such a skilled nerd. I still remember crowding around his Mac SE in his researcher's office as he was showing me Mosaic by Netscape. He understood then what a lot of us live now, how a lot of us talk to each other now, even how some of us know each other today, and particularly how Derek ended up leaving the world. This medium mattered, not because of the technology, but because it let us talk to one another so directly and authentically. I was home for several months at the end of last year, confronting some of my own challenges in life, and reconnecting with Derek was one of the great gifts of what was a very difficult time for me. Sometimes it's hard to say that because Derek was having an awful time too, but he would be the first to say that's nonsense. That's what you're supposed to say as opposed to what's real, that we each have struggles. His dying sucks, in his words, but it was not the only problem in the world. And there was the man again, wanting to listen and talk to me, even after we talked about life for his family after he's gone. Always giving. Quickly the conversation turned, "What about you, Bill?" When I think back the most over the years, over the work years in particular, and then on into my personal relationship with him, I think about that remarkable ability to to improve the quality of the discourse. It would be virtually impossible to have an argument with him on an issue of substance. It was always a generous discussion, and it drew others in. His very manner and way of being forced it into a real conversation, a multifaceted, open-minded talk in person and online. How the world needs that. How I will miss it. How I want to emulate it. In the last few visits I had with him, Derek and I reminisced a lot about the things we started, both at UBC and Navrat. He said a couple of times to me that he wasn't the sort of guy to start things, as I apparently am, for good or bad, but instead liked to contribute, to make it happen. Well, the truth is, we all know nothing gets done without those who do, and Derek did beautifully. He encouraged, shaped, cajoled, critiqued, and made things happen, all with the beauty of a craftsman. Both in writing and words, many of us here stand on foundations he built, helped us build inside ourselves, that we didn't even know we're missing. I hope we gave the same thing back to him. I saw Derek just before I went back to London last time I was here a few weeks ago. My partner and I had spray cheese and crackers. We talked about everything. The end, the beginning, death, what's next for us all. I'm struck how engaged and even joyful the discussion was. Yes, there was anger. Anger at it all ending too soon. But the discussion wasn't unpleasant for him, and in particular for us. It remains this remarkable thing about Derek. About all of this. Like that big window in his living room, he let light in and it stayed with you. For this, I am grateful. Grateful to have known him, to honor him, to have worked with him and been his friend. I look forward to the next stage of life for his family and to keeping them close. Nothing worried him more than not being able to be there physically and emotionally for Airdrie, his children, his parents, and his wider family. All of us in this room can do no greater honour to him than support them in the journey before them, and I know we will. Thank you, Derek. I miss you, and I promise to type only one space instead of two.

I think one other rare thing about Derek was he was a man perfectly suited to his times. With the advent of personal computers when they came out, and his ability to understand complicated things and make them easier for people, other people to understand, to the advent of social media and things like that, I think if you were going to invent blogging today, you probably want to try to find the kind of people who could turn it into something meaningful. Unlike, you know, so many of the blogs that are sort of out there in the world that are really just about the personal, Derek always managed to take the personal and make it relevant to everyone else. To talk a little bit about Derek's wonderful blogging and podcasting, we have Dave Chip.

I'm Dave Tjuekkanen. I'm a composer, songwriter, audio engineer, producer, and because of Derek, I'm a podcaster as well. As well. For those of you who don't know what a podcast is, it's— I'm sure there's a lot of you here who do— it's essentially take a radio program, put it on your MP3 player, and listen to it later. I first got to know Derek through listening to his podcast, Inside Home Recording, with Paul Gray, who was the co-host at the time. And it wasn't until, um, it was about a year later they started asking for people to contribute, see if, uh, they could get some fresh blood. Um, they're both Mac guys, I was a PC guy, and they put a call out to, uh, for a PC guy to come on. And, uh, I put up my hand, um, and, uh, promptly voted 3 months later I got a Mac.

They kept me on it.

