Most of this blog post was written 8 months ago, between his passing and his funeral. I didn’t find the strength to get back to it for a long, long time, but after talking and reminiscing with a good friend about Piotr I felt it was still worth finishing and publishing.
I left most of it as I originally wrote it, but filled out the empty sections.

My dear friend Piotr “chastell” Szotkowski passed away Tuesday, July 29th 2025.

This is an attempt to do him, his life & his accomplishments any semblance of justice. To share the joy that was Piotr. To try & capture his essence. To say goodbye to a great engineer, community leader, wonderful human, father, husband, jokester and most importantly one of the very best & closest friends I ever had or will ever have.

It’s also a tiny bit selfish. I have written this post continuously in my head for almost 5 years, since he first told me of his cancer diagnosis. If I never put it into text I may never know a good night’s sleep again. It’s also one of the hardest things I’ll ever write.

So, in some of my favorite cheesy words: I won’t tell you how he died, I’ll tell you how he lived.

The beginning - Mendicant University & Ruby

I can’t tell you too much about his early life - we only met in 2011 online at a place called Ruby Mendicant University. For context, at the time I was still a student in the first year of my Master’s and currently doing my ERASMUS in Sweden.
He was one of the alumni, I was taking the course. Despite the considerable gap in age (almost a decade) and experience (me: a student, him: a PhD and plenty of working experience) he always treated me as an equal, which I only came to appreciate much later because it all just felt natural.

I can’t remember how much we interacted back then, what I do remember is that when I was back in Berlin and I went to my first Ruby conference, eurucamp 2012, I ran into him in some entry hall, him sitting there working on his laptop with a DuckDuckGo T-shirt. When we started talking he first took a deep sigh and then we started discussing the ethics of open source and the teachings of Gregory Brown, the founder Ruby Mendicant university.

Said DuckDuckGo T-shirt, alas the photo is from 2013 (thanks to Jana)

It feels odd to me, but I can’t tell you why we became such good friends. We just did. We just started talking - and just never sort of stopped. Never for a moment did I stop and question why or how.
It turned out, we had some eerily similar hobbies - for one we both used to play “Middle Earth”, a fringe Lord of the Rings card game from before the movies even came out. I think there were like 20 people playing it in all of Berlin and it only existed for a couple of years, so I never expected to meet anyone who played this game as well. We both loved 4X & grand strategy games. We obviously loved Ruby and conferences. But none of this ever felt like it was the reason why we were friends.

Here are two more pictures of us at eurucamps (we didn’t take many pictures together) including our respective laptops. You can find the sticker of the specific Ruby representing Ruby Mendicant University at both of our laptops (they were a special made order for alumni). As this is where we met, that means a lot to me.

Piotr’s talk at eurucamp 2012 (thanks to Matthias). “One does not simply…” also suits him so well. Me at eurucamp 2013 (thanks again to Jana)

We started to plan our conferences together so that we could visit and speak at the same conferences and use that time to hang out. And so that’s what we did - in a good year we’d easily see each other 4 times a year for multiple days just from going to the same conferences. Once, I even took him to a conference, Heart of Clojure run by our friend Arne, as my plus-one - which I’m still oddly proud of. He joyfully introduced himself as my plus-one to others.

In all these events he was always incredibly happy to talk to people, include them and share his knowledge. There was so much of his knowledge to share. I consider myself quite well educated and an even better developer but I could always learn from him. I would say “Why can’t you just do XY in Postgres?” and he’d go “Well, that’s because then this would happen and so this other better way of doing what you intended exists.”

Us with our friend Florian & more at Heart of Clojure 2019

I enjoyed learning a little Polish. His opinion was always that if I made that very bad decision, as Polish is a very difficult language, it was only fair to teach me exactly the right grammar. So I was subjected to many a lecture on the intricacies of the Polish language, as well as fun facts. For instance, the word for “German” stems from “mute”. Because well, what we were saying was just like no language at all to them and so we might as well have been mute, apparently.

He also must have spent an eternity reading and correcting my Master’s thesis. Which for someone who I’d known a mere 2 years at that point is quite the investment and contribution. His feedback was so detailed, I created this meme for him:

Looking through our old emails, it is astounding to me how appreciative he was in all of our interactions. I’d send him a silly meme in which I thank him for what must have been at least a day of work on his side and he responds saying this made his day. Like… wat?

