Category: Paramagnus

Paramagnus Press Coverage

Post ImageWe’ve received a lot of great press for our business plan competitions lately. Of course, we were in the Ottawa Citizen the day after the Wes Nicol competition, and today we were featured in the Edmonton Journal:

Mack Male and Dickson Wong’s disappointment at not winning this year’s TEC Edmonton VenturePrize melted away 24 hours later when the University of Alberta students won a national business plan competition in Ottawa.

Unfortunately you need an account to read the entire article online, so go pick up a physical copy. There’s a great picture of us in there too, page G3.

We’re also featured on the Innovation Alberta website. There is text, audio, and an image:

One of the two runners up in TEC Edmonton’s VenturePrize Competition was Paramagnus Developments Inc. Paramagnus deals in podcasting software Tools, and is the brainchild of Edmonton computing science students Mack Male and Dickson Wong. Here’s what Mack has to say about being a finalist in VenturePrize.

And there’s more on the way too! If you run across something I haven’t, let me know.

Paramagnus Wins Wes Nicol!

We just got back from the dinner and awards ceremony, and we’re extremely happy to report that Paramagnus has won the national Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award for 2006! We had a good feeling after the presentation earlier today, and it proved to be right.

We’re off to the Presidential Suite here at the Fairmont to celebrate, so we’ll post more later.

In Ottawa

Dickson and I arrived here in Ottawa this morning at 9:30 AM and quickly had to get to the hotel to get started for the Wes Nicol competition. It’s been a packed day, which I wrote about at our VenturePrize Experience blog. We think our presentation went very, very well!

We’re just waiting for the dinner to start now, which is where the winner will be announced. Following the dinner is a party, and then probably bedtime, considering we only slept around 4 hours yesterday and those 4 hours were on a plane. The good news is that we got our travel plans changed, so we are departing from Toronto on Sunday rather than from here tomorrow morning. Gives us time to make a few business calls in TO.

Anyway, will update more later. Wish us luck!

VenturePrize Finals Complete

Post ImageWe just got back from the final event, and unfortunately, we didn’t win. We’re really proud that we made it to the finals of VenturePrize however, and we have our sights set on the Wes Nicol competition tomorrow in Ottawa. Congratulations to Chris and Don at Leading Edge Technologies for winning this year’s competition.

We’ve got lots of pictures and stuff to post, and we’ll do that slowly over the next few days. Our flight to Ottawa leaves in about five hours, so we’re getting ready for that. We’re a little disappointed about VenturePrize obviously, but we’re going to take what we’ve learned and do our best tomorrow evening.

You can read my post on today’s event at our VenturePrize blog.

Read: VenturePrize Experience

VenturePrize Experience by Paramagnus

Post ImageDickson and I have been working on a blog specifically for VenturePrize (and Wes Nicol too) and it’s finally ready for public consumption! Basically you can read all about our experiences in the two competitions, starting way back in October 2005 when we first decided to take part in VenturePrize. The address is:

http://ventureprize.paramagnus.com

With the exception of the March posts, all entries have been posted after the fact. So a post from November was actually written in the last two weeks, even though the post itself seems like it was written in November. We did our best to go back in time and remember what we were thinking and feeling so that the blog is authentic. I don’t think we’ll be adding any more “back posts”, unless we remember something worth sharing, so the blog is “live” moving forward.

There are two main reasons for this blog. First and foremost, it is for us, so that we can look back and remember the experience. It should also come in handy when asked about timelines in the future, as it is often difficult to remember when things happened. The second reason is that we hope our experience will be useful to future participants of the VenturePrize and Wes Nicol competitions. Learn from our mistakes, and improve upon the things we did!

The blog is entirely comprised of text posts right now, but we’re planning to add some media content at some point too, podcasts, pictures, etc. Enjoy!

Read: VenturePrize Experience

Paramagnus and Business Plan Success

Post ImageEverything is public now, so it’s time for an update on our business plan competitions! As you may recall, Dickson and I entered Paramagnus into two business plan competitions – VenturePrize and Wes Nicol. We had back to back presentations in February, and have been waiting patiently to find out how we did. We’ve known for a couple days now, but it was announced today that we’re a finalist in the VenturePrize competition, and we won first place in the local portion of the Wes Nicol! Congratulations especially to our fellow finalists in VenturePrize, and indeed to all of the competitors we’ve met thus far. We’ve learned so much already!

We’re now preparing for the final VenturePrize showdown which takes place at the annual EEDC luncheon on March 22nd. We’ll be among the first people to see the brand new extension to the Shaw Conference Centre. The following day we need to be in Ottawa for the national component of the Wes Nicol competition, so it’ll be a very busy two days! We’re looking forward to it.

Actually the next few weeks will be busy. We did a brief interview tonight that will air on CBC Radio tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon we’re filming our three minute video that will be shown at the luncheon on the 22nd. We’re presenting to a class at the University next Friday. Over the next two weeks we’ll be putting together an “insider’s blog” for our experience in VenturePrize. And of course we’ve got to update our business plan, prepare our second presentations, and keep our business running (not to mention school, volunteering, etc). And it won’t stop there – we’ve already got interviews and the like lined up into April. Definitely good for the business!

We’ve met a lot of people lately, and while it was nice to meet all of you, sometimes it’s hard to get down contact information or remember everyone. If you’d like to get in touch, you can reach me via email or at 780.619.3864. Or of course you can simply subscribe 🙂

Paramagnus Finalists in Wes Nicol Competition!