It was fantastic to be on it, on the podcast, and be able to contribute. Although at the beginning they had such a dynamic I couldn't get a word in edgewise. The only time people could actually hear me is in my segments that I gave I eventually moved to Vancouver. At that time I was in Toronto, and Paul stepped down as a co-host, and I filled in as the co-host. And the first time I actually got to meet Derek face-to-face was in his basement, in his man cave. It was fantastic. If you go down there, There's drums set up, there's amplifiers, there's guitars, there's all these toys. I was in heaven. I quickly got to know that we had a lot in common. We were both the same age, we both had kids about the same age. He has 2, I have 3, I had a spare. We both loved music, sci-fi, fiction, geekery, and sometimes he sported the same awesome haircut. Besides the audio aspect of the focus of Inside Home Recording, you got to know that he was into cameras, photography, and that was a big part of his life. Really got— hit me when he came over to my house once to record an episode episode of Inside Home Recording, and he brought his bag of tricks with him. And it was, it was this small compact bag, but he opened it up and he just kept coming out. Things kept on coming out. There was recorders, there was microphones, there was cables, there was power adapters and so forth. And at that time it was an overcast day and we had a plan to record out in the backyard in the Adirondacks, have a beer, so on. So we started, we were about half an hour into talking, and it started raining. And we both looked at the extension cord going from the shed up to our feet powering up the recorder and looked at each other and shrugged and kept on going. He introduced me to blogging, and I really got to appreciate his style of blogging when he gave me access to the coveted IHR blog and site. I got my administrative password and got in there and wow, everything is categorized.

Everything had tags all over the place.

Things were properly put in place. Before, about 3 months ago, we decided I floated the idea of redesigning it, and he said, "Yeah, go for it." I don't really want to get into that, but I started looking at it. Even the code that he had in there was meticulous. It was textbook stuff you'd find in any sort of computer engineering course. Everything was indented, the loops were documented. It was like, typical. Derek, when he was on air, I'm very lucky to always hear his voice in my headphones. I got this great mixed response, and he had a fantastic voice. It was unique, it was engaging. He was able to— when he talked, you were just drawn in. I just remember sometimes sitting there just listening to him like, just, oh. And then there would be silence, and I'm supposed to talk now. It was just, he had this great, you know, just kept on encouraging me and had a professionalism about him, but he also kept things light-hearted. We had fun, we had laughter, we had light-hearted banter. We tried not to keep very, we tried not to make too things too serious. One of the cool things about the podcast was that at the end we had this thing where we both said, I'm Derek K. Miller, I'm Dave Shepp, happy recording. We tried to do happy recording at the same time and we never got it. Never. We'd always fix it in post, so to speak. So I'd be happy recording, happy recording, happy recording, and it would just I tried about 3 times and I forgot. So, um, it was fun to do that. I think we actually did do it once, and it was just a real fluke, and I kept the reaction to the end of the podcast, which was sort of funny. I actually never got to know Derek without his cancer, but during the podcast, he never allowed it to be the elephant in the room. In the room. We always had the— began the podcast with, "Hi, how you doing? How you doing, Dave? How you doing, Derek?" And he would always come out and blatantly say, you know, "I feel like crap." You know, subject of, you know, puke and poo, nausea and all that sort of stuff would come up. And we'd just get that out of the way. That was one of the cool things, and it was was just he never allowed you to keep that as something that would put a cloud over things and keep the conversation going. His later shows, he wasn't able to talk a lot about his music anymore or what he was doing in terms of recording. Things started getting a little bit more philosophical, and you could see some— you know, frustration, anger popping in there, but he always brought it back to the positive. He always brought it back to how it's a good thing, you know, what he's doing and how it affects people. The only regret I have of knowing Derek is that we never really got to do that last show. Unfortunately, he lost his voice back in February and was never able to get it back, so we never really got that last show, but there's so much more that I can be grateful for, for knowing him. Um, he had this fantastic, as you've heard, passion for technology and being able to share life through it. Through his written words, pictures, in his voice. They're all captured and meticulously categorized. The qualities that I'm going to be able to admire in Derek and be able to relive is to live life, look for the positive things, see things from all sides, connect with people, and always wear a cool hat.

I think of all the things we can talk about, about Derek, the one probably none of us really want to talk about too much, some have alluded to it, is something I think he would require of us to speak about, which is living with and dealing with cancer. I think that it brought so many bad things into his life, but it did bring a few good things in his life, and some of those were connections with people and things he could share, and people who cared about him as well. And so we're very privileged to have Stephen Schwartz here to talk a little bit about that.

