Bidding Farewell to an APTrust Legend
April 5, 2024
After an incredible decade and amazing body of work, we must bid a bittersweet farewell to Andrew Diamond, a driving force behind APTrust’s success. Andrew originally joined us in April 2014, leaving only briefly in 2017 before returning for another seven years of trailblazing innovation.
Over his tenure, Andrew authored hundreds of thousands of lines of code, rewriting our core services three times and developing three versions of the invaluable DART. His work stretches far beyond APTrust, as DART has gained international attention and adoption, becoming the successor to apps like Bagger and Exactly in packaging content for digital preservation.
An exceptional presenter, writer, and colleague, Andrew shared his brilliance at conferences worldwide, earning a reputation for excellence, collegiality, and generosity. His personal website hints at his creative talents extending into mystery writing.
Andrew’s innovations seemed to defy possibility. He pioneered using AWS S3 for staging storage in radically efficient ways, surprising AWS engineers. His method for running fixity checks in the cloud, developed with Flavia Ruffner, continues to inspire other organizations to change theirs. And true to his passion for sustainability, Andrew spearheaded APTrust’s energy-saving move from Ruby-on-Rails to Go, dramatically reducing our carbon footprint.
While other Andrew Diamonds work in video, theater lighting, or even reggae music, to us he is simply peerless and irreplaceable. We will deeply miss his spirit, skills, and friendship.
Yet, in typical selfless Andrew fashion, he departs APTrust to join Simple Thread and a crucial project strengthening America’s electrical grid infrastructure. By improving grid resilience for renewables, he takes on the sustainability challenge of our era – this timing saving the future, instead of the past.
Andrew, words cannot express our gratitude for your decade of pioneering work at APTrust. You have quite literally preserved history while lighting the way toward a better tomorrow. We cannot wait to see the tremendously positive impact you’ll have next.
Andrew’s last day working for APTrust will be May 3, 2024.