22+ odd years ago I emailed Ross out of the blue. At the time I was working at a small startup attempting to build mobile banking infrastructure for rural poor in South Africa and elsewhere. I was after a copy of a paper he had mentioned in a talk and Ross replied with a blunt to the point email about how hard he thought the problem domain we were trying to tackle was (along with a pointer to the paper I had asked about). I remember being slightly annoyed by the initial tone of his response, but it got me thinking - then thinking a lot more. There were some very well thought out reasons behind his arguments. I replied a few days later with a detailed list of how we were addressing his concerns along with some others he hadn't mentioned but also acknowledging the areas we needed to dig into further. I didn't really expect an answer, after all, I didn't know him, but he had got me to think hard on key problems and I wanted to acknowledge that.

We got a lot more than a simple reply. We got his focused feedback, constructive criticisms, pointers to other work he thought was relevant, general support, some key follow up conversations on the phone, followed by introductions to folks he knew in industry who he thought could help (who would have never entertained us at that stage otherwise). While the startup eventually didn't make it, many of the ideas we worked on did. Of the folks that we met through that whole adventure, Ross was one of the standouts. Yup, he was very good people indeed and will be sadly missed!