Sori, I'm moving so slow. Thank you all for being here. And I was really surprised when they asked me to speak. Most of the people here who spoke today, I've known Derek the shortest amount of time, only about a year and a half. We became friends quite unlikely. Uh, I lost my wife to ovarian cancer 7 years ago. And I also, uh, suffer from mental illness, bipolar and depression. I became friends with Airdrie first, and I think our connection, our friendship, was because I went through what she was currently going through with Tara. And I became friends with Derek through this. We, uh, the Millers themselves, all of them— Derek Dreeke, the girls, his father and his mother— welcomed me to their home at a point where I was feeling helpless and lost. In a way, his openness and his honesty saved my life. I can honestly say his family saved my life. And I was moved incredibly when, at the end of life, Derek and Airdrie both asked me to be there at the house. Derek and I talked a lot at night when Airdrie would fall asleep. And we didn't talk about cancer much, because we both kind of knew it with each other. He had it, I had it. It was a, uh, we talked about fear a little bit at night, but his sense of humor was always there. And even to the end, a lot of you weren't there for it. Some of your friends came to visit, which gave him a huge boost. I'm going to mention just a couple quick anecdotes about his last few days and how beautiful home hospicing can be. End of life. The choice not to be in a hospital if you don't have to be. He can be in his own living room looking out the window that he grew up in, looking at the mountains he grew up and loved looking at. Election Day was only— our national election day was only a couple days before Derek passed away, and he was really excited about voting, uh, and he kind of guilted a bunch of people too. He used his, uh, he used his blog and his voice to say, "If I can get my ass out of bed, dragged," and he did get his ass dragged. It wasn't easy for him. He went and he voted. And that night he was up watching the election results. He was excited about it. It was, it was Derek. It wasn't, it was a moment where it wasn't about his end of life. It was about what's happening to the country and how proud he was to vote. In the last couple days, I was taking care of the night shift while, uh, Airdrie was taking care of daytime, taking care of Derek. I would listen downstairs on a baby monitor. We had a baby monitor set up. I would be downstairs and I could hear his breathing all night, and then anything changed, I'd come up and also give him his meds. His sense of humor was there. Uh, he called me up and he always talked about pooing and peeing a lot at the end of his illness. It was a constant theme. We helped him go to the bathroom. It was a pretty odd moment. Uh, Airdrie was asleep, snoring on the couch. I was in my underwear. Derek was not in his underwear. Uh, we were— I was holding him to get him to go to the bathroom. And he said, "Yeah, here's two half-naked men." cancer holding each other in the middle of the night while my wife is snoring on the couch. You know, he kept his sense of humor for anybody who was curious right to the end. His humanity was there right to the end. He looked over me from his bed and said, "How's your back today? You look like you're in pain." Not thinking about himself, asking about me. My regret is that I didn't know him 20, 25 years. I never knew Derek without cancer. I— Derek was just Derek to me because I only knew him when he was ill. I will be forever changed for the, the kindness he showed me, the— his ability to made me feel part of something and part of his family. He welcomed me into his house and gave me a place where I felt safe and loved. Even when things were tough for him, he always showed me that. Talking about end of life is not easy. Talking about death is not easy. But we talked late at night. We talked those last few days a lot at night, uh, to the background snoring. But it was, it was, it was, it's not a happy moment. It's not a, uh, it's, it's It was not a joyful time, but it was an incredibly moving, and it will forever change me, that I was allowed to, uh, and invited to share. And he openly wanted to share this with me at the end of his life. I'm grateful to call him my friend, even though I haven't known him long. I am grateful that the Miller family, Erydri, Loren, Marina, Carl, and everybody else allowed me to get to know their son and their husband and their father the way I did, and allowed me to share this most intimate, intimate time in Derek's life and theirs. Thank you again, uh, and I'm glad you're all here. It's pretty moving. That's all I have to say.

Another small interesting thing about Derek: he never sought out fame, which is kind of odd. I remember when a group of us all lived together, and periodically we all figured he would be the one guy who could make it as a politician, because he hadn't killed anybody or done any awful things. And I remember saying, "You know, you should run for office. You're perfect. You look good. You got prime ministerial voice." And he said, "Nah." That was kind of his thing. He found other ways to contribute. I remember we were in Australia together, you know, as a band. And I knew at that point he was thinking of leaving the band. And I said, "You know, come on. We're gonna make it. We're gonna be huge." And he said, "No, I miss surgery. And I can always write songs." And so he did. He always found these ways of giving things that he created out to the rest of the world. And the interesting thing about that, as Stephen mentioned, we just had an election recently. Think of all of these politicians who are potentially powerful men and women, aspiring to power, aspiring to fame, aspiring to be known. Derek has created one thing with all of his writings and his songs and his blog. That most of them will never have, which is a legacy. And I think he knew that that was becoming a legacy as things were coming to a close. And as you probably all know, millions of people went to his blog to read it. His poor family have been on media just about every day. And there's so many people out there that care about what he had to say and what he did in the contributions contributions he made. He's entrusted that legacy to his family and a few select friends. Uh, one of the most, uh, closest to him is Alistair Calder. He's going to talk about the future of Derek's legacy.

