In memoriam Hans Steinegger

We have received the sad and shocking message that our Friend and colleague Hans Steinegger has died in a heart attack. A family and a partner in life has lost a dear one, the world of orienteering has lost a person that through his work has made fundamental impact.

Hans Steinegger was an enthusiast. His life-project, the creation of the OCAD software for mapping, started as something of a hobby and ended up in a business that stretched out world-wide, and far beyond the scenes of the orienteering sport. He was an extremely gifted designer and programmer who saw possibilities and realised them. The quality of his program surprised even the largest providers of professional cartographic systems, and the OCAD software came to be used in a variety of organisations working with computerised cartography.

But Hans had his roots in the orienteering sport and its cartography, and kept this focus while developing OCAD. The possibilities and extraordinary quality of OCAD, paired with a pricing that made it affordable for clubs and individual map-makers, played a fundamental role in the process of revolutionising the drawing and production of orienteering maps with the use of computers. OCAD filled a gap where traditional professional systems failed. Also, Hans understood that besides quality and ease-of-use a key to success was to make OCAD affordable, in fact he even decided to give away a version for free, and in this way Hans helped attracting new generations of map makers to the art of orienteering mapping.

Many of us has worked close to Hans, while others got to know him through using his software. He was a silent man with very clear ideas. He had a bright mind that impressed, and made people listen. When Hans lectured at IOF mapping seminars or elsewhere, he always had the full attention of his audience, because everyone knew that what he was going to say was important and would make impact, whether it was news about OCAD, ideas or comments to IOF mapping specifications, or just his professional opinion in general orienteering issues.

Hans is missed by a world of orienteers, mappers, friends, and colleagues. We are thankful for what he did for us and for our beloved sport, and that we had the pleasure of knowing and working with him. We can only hope that his colleagues in Baar has the strength to continue his work, developing and supporting the hobby project of a silent Swiss man that grew into a life mission, spread all over the world and made fundamental impact on the orienteering sport.

This day our thoughts and sympathies are with Hans Steineggers family and dear ones.