Diaspora* co-founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy eulogized in Philadelphia

The last time Delia Votsch spoke to Ilya Zhitomirskiy, she asked her former Lower Merion High schoolmate what he was up to in California.

A software whiz who was known as much for his ideals as for his programming prowess, the 22-year-old Zhitomirskiy replied only that he was "working on a project with some friends."

That was an understatement. The project in question was Diaspora*, a start-up social-media network that had garnered national attention as a sort of anti-Facebook.

Zhitomirskiy's unpretentious nature was among the qualities friends and family members touted Sunday at a memorial service at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.

About 300 people gathered at the church in the 2100 block of Chestnut Street to hear the young techno-whiz eulogized as a brilliant mathematician, idealist, visionary, adventurer, and dragon slayer.

"He was a person with big ideas and strong ideals," said Abbi Sofaer, whose sons were friends and business partners of Zhitomirskiy in the Diaspora* project.

"Two words he used a lot will always remind me of him," said Evan Korth, one of Zhitomirskiy's professors at NYU. "Epic and awesome."

"He was both," Korth said, choking back tears.

Zhitomirskiy's open casket was set in front of the church altar for the service. A large black-and-white photo of his smiling face was mounted on a stand beside the casket. His parents sat nearby.

The service included a slide show with techno-music, showing Zhitomirskiy as an infant, young child, high school and college student, and young entrepreneur. The show flashed on a screen set up behind the casket.

The computer programmer died Nov. 12 at his home in San Francisco, reportedly of suicide, though the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office said it would be weeks before an official cause of death was determined.

Votsch, who was on the robotics team at Lower Merion High School with Zhitomirskiy, said that notion was hard to square with the positive, upbeat young man she remembered.

Votsch was a freshman and Zhitomirskiy a senior when the two were on the team in the 2006-07 school year.

"He didn't treat me like a little kid," said Votsch, now a sophomore in the civil engineering program at Drexel University. "He always made you feel better, always positive, friendly and sweet."

The robotics team, called Dawgma in a play on words taken from the school's bulldog mascot, took part in the international FIRST robotics competition that year.

Alex Flaxenburg, who had graduated the year before and who was serving as a team mentor, said Zhitomirskiy immediately got into the spirit of the event. FIRST is epitomized by "coopetition," a combination of cooperation and competition, and Zhitomirskiy bought into the idea of unselfishly working together to solve a problem, Flaxenburg said.

Plus, he was sharp.

"Ridiculously good at software," Flaxenburg recalled. "Half the time he would teach us something."

Zhitomirskiy conceived of Diaspora* in 2010 with three friends at New York University, where he was studying mathematics. The four envisioned a social-networking site where users had complete control over their privacy and how much information they wished to share.

With hundreds of thousands of dollars raised through the public-funding site Kickstarter, they established Diaspora* as a decentralized service, with users able to set up their own nodes rather than ship personal information through a central corporate hub.

In various videos on YouTube, Zhitomirskiy comes across as thoughtful and articulate when describing his vision. In one clip, he talked about how Diaspora* allowed users to customize how they share information with various groups of acquaintances.

"As we wear different clothes to work, as we wear different clothes to school, for different groups of our friends, many times we want to share different thoughts," Zhitomirskiy said.

In another, he said: "No longer will you be at the whims of these large corporate networks, who want to tell you that sharing and privacy are mutually exclusive."

Those kinds of sentiments were typical for a young man who, in addition to thinking about the technology, was always thinking about its impact on people, acquaintances said.

Lower Merion technology teacher Rich Kressly, who coached Zhitomirskiy on the robotics team in 2007, said that even in high school, the young man always saw technology as a means to a better world.

"If you asked me how many people saw how ideals and visions fit together with the technology, he was certainly rare that way at a young age," Kressly said.

Votsch, meanwhile, did not realize until last week that the "project" Zhitomirskiy mentioned during their summer phone call was Diaspora*.

She had heard of Diaspora*, but never put two and two together until news of Zhitomirskiy's death became public.

"That's how he was," she said. "I said, 'I guess Ilya was famous.' I had no idea."