a few years ago, actually when Derek told me that he had cancer, he called me, like I think he did a few of you, before he posted back in 2007. And he talked to me about it, and he was very Derek about the whole thing. It was a lot about realism, and what it meant, and what the likelihoods were. And, you know, Derek had this way of making everything seem so understandable that it seemed like it was defeatable. And at the beginning, it almost seemed just like it was a small hurdle and that it would happen. And I'm on the phone with him saying, "Well, you know, people survive this stuff." And he was saying that, you know, that this is pretty grim and that we have to be be prepared. So even at the beginning, he always had the ability to say, okay, now let's look at the realistic situation here. So after a few years, he mentioned the idea that should he not be able to continue, he wanted me to make sure his website went on and that his Flickr account didn't get deleted and all that sort of stuff. And I was I was like, "Okay, that's probably something that could happen." And then he said that he wanted me to do it. And I was like, "Aye, sure, I'm geeky, I guess I can figure all that stuff out." And so then in January of this year, he sort of confirmed that, you know, that that's definitely going to happen. And we'd had a couple of conversations about how I got him into the whole blogging thing, so I may as well be in charge of keeping it going. But I had no idea that it was going to turn into what it turned into. Many of you have probably heard the stories of the mass amounts of traffic that has happened to Derek's blog. I can tell you from my side of the fence, that was a 10-hour heart attack. First day when the site was not around and people were, "Ah, wow, that was crazy." I'm madly trying to get it from going and moving it from server to server. I don't know if you know the story, but basically just kept moving to ever larger and more capable servers around, literally around the world, until we could find one that could handle the load. And then with the generous contribution from Chris Perillo and some people that he knew that work at Google, they were able to keep it going. And at the height of it, it was doing something like 27 gigabit per second. So for all the nerds in the audience, that's funny. And Derek would have thought that was pretty neat. He would have done a graph and stuff.

How that was really cool.

So, you know, that legacy is— it just started with a bang, right? It started with— this is how much His words touched people, people that he never met, people that never knew who he was. He had this impact, and he had this impact in his voice and in his music, and particularly in his words. And that last post was poignant and it touched a lot of people because it was his opportunity to write the very last words he would write and share with the world. And he entrusted that to me, and that was a huge honor. And I'll always be happy for that. But at the same time, I think that, you know, the website thing, I'll get you. You know, planning this event, I was gun-shy. I mean, you know, I had, sure, okay, I'll, yeah, I'll take care of the website, and then kaboom. And then, sure, yeah, I'll help plan this thing, and then I thought, you know, maybe we should get GM Place or something. But Derek, as far as where we're going, Derek's words will live on. Definitely keeping his website around, keeping his Flickr updated,— not updated, but up, keeping it still available, making sure that his website is always available all the time. And I don't know that many of you know, I've been contacted by UBC, and they're in negotiations with the library to potentially set up a foundation in Derek's name that would keep his website going in perpetuity, which—

—is a big part of his life.

And so I think that he would think that was pretty cool. And I think that's pretty cool too. So I think we'll be able to read Derek's words long, long into the future. And many people will get the opportunity to read the wonderful things that you wrote over the years. So, you know, I want to thank you personally for coming down and making this a great event. And I think we're moving on to a different part of the program right now. So we're moving from words to music, I think. And Derek's sort of had a big part in— music had a big part in Derek's life. And some of us had the great pleasure of playing with Derek, and we saw Craig and Doug here before, so we're going to force you to listen to us now. So hopefully we can remember some of this stuff. We honestly haven't played a lot of these songs in about 16 years, so you might need to forgive Chord changers.

This was our most popular song. It's called Tuning.

So this is a song that started out as a poem Derek had written when he was at Banff Marine Station and was probably supposed to be studying. Yes. It goes like this.

I wish someone would ask me What's the most beautiful place you've ever seen? I could tell them about— Bats on blocks, heaviest buildings crushed into the sea. Black soup, cracker crumbs, waves flowing from the Pacific, exploding with a distant crowd. Wild child to shove them aside. A horizon that gets no closer for 9,000 miles. Until Antarctica. And now I've seen so many things I can't find the words to tell you. But no one ever, ever asked. We had come to see tide pools, but I sat on a rock looking south into the wind. For half an hour, and I didn't want to go home. But no one ever asks. A horizon that gets no closer for 9,000 miles. Until Antarctica. And I've seen so many things, I can't find the words. I wish to tell you, but no one ever, ever asks. A horizon that gets no closer for 9,000 miles until Antarctica. And I've seen so many things, I can't find the words to tell you. But no one ever, ever—

I've seen so many things.

