Steve Cisler Passes

[Keola Donaghy]

I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Cisler today.  
Steve was a champion of community networking for many years and helped  
countless individuals and communities, including our Hawaiian language  
community. He also assisted other Native American groups with the use  
of technology to strengthen their communities.

The director of our Hawaiian Language Center and I met Steve at a  
community networking conference in Honolulu in 1993, when we were  
looking to start a Hawaiian language bulletin-board service for the  
immersion schools. He showed us FirstClass, the software we used to  
create Leoki, and continue to use to this day. He lent us (in his  
capacity with the Apple Library of Tomorrow program) the computer that  
we used to establish Leoki, and when we provide we could accomplish  
what we wanted, he gave us the computer as well as another which  
became our first web server in 1995. While obviously on a different  
server now, this was the first generation of Kualono. While other,  
bigger name people of that era made big promises which never  
materialized, Steve worked quietly and with little fanfare to help us.  
I always have referred to him as Leoki's "Godfather".

Steve and I stayed in touch after he left Apple, but hadn’t  
communicated for about two years. He will be deeply missed. Some of  
the many people who knew Steve and benefited from him kindness and  
dedication have left comments here:

http://communitynetworking2008.blogspot.com/2008/05/community-networking-champion-steve.html

Keola

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Keola Donaghy
Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Studies
Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikolani             keola at leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu
University of Hawai'i at Hilo           http://www2.hawaii.edu/~donaghy/

"Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam."  (Irish Gaelic saying)
A country without its language is a country without its soul.
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