It’s been a great week for Paramagnus! On Wednesday it was announced that we were semi-finalists in the VenturePrize competition and last night we found out that we were selected as finalists for local part of the Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award, also a businss plan competition!

The Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award is a national non-profit competition designed to promote entrepreneurship with Canadian University students. Now in its 9th year, the program is launching its second national Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award ceremony, to be held March 23rd, 2006 in Ottawa.

We present to the judges on Saturday, and if we win the local competition we get to travel to Ottawa to compete against the rest of Canada. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited!

If you’re going to participate in a business plan competition, you might as well compete in another. There ends up being quite a bit of overlap in terms of the work you need to do, but you meet different people and learn different things from each.

Hopefully a week from now we’ll be making travel arrangements for our nation’s capital!

UPDATE [10:02 PM]: I fixed this post to say “semi-finalists in the VenturePrize competition” as I had erroneously put “finalists”. I’m getting ahead of myself 🙂

Read: Wes Nicol

Paramagnus selected as VenturePrize semi-finalist!

I am really pleased to announce that Paramagnus Developments Inc. has been selected as one of six semi-finalists in this year’s VenturePrize Fast-Growth Enterprise Award category. As some of you may know, Dickson and I have been working on a business plan for Paramagnus for the last four or five months, and we submitted it to the VenturePrize business plan competition at the end of January. From the press release:

These six semifinalists will present their concepts to a judging panel who will announce the final three contenders at a March 6 special reception. These three finalists will then make a final pitch to judges and a sold-out audience at the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC) Annual Luncheon on March 22, 2006, where the grand prize winner will be crowned.

“This is an exciting group of contestants representing a range of innovative business opportunities,” said Jay Krysler, VenturePrize Program Manager for TEC Edmonton. “The business plan screening panel, who are business and finance industry professionals, certainly had a difficult time selecting only six from so many great business concepts. Alberta will be well-served when all these plans move forward.”

It feels very good to have your business receive validation and recognition from some very smart people. We’ve learned a lot throughout the process so far, and I know there’s far more learning ahead.

We’re really excited about making it this far in the competition, and we’re going to do our best to blow the judges away with our presentation. If all goes well, I’ll be posting again on March 6th that we made it to the final three! No matter what happens, I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished already, and I am eager to see the feedback on our business plan.

I also can’t wait to get our products and services launched!

Read: TEC Edmonton

California Trip Recap

Our trip this past weekend to California was definitely what I would call a “business trip” as we didn’t have much time to do anything vacation-like. After the expo was finished on Saturday, Dickson and I drove into Hollywood and Beverly Hills for some sightseeing. The drive also meant more time on the busy and very fast freeways! Actually, I think the reason they seem so fast is the cement walls on either side, the large number of lanes, and the incredible number of vehicles.

The houses in Beverly Hills were quite amazing! We also drove down Rodeo Drive, and saw some of the fancy stores like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Lots of fancy cars too. Sunset Blvd was very busy, making it almost impossible to change lanes without cutting someone off! For a late dinner we went to IHOP and had, what else, breakfast! The pancakes were very good, I must admit, though very filling. We didn’t have too much time though, as we had to return the rental car, which meant some fast driving on I-10 to get back to Ontario.

As for the conference/expo, it was great! We definitely had one of the most simplistic booths, but that’s okay. We were there to talk with people, both to learn and share, so a flashy booth wasn’t required. We met a lot of great people, and learned about lots of new projects. Exciting! We definitely want to something more for next year, but we’ve got almost a year to plan it.

Traveling home was long! Fortunately we met Dave Slusher and rode with him to Denver. We chatted about quite a few things, it was great! We also departed Denver at the same time, although in different locations, so we hung out til boarding. Thanks Dave!

In Calgary we stopped at Earls for lunch and then at Krispy Kreme to pickup some donuts. No trip to Calgary is complete without getting one of the hot, fresh original glazed donuts while waiting in line to buy four dozen! Finally we were on our way home. I realize now that I actually did a lot of driving over the weekend, and it just tired me out. Fortunately I slept longer than a few hours last night 🙂

For my pictures of our trip and the Expo, click here. Dickson will have more posted soon too, so check out his blog.

Portable Media Expo Day 2

Post ImageTraveling has a way of making the old schedule go a little nutty, so I didn’t get a chance to post much over the weekend. Well, that and the fact that Internet access was not as abundant as it should have been! Overall, the Expo was great – both for Paramagnus and for podcasting in general. My only complaint about the entire event would be that there was no wireless Internet. I don’t believe that any technology-related conference in the year 2005 should be without Internet access! That’s one thing Chris Pirillo has absolutely correct with Gnomedex.

In any case, the second day of the Expo went very well. I’d say it was the busier of the two days. We were the first to present in the morning, and despite the fact that the stage Internet did not work, it went very well. I hope the people who were in the audience gained some value out of my presentation. I know some of them did, because they came by the booth later. We also got the chance on Saturday to take a look at some of the interesting things the other exhibitors were doing. It’s a very exciting time for podcasting!

Thanks to everyone who came by and spoke to us during the two-day Expo! It was great to meet you, and we look forward to helping you with podcasting. Thanks also to Tim and everyone at TNC New Media for putting on a great show! We’re looking forward to next year already.

Read: Podcast & Portable Media Expo