There are things I can't find the words to tell you, but you don't ever, ever ask. I wish someone would ask me, what's the most beautiful place you've ever seen?

I can't remember most of the words, because a lot of words have actually come in in the last 16 years, and a lot of words have gone out. This song was written by Seb and discovered by me. And he had wrote the song and I had seen a recording of it or heard it and thought it was kind of cool and thought that we should actually do this and sort of formed some of the early parts of what we did in the Flute. And it seems kind of fitting for the situation, so I thought that we would try it. And I'm going to be happy if I can get through halfway this song, so we'll see what happens. So actually, you know what? I kind of want to block this round of applause so that I can feel a little bit better, because it feels very quiet.

Wow!

This is my daughter.

This is Angelina, and Angelina has something that she wanted to say.

Derek is loved as always. We love him too.

He will always be in our heart forever.

We will always love him. He is amazing player.

He was amazing at operating on computer.

poster online, and I met Derek online like so many people did, which is odd because I could walk to his house. Derek was an amazing geek. He had nerd cred out the wazoo.

He had music cred.

He had writing cred. He had husband cred, family, friends. I mean, we're all here. And I mean, more than 10 million people online have read him and been brought together, moved by his words. Not many people intimidate me, but Derrick intimidated me. Because he was just an amazing human being. And it wasn't that he was intrinsically awesome, he wasn't born that way. He made himself into a human being that could touch millions of people. And I'm inspired by that. And, uh, I think the term The official term for someone who is that good at that many things is Renaissance man, but I don't think that applies to Derek because he was, as they said, very much of his time. Derek was the archetypal 21st century man, and we're all brought together through technology, which he used. I mean, it was his magic flowing out through the wires that brought all of us together here. Here in this room and all around the world. And I just wanted to come up and share that with you.

Thanks, Lorraine.

Hello, my name is Jason. I'm going to make this quick, but not for Derek. I'm going to do it because if I don't, I'm going to lose it up here. I met Derek in 1999 when I first moved to Vancouver. I started working for Multicom Software, and him and I and Alistair and Miles were on the web team together. So I took away a lot of stuff, but the big one for me is what he did as a father. In the age of social media, there's all kinds of discussion about what do we do about kids and online media, and Derek was always very pragmatic about it.

And now that I have two kids, I use it as inspiration.

He did a post not too long ago talking about the need for kids to make mistakes.

Makes mistakes.

That if we coddle them too much, they don't learn how to live life. Um, and I'm sure he was very protective and probably worried, but he allows his kids to get out there and make mistakes that he made. Um, and part of the reason why I think he can do that, um, is because I think he had intense courage in his kids. Um, He believed that they were wise enough to make smart decisions most of the time, and I think he believed that they were strong enough to, odd time, they make a bad decision. And I hope I can have that faith in my kids.

Everything. Thanks. Are there any last speakers? This is your last chance before you're forced to hear the band again.

My name is Michael, and I knew Derek from high school.

And I actually didn't know him that well in high school, and even latterly, I'd see his family maybe once a year. And I'm actually going to education. I'm trying to negotiate a job career change. I'm trying to get into education, and one of the things that I've worked on latterly in my legal career was in music. And it's actually through Derek's blog and through knowing Derek that— I work with a lot of young musicians in town, mostly in their teens and their 20s. But when I saw Derek develop as an adult into a very talented creative musician, I started seeing the connections between— I don't think it's any sort of coincidence that we've got a lot of really amazing musicians here and amazing computer coders here. And it was through Derek actually that I've really, really sort of solidified the connection between creativity and kids and computers and this world that used to be— these worlds that used to be so apart in the last century have really come together. And in working with these young musicians nowadays, it used to be that when a young musician didn't— the two The two worlds were separate, and nowadays I see all these wonderful young kids, many of them, some of whom I work with and some of whom I teach. And if you're a musician, you know, you have all these wonderful pathways into the world of computers. And if you're a computer, you may, if you're interested in computers, chances are you have a, you may have an interesting pathway into music. And Derek's life really really, I think, shows that coalescence between those two worlds and the compatibility of those two worlds. And as I go into education, I'm going to try to remember that in becoming a teacher. And so I'm going to see those kids at the back of the room doing— some of them may be doing music, some of them may be doing— working with the computers or texting on their phones or whatever. I'll see the sort of wonderful potentials for all those, all those kids, all those young musicians, all those computer geeks, and the crossover that Derek represented.

