Tag: Paramagnus

In Toronto

We drove down to Toronto today after leaving Ottawa around 10 AM. We didn’t realize there was an extra drop charge on the car rental, but it still worked out to about the same or slightly cheaper than a flight. It didn’t take too long to get to the city, and the drive was actually pretty nice, but it took longer to find the place we were going! Thank goodness for MapPoint. We had a meeting with a colocation facility (Frontline) which went very well (they were nice enough to meet with us on Saturday). After the meeting, we called our good friend Ashish Patel!

Ashish was nice enough to take us on a tour of the IBM Toronto Software Lab where he works. I took a few pictures, but told him I wouldn’t post them (no need to find out if they have a blogging policy the hard way!). The place is pretty neat and is a world class IBM facility where WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, Lotus and other software products are created (including the compiler for the upcoming PS3). It was very cool to see where Ashish works, and he has our Podbot picture proudly displayed at his desk!

After the tour we took Ashish for dinner (he chose Boston Pizza which was fine by me) and then we just hung out at his place for a while. Was kind of nice to relax for a couple of days here. We drove to the airport tonight and got a room at the Sheraton so that we don’t have to get up so early to leave tomorrow.

We considered extending our trip and going to New York, but decided maybe next time! We’ll be back in Edmonton tomorrow at 2:30 PM.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention, it rained almost all day, both in Ottawa when we left and in Toronto! Sure beats the snow though 😉

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!

In Calgary Once Again

Seems we end up in Calgary for almost every trip we take (except for Northern Voice). Fortunately there is free wireless Internet here, so I am not complaining. Well, at least it makes the travelling a little better. This is our insane flight schedule:

  • 9:00 PM – Depart Edmonton
  • 9:45 PM – Arrive Calgary
  • 12:32 AM – Depart Calgary
  • 6:17 AM – Arrive Toronto
  • 8:30 AM – Depart Toronto
  • 9:30 AM – Arrive Ottawa

Currently we’re scheduled to come back on the 24th, but we’re going to try to change that to the 26th. Preferrably, the 26th departing from Toronto, as we’re planning to drive from Ottawa to Toronto on the 25th for business and to meet up with some people. I’m hoping we can get the flights worked out anyway!

We’re in Tim Horton’s at the moment, as it was the only food establishment open (unsurprisingly). Seems those 24 hour McDonalds express locations would be perfect for an airport!

More on the trip later…

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

Our New HDTV Projector

Post ImageAs Dickson mentioned yesterday, the HDTV projector we ordered about a week ago arrived. The projector is an Optoma MovieTime, and supports HDTV inputs and has a built-in DVD player. Even though it goes against my rules for buying electronics, I think we made a good purchase (and it was a steal of a deal from Costco). We watched Into The Blue yesterday, and I brought in my Xbox 360 from home today – gotta love that widescreen!

The reason we got the projector was work…no really! We are always scrambling to find a projector for our Edmonton .NET Wizards meetings, and we can definitely use it for Paramagnus-related stuff too. Okay, okay, we’ll also use it for the odd movie or gaming session 😉

I’ve got some pictures up at Flickr if you want to take a look.

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

Podfading

Post ImageWired has a new article up today which talks about one of the down sides to podcasting, known as podfading. Ryan and Jen Ozawa, former producers of the popular Lost-themed podcast The Transmission are the latest example of podfading:

Podcasting has drawn thousands on the premise that anyone can create an audio program, build an audience online and even vault to stardom. Less celebrated is the fact that untold numbers of shows just wink out just as suddenly as they started.

The phenomenon has earned its own label, “podfading,” coined by podcaster Scott Fletcher in February 2005 when he gave up on two podcasts of his own.

Podfaders’ motives vary wildly, from those discouraged by their lack of listenership to, in the Ozawas’ case, a success that overwhelmed them.

This story both saddens and motivates me. Podfading will always exist, but there’s no reason it should be any different than blogging, where millions of blogs are abandoned. The difference is that the effort it took to create those blogs in the first place was negligable – not so with a podcast, at least not yet. Brian Reid sums it up:

“There was no money in it and it did nothing to push my career forward. I’ve got a lot of other things in my life, paying work being one and my family is another. It’s not like blogging, where you can do it for 15 minutes at a time and get away with it.”

I know it varies quite a bit, but one survey found that the average time spent producing an episode was just over four and half hours! That’s a long way from fifteen minutes.

At Paramagnus we don’t expect to cut the amount of production time to fifteen minutes, but we do hope to significantly reduce it. The reason we started working on tools and services for podcasters was precisely this problem – the pain involved in creation right now is too great. Too much time, too much effort, too many requirements.

I really wish I had some numbers to share, but we’re not quite there yet. We’ve obviously been doing our own testing, and we’ve found that it’s a lot less work to produce an episode than it used to be (when I was doing BlogosphereRadio “by hand”, for example). Podcast Spot really goes a long way to reducing the pain of publishing audio to the web, adding appropriate metadata, generating an RSS feed, promoting the episode, and gathering feedback and statistics. We’re working hard on Podcast Wizard too, which we hope will reduce the pain of actually planning, recording, and mixing an episode.

I feel sorry for the Ozawa’s – it sounds like they had a great show going (I’m not much of a Lost fan, so I never came across it). Maybe after we’ve launched they’ll find it easier to podcast and who knows, maybe they’ll even decide give it another go!

Read: Wired