In one of our earliest email exchanges I found he writes:

I am also keeping your previous email in my INBOX and
reading it daily, it’s by far the best I got this year. :)

I can’t for the life of me figure out what email he’s referring to. In that email I just asked him to please review my Master’s thesis. The only emails prior to that are an email wishing him a happy birthday (which is nice, but nothing special) and an email reminding him of CFPs to apply to. But maybe that appreciation of interactions is also something that is special to this wonderful human being.

He was with me at every conference I went to, even if he wasn’t. We’d always message, especially during conferences, and tell each other how they were. One of the strangest encounters I ever had at a conference was me sitting next to some random person I didn’t know at Mozfest. We started chatting a bit and figured out we both knew Piotr. He used to work with Piotr at the non-profit Techsoup working on CiviCRM (in PHP!). I have no idea how we came to talk about Piotr, only that we did. This was not a Ruby conference, and opposed to how this post might make it appear I don’t start every conversation with “Hello, I’m friends with Piotr Szotkowski”. Only every second 😉

A photo of him all the way back in 2015 from his own gallery, which he titled “Easter Doctor - Went all Tobi this Easter (also sick)” (I used to be very well known for my favorite color being green, in case you can’t tell)

Of course we wouldn’t just make do with conferences - when I first went to Warsaw with friends I split off from the group to hang out with Piotr and Tomash - I think it was March or April but Warsaw was in thick snow. When Piotr picked me up he was just like: “Why would you visit Warsaw at this time? What is wrong with you?”

He was like that, straight, direct and to the point. He could also be a bit irritating: liked to pull your leg, make references, puns, poignant remarks and pedantic corrections. All with a wry smile on his lips knowing what he’d just pulled off. I’m quite confident he did this majorly with people he really liked - it was one of his ways to show affection. How do I know? Well… I’m quite the same and so the 2 of us could go back and forth with these trying to outdo the other for hours. We’d just sit there trading barbs and having the time of our lives.

Wujek Tobi

In 2016 I got accepted to ElixirLive in Warsaw, partially as an excuse to visit Piotr and so of course I stayed with him. His daughter was a couple of years old at the time and of course we interacted but not that much - I only speak a couple of words of Polish and she didn’t speak any English.
The story still goes that when some months later Piotr showed her pictures from a conference we visited together she pointed at me and said “Wujek Tobi” - “Wujek” meaning “uncle”. This moment still melts my heart. The term “Wujek” has since taken on a life of its own, i.e. even with my German friends and kids we sometimes refer to me as “Wujek” or rate my “Wujek-ness”.
I’m also very glad that his second child learned English from the get-go and so “Wujek Tobi” reading picture books to him before he goes to bed has become a cherished tradition. He will often tell me things in Polish and must wonder who that strange man is who can’t understand simple words.

It’s a connection I never took for granted. The first time I went to Warsaw I saw a church and on the side of the church there was this:

Side of a church in Warsaw, taken during that visit in 2016

When I asked what the sign says, it roughly translates to “part of the chain of the German tank which destroyed this church in 1944”. On most of my visits to Warsaw I went and visited that church, because I am truly thankful that after all of what my ancestors did I can come to this country and be seen as nothing but a friend. And that is my reminder to never take that for granted. Piotr of course knew this, so he’d always plan time for us to go visit the church (and eat some Pierogi later).

A picture of us together with our friend Aaron Cruz during said visit in December 2016

While I don’t believe in fate, I do, let’s say, enjoy a good coincidence. I like to joke that I was born practically with a view of Poland, while his birthday happened to fall on the day of German Unity - which, as someone born in the former GDR, is hugely important to me. Or to hear Piotr tell it:

October 3rd is indeed my birthday; I appreciate how you united the whole country to celebrate my 11th. ;]

Conferences & More

He was a prolific conference speaker with a wide variety of great, entertaining and valuable talks. Seriously, there’s A LOT OF THEM. There are so many of them that our friend Florian had a brilliant idea for an April’s fools joke we never did pull: Make a fake website of “Szot-conf” - a conference organized, run, and all talks given by Piotr Szotkowski linking to videos of his various talks.

