Yesterday was my last day at Mercurial Communications here in beautiful Victoria, BC, Canada.

Mercurial leadership has been on board since Flock first made the offer to me. And Merc allowed me to volunteer for Flock while still closing out items for them. They immediately provided the people to transfer knowledge and tasks to, freeing me of most responsibilities early. Clayton made it clear when he said, “there is no conflict of interest”.

Merc has been the most amazing work environment for me with the most amazing people. I will always cherish the experience.

Although Merc has over 100 employees, they have kept their values from when there was only Chris Coldwell, Chris Campbell, and a few other employees. This has taken a lot of hard work!

Mercurial includes some of the most talented people I have met including Clayton Stark, Joshua McKenty, Chris Campbell, Marcus Redivo, Rick Tessner, Kurt Cagle, Aaron Greengrass, Justin Loius, Bill Stewart, Neil Johnston, Steven Lang, Leon Carl¹, Dick Phan, John Chambers, Steve Bengston, Andreas Mertens.

Ahmed Awad was also an excellent mentor — though him doing his PhD and only working part-time for Merc, did not make the relationship as rich as it could have been for either of us. Liz Vinkle, Richard Wood, Bryan Hudson, Jacky Zhang, Adam Flesher contributed a huge amount to my success as a leader in Merc QA.

Those “small company values”, and probably most important, is the great energy of Mercurial, and the impact that will continue to have on my life. Many of the people mentioned above embody this. People that also immediately come to mind are Chris Coldwell, Karen Won, Hope Jordan, Peter Freeman, Jeremy Krahn, Meiri Sage, Rob Lowe, Rob Rutherford, Raj Paul, Brad Lewis, Caleb Cooper, Ashley Whitworth, John Rafuse, Devon Greenway, Brett Hartmann, Sam Amos.

It is not fair to mention only them as Merc has so many wonderful people, but those are the people that I worked with the most (and even then, I am sure I have forgetting some people).

If I have any regrets it was not figuring out a way to work directly with Chris Coldwell more. He is a “peaceful warrior”!

My long-term plans are to live and work in Victoria, and I hope I will have opportunity to collaborate with Merc again in the near future — with me bringing even more to the table.

I am sure I missed a lot of people, my apologies, there are also a lot of Mercs I hope to get to know better,
Lloyd

1. Leon, we interviewed a lot of people together! [↩]