Three weeks ago, @Steve (Steve Coile) posted that he would be transitioning back to being "just" a community member after spending about five years as a part-time employee of AppSheet and Google. https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/AppSheet-Q-A/Leaving-Google-but-not-the-community/td-p/50374...
This happened just before the holidays and many have missed the post -- I certainly did. Steve's contributions are too important to just note without pausing for serious admiration and appreciation.
From the time we launched AppSheet in late 2014, the key adopters and advocates for the platform lived here in this community forum. And it is here that a a true sense of shared support, enthusiasm, and fellowship formed as users helped each other. Steve emerged in 2016/2017 as a champion. He spent hours every day answering questions, trying things out, recording things that didn't work or that should have worked differently, and identifying inconsistencies in our docs. So much so that at some point, we reached out to Steve and asked if he'd be willing to help us with our docs and support. I had the pleasure of talking with Steve a couple of times "in person" (i.e. via video call) though in truth, I feel I really know Steve via his countless messages, emails, and posts. If you think 18K posts on this community is lot, believe me Steve's done a lot more within the team as well.
I also appreciate that Steve is straightforward in his criticism of things. It comes from the heart and a desire to make things better. If Steve doesn't like something, he's not going to couch it in weasel-words. He's going to tell you he thinks it sucks. And for me, that was always a good thing because Steve is often right. We often justify compromises and settle for things in the name of pragmatism, but Steve doesn't really do that. He views things like a customer and appropriately expects more of us than we seem to do of ourselves. So over the years, I felt he was a voice of conscience that kicked in whenever it was warranted.
One person like Steve makes the lives of a hundred other people better. And he has never done it because it is a job -- in fact, Steve has always been ambivalent about the "job" part of it. At one stage, he told me he just liked the platform and he felt it was worthwhile to invest his time to make it better. There is a deep loyalty in his value system that goes beyond what any job/employee relationship requires. Steve has been an amazing loyal teammate and the entire AppSheet community has been his team.
I hope Steve will continue to contribute going forward as he has in the past. Our user community has been at the heart of this platform over the years, and Steve has been at the heart of our community. Thank you sir!
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