One notable example was “They hear me Typin’, they hatin’” which he submitted as a bit of a troll - a talk about mechanical keyboards. It kept getting accepted to conferences. He gleefully once told me that it took an attendee until the mid-way of the talk to give up hope that this was just a very long pun and he’d eventually start talking about type systems.

I’ve heard great things about his last conference talk, but have yet to find the strength to watch it.

Please enjoy his world domination plans from Ruby on Ice 2018

At Rubyconf Portugal 2016 during speaker’s dinner he organized a ride for the 2 of us back to the airport the next day together with Aaron Patterson, an idol of mine, and Yehuda Katz. He was considerate like that - he just tapped me on the shoulder one moment and said “I got us a ride to the airport tomorrow”.

A picture he took of me at Rubyconf Portugal 2016, cheekily titling “The end is near”

One of my favorite memories is from 2019 when I had a short-term opportunity to speak at my beloved Pivorak meetup in Lviv. Piotr messaged me a couple of weeks before “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re going?” and I was like “it was super short notice, sorry!” and he was like: “Well, I just looked at the flights and noticed they weren’t too expensive soooo….” and that’s how I got to spend another surprise vacation of about a week with him. It still amazes me that he did take this time and money on such a short notice… just to hang out with me.

Whenever we were together on these trips and we’d wind down and I’d play a game he’d always ask what I’m playing. Why I’m playing it. What I like about it. And he’d ask if he could watch me play the game all while asking about its mechanics and what I like about it. Who does that? I’ve never met another person who was so so interested in what I’m playing and would watch me play games as if I was a streamer.

I think it was also around that time that we had the following conversation:
“Tobi, do you know these people that say everything in their life is so much better now that they’re doing sports regularly?”
“Yes?”
“I am one of them now”
😂

As fate is cruel, I believe this wasn’t too long before his cancer diagnosis - maybe a year or so. Now, how did I learn of that? He wanted to do a video call, which was unusual as he hated them - we either texted or met in person. And so in this call he told me:

  1. I have cancer
  2. I’m getting married
  3. My future wife is also pregnant

I don’t believe I’ll ever have a higher life-event-density conversation with anyone ever. That’s a lot to take in. But still, he didn’t invite me to the wedding! And so I was almost furious and said: “Aren’t you going to invite me to your wedding?” and he calmly replied: “Yes of course Tobi, I’d love to have you there. However, I didn’t want to invite you because I didn’t want you to feel like you had to go to a wedding in Poland in October when I know you’re very cautious around COVID” (this was 2021). This also shows you what kind of person he was: Very empathetic, very wary of imposing and almost too respectful of others and their needs.

Need more evidence of this? Well, the last time I went and visited him, a mere 6 weeks before his passing, he had taken the bed I usually slept in and seriously offered me that he could move to another bed so I can have that one. He did it a bit with a wry smile, but I also have no doubt in my mind that if I had been an ass and said I’d really wanna sleep there he would have moved. Absolute mad man.
When I left it was also him consoling me and not the other way around. He just was like that.

And even through all of that, he still had that smile

It’s hard to overstate the impact he had on me and my life. During my last visit I used the saying “Not my circus, not my monkeys” and said I didn’t know where it was from. He kindly informed me that this was a Polish saying, and so I probably learned it from him.

It’ll be different for everyone, but the first moment it really hit me that there might be a future without him was when Europa Universalis V was announced. Its predecessor was by far his favorite game - he loved playing it and talking about it. So, naturally I wanted to tell him. But then I stopped - he might never see its release. It felt almost cruel to bring it up, so I didn’t. Instead, I did try to contact Paradox to maybe get him a demo or something, but I never heard back.

Community

If I had to pick one story for someone to get to know Piotr it would be this one from his last months. To paint the picture: getting up was strenuous for him, he’d sleep a lot and even playing one short game of Magic was too much. So, it was hard for him to even concentrate. Still he poured a lot of effort into the Berlin Code of Conduct - as recently as less than a month before his passing. Because that’s what he cared about: Making communities a safe place for everyone and to make everyone feel welcome and appreciated, to help everyone thrive. And the thing is… even when I asked him about it he wouldn’t say that. He would just say “Ah you know, it’s just a nice little bit of coding I can do on the side.” And that’s also very him, he wasn’t one to brag. He just did things because he thought they were right and helpful. I bet most people didn’t even know he had a PhD - it was never something he’d mention.

