[802.3_DIALOG] To Hugh Barrass - An Inspiring Person

["Joel Goergen (jgoergen)" <jgoergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

I feel compelled to share my deep sense of loss, while at the same time, trying to smile at a great deal of memory around Hugh.

Knowing Hugh for almost 15 years, it is hard to not know the man, respect him, laugh at him, curse at him, and enjoy the rough sense of humor we all know him to have.  It seems strange to me that yesterday he is on a call, laughing, leading, inspiring, and today he is not.  I will miss him.  A colleague, a friend, a person that could provide a clear vision in the fog, or provide fog in a clear vision – it is just who he was, if that makes sense.

We worked together on many things the last two years.  Not just in IEEE802, but in other areas such as sustainable energy and power management.  Hugh had many ideas for our industry.  I feel it would be a double great tragedy if I did not try and convey those.  Hugh had no trouble sharing his thoughts.  Sometimes a wee bit of trouble getting them in a picture without coffee or a pint, but none the less, great thoughts.

With a deep sigh and a sense of watery eyes, I share those dreams of his – because I think he would have wanted to have those shared.

Power, Energy, sustainability, saving our environment for the kids, was a passion of his.  I never saw anything he worked on mean more to him then energy, energy star, and how to make a switch/router operate more efficiently.  It had become, or certainly would have become, the major passion in his work life.  He lived for it.  He inspired those of us that tried to find answers in energy sustainability to try harder still – to, in a manor, succeed where we could not, accepting no failure.

Energy Efficient Ethernet was his second greatest passion at work.  What I believe to be, or had become, his greatest passion was energy scalability.  He believed that performance should scale linearly with performance.  He was devoting every working moment to finding a means that we, at the standards level, could drive energy scalability.  He believed that 400GbE would be the IEEE802.3's best effort yet into achieving truly energy scalable internet.

I know not what tomorrow brings.  I would have said goodbye today, then, had I known.  I don't know … I guess I am glad I do not know what tomorrow brings.  But I do know that I will continue to carry forward the energy vision Hugh held in his heart for our industry.  This was something that was so important to him.  It is something that drove him, inspired him, and lead him to where we are.

If there is anything we can do in the honor, the memory, the strength that he left us all, it is to keep his vision in sustainability alive.  And now I ask you to do something for a great friend and an inspiring man – please walk with me into the future with a focus in energy efficiency.  It was, is, and will always be one of the greatest gifts he left to us – that he left to Ethernet.

My heart is too heavy to continue writing.  Like many of you, I spent several hours a week with the man – it is difficult to know he is gone.

My heart goes out to his family, and my heart goes out to Ethernet – to those that may never know the loss of such an amazing and inspiring man.

Joel Goergen