I didn't meet Derek online. I met him when we all had lanyards around our neck, as we do at these conferences we go to. In about a 12-hour span at a conference called GNOMEDEX in 2005, I met this whole handful of people who had built the internet. And it was an amazing, eye-opening thing for me because I just started doing this this thing called podcasting and thought I was this cool writer, made fanzines, played drums in a band. Later on that night we were at the Experience Music Project. I ended up in one of these jam spaces with Dave Dederer from the Presidents of the United States and Derek Miller. I think I'm pretty cool, right? I've been around, I've done all these projects and stuff. I get talking to the guy Derek and I'm like, "Oh, you know, I'm a writer." He's like, "Well, blah blah blah." I'm like, "Well, I did fanzines." Boy, does this come with things all the play count. Oh, you're Dave?

Holy shit, alright. I was on this punk rock band.

Yeah, I knew my band, we toured Australia and this.

Damn it!

Well, you know, now I'm the marketing guy for this web company. You know, I send out these press releases, I manage all like whenever there's a disaster, whenever we have an outage, I'm the one that sends out the memos. Yeah, I do that too. I got a nap. Well, me and my buddy, we just started this podcast called Clubside Breakfast Time, and it's pretty cool. He's like, oh yeah, I've been doing this podcast for a couple years where everybody knows me. Creative Commons licensed music. And I'm like, well, I really need instrumental music for my podcast. I need something, you know, don't take this the wrong way, but I need something I can talk over. And he's like, yeah, all my songs are instrumentals. Someone pointed out earlier, I'm about a year younger than Derek, and as soon as I started learning about him, he was someone I could always really look up to. You know, we had all these same— like I said the other day, we had the same hashtags, right? Except his work was always a little bit more polished and professional, and, well, mine was a little bit more renegade, I guess. And, you know, he would have a show, Inside Home Recording, about how to make a really good sign-in podcast. I would have one about how to make a podcast after 6 beers and 3 joints. I remember there was a little timidity as a northern voice, you know, like just went on the last couple days and I was doing my talk called, uh, about podcasting. I was a last-minute replacement. I don't know why they don't book me months in advance. So I'm doing like my little Bob Dylan slides and I'm like, oh God, Derek Miller's right there. Oh shit. So I remember there would be a levelator. I was like, I was like totally out of my element, but Derek was right up there in the second row laughing and going right along with my stuff, nodding along. I knew I was up there with Roland driving the slide deck and me and my little paper cards that I was on the right track because I see him smiling along and nodding. The next year I did a talk called "Fuck Stats, Make Art," and Derek had just been diagnosed around that time, and he was again sitting right there, and at that point I was just honored to even have him there coming to hear me To talk. hear my spiel. And it turned out to be really handy that he was there too, because Chris Krug and I were trying to get the computer going with the projector and all that. Got the wrong dongle, man. So I got down in front of him, like, "Dang it, we got the wrong dongle!" And fortunately, Derek was right there with his kit. "What do you need, the mini-DVI?" I told myself I was never going to miss an opportunity to hang out with him. Anytime there was a conference, an event, a party, anything that he was going to be at, I was going to make a point of being there. And last year when I hit 40 and Derek and Airdrie and the kids came up, I was totally honored. They were the two only minors in the place. My party's usually very kid-friendly. I mean, obviously they're— They carry the same grace and good humor as their parents. And shortly thereafter, he had his 41st, and we went out there and had a great time. I brought a few presents to kind of— because, you know, with Derek and his music and releasing his Creative Commons in his home studio, I love this kind of stuff, and I've traveled all over the world. I have boxes of cassettes and CDs that people have just homemade before, and I think it's a beautiful thing. So I took a whole collection Derek had received, and he was so graceful, and we had a great time. Great time on the lawn, we're just about to go. And then I, uh, someone came to me and said, "No, no, you've got it, you've got it, no, just Dave, come with me, you've got to see this room." And I always wondered what kind of style Eric got his name from, because he's such a refined, dignified, you know, really, just a nice guy, right? And, uh, I was kind of curious, and sure enough, I go down to this room and I meet the parents, and sure enough, the parents, yes, they are dignified and they are lovely, but damn, can they party!

You walk through the door and it's like you've gone back to 1976.