His involvement with this code of conduct of course goes back way longer than that - if memory doesn’t fail me his translation of it to Polish was the first translation we had. I think German was only our 4th or 5th translation, but that’s another story.

Tomasz and Piotr raising funds for Rails Girls Summer of Code - from his own website, one of my favorite pictures of him

If you look for what matters to him that’s it. Even in a talk at Arrrrcamp back in 2012 he mentioned that he was currently the proudest of having been a coach at the first RailsGirls event in Warsaw. He was a prolific coach there and in related events. He also cared deeply about LGBTQ+ rights, going to protests in Poland.

And now that I’m writing these lines I finally, after way more than a decade, realize what probably was the biggest basis of our friendship. After telling you, dear reader, just a couple of paragraphs ago, that, I never could figure it out. This right here. Caring about community, caring about inclusion… caring that our community wouldn’t just be full of straight white dudes (ironically, like the two of us). For context, I’m running the Ruby User Group in Berlin and was also a very active Rails Girls coach as well as one of the creators of said code of conduct.

And as a result of all of this, many people in the community have a story to share about him. And so while this is all sad, as we’ve lost one of our best, there is a silver lining. Not only did I reach out to many common friends I hadn’t talked to in a while, but just as many reached out to me sending their condolences as they knew how close we were. And so, he’s bringing people together once again and I’ll have many catch up calls in the coming weeks that I’m looking forward to.

I also would be amiss not to mention his company rebased. I recommended people to work with them whenever I could. And, just as he cared about the community in general he cared about this community - the people working there - a ton. I’ve learned more than I ever thought about Polish employment law, listening to to him elaborate how they tried their best to make full-time employment happen at rebased in a way that was good for employees vs. the normal contractor setup. Or how they tackled office setup and the other day-to-day necessities of running a company. His empathy for everyone working there seeped through it all.

We organized a wreath from the Ruby Community for his funeral, for which people donated way more money than we could have imagined and so we donated the remainder.

Ruby community wreath at his funeral, his grave overflowing with flowers

Closing

And so, how do you finish a post like this? First of all, I don’t want to finish it. There are always more stories to tell, more facets of Piotr that I haven’t looked at or shared. At the same time, doing him truly justice is an insurmountable task so this will have to do - knowing that I probably missed a whole bunch.

Second of all, one thing I struggled with mightily is: What do you do if one of your best friends has cancer? I didn’t know what to do. It was terrifying. So, this isn’t my advice but a piece of advice I received and cherished. In typical Tobi fashion, I over-shared and told a co-worker at the time of Piotr’s cancer diagnosis. He later revealed to me that he was a cancer survivor and gave me the following advice: “Be his friend like you’ve always been his friend. He doesn’t need your pity or your sorrow, he knows how bad his situation is. What he needs is a friend.” And so, that’s what I did - even if it was hard sometimes.

Thirdly, if you looked at me while writing this post, with tears in my eyes, you’d think: “Why the hell is he doing this to himself? Is he stupid?” and you’d be right to think that. At the same time, sharing my thoughts and emotions openly to deal with my deep grief is also “classic Tobi” as all of my close friends can attest.

So, let me close this as cheesy as it started out:
I like to remind myself that all this pain and grief I feel is only there because Piotr means so much to me. Because our interactions were this meaningful. Because he was such a huge positive force in my life. Such a source of joy and knowledge. A support whenever I needed one. A wry smile. A good laugh. An hours long conversation about everything and nothing. And I’d rather have experienced all of that - and feel this pain now - than never have known this wonderful human being that was Piotr Szotkowski. At the same time my thoughts are with his wife, his children & his family - as their loss is immense and I can only hope to support them in these times. It is my goal and hope to stay in their lives, that many years down the road at some event someone will be like “Why is this German dude here?” and I’ll only sport a wry smile remembering Piotr “chastell” Szotkowski.

Some of his absolute favorite pictures of himself, that his daughter took of him - they were pinned on Bluesky profile.