Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

Bill will be missed greatly!

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

I wish Bill the best, his contribution to the FIRST community has been fantastic and I have always loved how frank his posts on Bill's blog have been.

Many people I know along with myself personally talked with Bill less than a month ago, noone heard anything like this. The regional director I talked with yesterday didn't say anything about it either. I wonder what happened?

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

My guess is that it might have been related to the field problems on Einstein.

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

I seriously doubt that.

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

It's not really worth speculating. 7 years as FIRST Director, 26 years at Polaroid, 6 years active duty in the military (as listed in his Bio on the FIRST website)... all of that could put him at retirement age. It could be related to Einstein. It could be a decision to make room for someone with more experience with issues they're anticipating over the next 5 years. Unless they tell us, we'll never know... and speculation isn't really worth it without facts.

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

By breaking down the wording of the post, we can easily infer that it was an abrupt departure that probably caught one side or the other off guard ('concluded his service'). Yet I don't think it's helpful, forward-looking, or otherwise useful to conjecture the circumstances of his departure.

I always liked Bill's posts. Hopefully the new 'frcrobotics' blogger can be as personable and clear as he was.

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

I don't think this is the reason that after all this years he will leave.. I mean, just one problem will make him leave? that isn't sounds right..

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

I think it is in bad taste and unprofessional to speculate about the reason for Bill's departure. Lets celebrate what he has done for FRC and leave the rumors and other talk on the table for now.

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

Agreed 100%!

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

It wouldn't be CD without people picking apart what FIRST decides to do... >_>

Noone never knows what's up. Nice guy, though.

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

People move on for all sorts of reasons (retirement, other opportunities arise, financial reasons, family reasons, etc etc...). Most sources say the average stay in a particular job in the US is only 3-5 years, so its not uncommon for turnover to happen.

We wish Bill all the best in his future endeavors! I look forward to finding out who steps up to this difficult role :)

But usually the post would explain that... And be from Bill himself

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

Not necessarily...especially when you don't know why. For all we know, it could be a personal reason (good or bad) or something as slight as him getting another job offer (was FIRST his job? did he get paid or was he a volunteer?) that he can't talk about.


Not speculating, but just giving examples to disprove that the way the blog was written doesn't imply at all that he left due to Einstein.

Re: Bills (Last?) Blog 6/20/12-Important Announcement
 

I've posted a well deserved thank you to Bill here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=22

I'd like to congratulate Frank Merrick on a well deserved appointment as Acting Director of FRC. 1114 has worked closely with Frank during the Einstein testing and he has been open, honest, direct and thoughtful throughout the entire process. It has been clearly evident that Frank cares about the teams and is willing to go the extra mile to make things right. I am positive that he will lead FRC in a positive direction during this challenging period of transition.