The shag carpet, the wet bar on the wall filled with all those liquors that you always wonder, "Who drinks Goldschlager?

What are all these different kinds of schnapps?

What is this?" And then there's the tickle trunk. Within 5 minutes we were all boogieing down with funny hats on. And that's something else, my final thing that Derek and I shared in common, was the importance of a good hat and a good pair of glasses. And finally, one other thing I learned about Derek on the the night that I tried to fix the Miss 604 Awards. Guess $100 isn't enough to win first place in the podcast. I took second. Shot. And I also learned that, well, two things, that Derek was a very gracious winner and gave me a nice shout out on his blog, called me his buddy. Our pal Dave came second. I also learned that Airdrie, well, 6 months she's still teasing me about it. So, that's about the two of them. It's truly an honor to know you folks. Derek is now a proud source of safety net for his girls everywhere around the world. No matter where you go, you now have a friend. Besides in this room, everywhere and all around the world right now, people are paying attention to this, and it's because he built something so beautiful. So I'm honored to be a part of it.

Thank you very much for letting me.

Hi, my name's Ryan Quack. I've known Derek since, I guess, about 1991 when I took over the student paper after— well, there was Aaron Drayton, then I took it over after him. I guess there's 3 things I just wanted to thank Derek for. One was for giving me his copy of Chicago Manual of Style, which opened up a whole world of linguistic nerdery for me. The second is, I don't know that Derek will ever know how much it meant for him to have visited my wife in the hospital a couple of years ago when she was stuck there for a while. She's unfortunately not feeling well today, or she would have been here. As well. And the last thing I wanted to thank Derek for was, uh, I've been riding around with this for about, I guess, 10 days or 2 weeks, thinking that it was too late for me to have said these things to him. And, uh, I guess if there's anything you can learn from Derek, that it's just— it's never too late, and you should go for it.

So thank you.

I met Derek about 2005, and like a lot of people have talked about today, Derek was there at the beginning for a lot of things. And I think we met just at the beginning of his podcasting life, and we You know, kind of like Derek, in the spirit of everything we do, we just met at a friend's house in North Van, and we just shared information. It's kind of like the meetups you guys have with BBSes before. And, uh, that's what I always remember about Derek. You know, it didn't matter that, um, you didn't know something, or, you know, you didn't have something, he always wanted to share that. And I've been fortunate enough to be with Derek a number of times to, uh, share our photography love, and, you know, he's like that guy that knows how to do everything, so you can always call on him to, like, answer a hard question, and he's, um— this is really actually hard to do— but the first memory I have of Derek is meeting him at that meeting at my friend's basement, and we both just got new laptops, and I was kind of complaining that, you know, it's a great laptop, but it's "Kind of warm." And he goes, "Oh, yeah, I got this cool thing." Opens this bag that has all this never-ending stuff in it.

Pulls out this little stand, like, "Yeah, you stick it on that." I'm like, "This guy's like Inspector Gadget!" I'm used to being that guy.

And so he, you know, we've been friends for, you know, 6 or 7 years, I guess. And I miss him.

Hey, I'm one of those people who came really late in Derek's life. He kind of found me through writing and liked my blog for whatever reason, and, uh, never really got to find out why he did, but I'm really glad he found me. And I feel burned for not getting to know him longer than I did, which is only a year, because it turns out that my friends, and my brother was friends with all of his friends back 25 years ago, so it's weird that we only met a year ago. And as long as I've known him, I can say that I think I'm forever changed by having known him for a brief time, and I'm pretty sure it's going to resonate for me for a long time, so I'm glad that I at least had that.

My name is Joanne, and I met Derek first in 1984. It was at a dance at St. George's. I was hanging out in one of the corridors with some friends and talking to different people, and this guy turned to me and said, "Hi, I'm Dick Miller, P.I." I got to know him better the next year, 1985, because I went to Crofton House, and my school and his school, a workhouse school, had a cultural trip that we took to London and the USSR. So I ran into him again at the airport, and we sat next to each other on the plane going to London and talked a lot. He very kindly let me sleep on his shoulder on the way to London, which made things more comfortable. But we ran around London, saw a lot of things together, and sights in Russia. One of the things that I remember is there was sort of the good group and the bad group in the tour, and I remember the teacher who was the leader would get very frustrated because certain students would always be late. It was the same group of students, and he said, "Finally, that's it! The next time you guys are late or anyone is late, we are leaving without you." Well, as luck would have it, the next time that was me. Derek and some other people, but we missed the bus. But luckily, uh, the excursion that night was to the opera in Moscow, and the teacher luckily had handed out the tickets beforehand. So Derek and I and a couple other people who had been left behind as well, we left our hotel and took a deep breath and ventured out to the main city, main city, in Moscow, where we flagged down a taxicab. We're not speaking any Russian, or I didn't Derek had gone to the sort of the Little Russian classes that they had, and he would translate all these signs that we saw by. One of the things I remember is the sign "restaurant" looks like "pektopa." He would translate all these signs as we go by. Anyway, we're standing there on the main road, we flagged down a taxi, showed him our ticket, and we made it in time, checked our coats, got into our seats, and, you know, sat down, and the teacher turned around he kind of looked at us and we said, "Hello." He says, "I thought you weren't gonna be here." I said, "Oh, well, we made it, I guess." Derek always seemed to be there in my life when I was in crisis. In school, usually academic crisis. One of the other things I remember is the night before the grade 12 provincial examination in biology, I phoned him in a panic and said, "Derek, you've gotta explain fetal circulation to me," which he did. And then a month later when we got our grades, we called each other up, and he was very chagrined to realize I actually got 1% higher than he did. There's no justice in this world, I guess. I knew Derek, we both were at UBC together, and one of the things I remember was I got a call from him late one night. He had been editing something that he had been doing, probably for about 2 weeks, 24 hours. I was living on campus at the time. I said, "Look, I'm really tired. Can I just come over and crash?" So he, one night, he slept on the floor of my dorm room at Gage, I remember. I said, "No problem." And another time he picked me up at the airport in the middle of a blizzard. To this day I don't remember why I had asked him to do that, but it was very kind of him to do that for me. And I regret that that we went our separate ways and I moved out of the country and we kept in touch by email. I was lucky enough to email him and sort of have a little chat with him a couple weeks before he passed. And I just am very grateful for having known him. I've always thought of him as one of my very best friends because he was so much like his camera. And I will always love him and miss him and be very happy that I knew him.

Thank you.

As the guys set up, I'm John Castell. And I want to, I just want to thank the family, Erich, and Lauren, and Marina, and especially Karl and Helga, for allowing us to hold this event, and for all the photos and bits of information and stories and and helped contact some people that declined to speak. It wasn't the easiest thing to do. And so I want to thank the family for that. I'd also really like to thank the co-organizers of this event, Ralph Pacheco and Alice DeCollo. in a very short space of time, and they really deserve all our thanks for that. In addition to that, I just wanted to say from a personal standpoint that Derek, for me, always typified the term nerd cool. So cool as he was, he didn't invent it.

But he did come by it honestly.

Because as many of us know, his folks, Karl and Helga, are two of the coolest people on the planet. Ja. So I think we'd all like to thank Karl and Helga for making it and giving it to us, and for Airdrie for lending it to us, miigwech.

Tod Maffin, Airdrie, we all love you.

And now, as the guys have set up for Derek's requested musical selection, Here the Plu and friends play Four Seasons in One Day. Thank you.

I'm going to steal this mic, sorry, it's a short one up here. I also wanted to say, uh, I'm used to sharing a stage with Derek. My name is Sean Dillon, and we're used to jackassery comments and everything else. I want to share my favorite quote of Derek's.

It's, um, "I love not counting." 4 seasons in one day, lying in the depth of your imagination. Worlds above and worlds below, sun turned on the black clouds hanging over the doorway. Even when you're feeling warm, The temperature can drop away like 4 seasons in one day. Smiling as the shit comes down, you can tell a man from what he has to say. Everything gets turned around. I will risk My neck again, again. You can take me where you would will, up the creek and through the windmill. Like all the things you can explain, 4 seasons in one Love, Jazza. That rain, that rain fills my cup. That fall seasons in one day. Doesn't pay to make predictions sleeping on an unmade bed. Finding out wherever there is comfort, there is —only one step away. Like four seasons in one day. The jazz of— that bring— that bring— fills my cup. Like 4 seasons in one day. Thank you very much.

Thanks so much everyone for coming.

There's a foundation set up in the Millers' name. Al, do you want to give the details on that?

Um, you can go to Derek's website at penmachine.com/trust, or just go to his website and there's going to be a link on pretty much every page to go to the Miller Trust. If you live in the city of Vancouver, you can go to any branch in the city, and there's details on the website, or if not, there is a PayPal link that you can donate to that trust.

It's also in your program today. Thank you very much for that.

So thanks very much for coming out, we really appreciate it.