Ideavibes

Ideavibes, a start-up headed by Paul Dombowsky, is a crowdsourcing app that lets you engage your target audience online and increase their participation. What’s different about this company is that it’s socially driven; a percentage of their product, profit and time is donated to the not-for-profit sector to help socially conscious organizations move their brands forward. In addition to their app, Ideavibes also provides social media consulting and crowdsourcing expertise.

By Carolynn Lacasse

#GenYOTT: Patios, Sun, and Good Times

If you like nachos, patios and good times the summer edition of #GenYOTT is where its at. On July 29 Brixton’s on Sparks is playing host to this monthly meet up. This time the night is ’speaker-free’, but all those ready for some great chit chat are welcome out for what is always great evening.

Register for the event here.

As always this event is brought to you by @Japman_Bajaj @Alkerton @JenButson @MattRichling

By Carolynn Lacasse

Josh James of Omniture talks to his alma mater

 

Josh James, December 8, 2009 from Rollins Center at BYU on Vimeo.

I’m a big fan of successful entrepreneurs who visit schools and play a big role in the entrepreneurship classes. I recently watched this video of Josh James going back to Brigham Young and sharing some insights. Here are some of the tidbits I took out of it:

Josh dropped out of school, but took the most out of his classes. The only reason he dropped out was that he had learnt so much from his economics, statistics, and entrepreneurship classes, and applied them so well, that it didn’t make sense for him to stay in class when he was bringing in $125 an hour building websites for companies.

As a 4th year student, him and his buddy turned a $12,000 investment in a CGI script business into a $200,000 sale of the company, which he describes as being “really cool. Like really cool. It beat selling out billable hours by a longshot, even at $125 per hour.”

In their next business, they had 50 employees, and in February 2000, they were sure they were going to fail. They moved to a paid model, and converted 0.05% (that’s not a typo) of customers. They were losing 800 customers a month, mainly small businesses. Of the 50 employees they had, 48 were working on retaining small business users, and just two were working on building the enterprise side. Then, they got calls from eBay and CNet encouraging them to keep doing what they were doing, at which point they took 46 people off of the small business side and put them on the enterprise side. That’s when it really took off, almost exponentially, ultimately leading to the $1.8 billion dollar sale of Omniture to Adobe last October.

Things he did personally that helped make it work:

1)      Reads a ton. Was reading books and magazines by the truckload. He used to read between 30-40 magazines a month, cover to cover.

  1. Books and Magazines helped him shape his mentorship. He would read 15 books on a topic, and find the 5 best ones and just really absorb them. He did it on all the stuff he wasn’t familiar with, and when he was done, he would have 5 different opinions by experts, helping him formulate very strong opinions, and gave him more confidence as a young entrepreneur.

2)      Take alot of vacation time. Never work Saturday and Sundays, but work like a dog during the week. And when he vacations, he makes sure he vacations really, REALLY well, not just for himself, but for his kids and his family too.

3)      Puts the same passion at home as he does at the office. There are responsibilities at home that need to be paid attention to (i.e kids, family) that will help fuel you even more at the office.

4)      Get an Assistant as soon as you can afford one.

On where he got his ideas for business:

“They say necessity is the father of invention. Things that annoy me end up fuelling my ideas. Then I heard someone in an entrepreneurial lecture series tell us to make ideabooks. The idea is you write an idea down, you write the marketing plan, the sales plan, the employees you’re gonna get, the profile you want, your competitive advantages, and you just keep writing and writing and writing, and the next day, you move on to the next idea, unless you’re still so drawn to the last idea, in which case keep writing. And when you find one that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.”

On starting a business:

“First of all, you have to make sure you have the right profile. If you’re too averse to risk, just don’t start a business. The number one problem people have is that they have ideas and they talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, but never do anything about it. And then they go to some professors, and the professors tell them “well you have to think about this this and that”… NO YOU DON’T.  Just start it, and I promise you, when you’re spending your own money on it, you’re going to pay a lot of attention on it!”

On getting your first sale:

“Do anything .. ANYTHING.. you can to win your first customers. As long as it’s not … (long awkward pause)... immoral… it might be borderline not legal, but as long as it’s not immoral, then whatever it takes. You gotta win those first customers. We had a customer come visit us, and i had all my friends come visit us wearing suits like they’re working on who-knows-what, pretending like they were working on stuff! Do whatever it takes to get those sales”

More on the first customers:

“Never give anything away for nothing. You may find you need to discount your price, but never give stuff away for nothing. If someone wants to pay less, you have to come back and ask them what they’re going to do to make up that difference. What kind of press release are you going to get? What kind of events are you going to speak and tout us at? What else are you going to do to make up the price difference? Never give away stuff for nothing”

On First-Time Entrepreneurs:

“It boggles my mind that people aren’t focussing more on revenue, revenue, revenue. Who cares if the desk isn’t put together, or some guy sent you an email you haven’t replied to, or some other guy wants you to attend some chamber of commerce meeting? Go after revenues. Sales is all that matters in the beginning. And if you can’t get a sale, THEN you go back and fix the product. But as soon as it is barely good enough to sell it, you sell it!”

On Business Ideas:

“For the most part, I don’t want a unique ideas There’s maybe a couple unique ideas that have turned into big businesses. But if there’s alot of people in the space, it’s vindication that people are willing to pay for it, it means there’s a market, it means you can make some money, it means you can compete, and it means you can be better faster stronger, especially if there’s only small players in the field.”

 

There’s a ton of good stuff in this video, and this is already a way longer blog post than I like to write, so I strongly suggest you check it out.

By Japman Bajaj

Ottawa Mobile Developer Day – August 28th

Come and join us for a full day of mobile software development technical sessions on August 28, from 10am to 4pm, at Adobe Klondike Room, 343 Preston St.

We have five speakers from different parts of the mobile space. Here is the agenda of the day,

  • 10 am – Mobile Projects by Paulo Fierro (Jade Hopper)
  • 11 am – Mobile AIR Development by Julian Dolce (QNX/RIM)
  • 12 am – Break
  • 1 pm – Mobile HTML5 by Mohammad Jangda (Vortex Mobile)
  • 2 pm - iPhone Development by Tariq Zaid (SelectStart Studios)
  • 3 pm – Windows Phone 7 by Colin Melia (DreamDigital)

Sign Up Here

Speaker Bios,

Paulo Fierro is a Norwegian born developer with a passion for User Experience and over a decade’s experience of playing with the Flash Platform. Over the years he has worked with clients such as People Magazine, the New York Giants, the Kentucky Derby, SAS, Nickelodeon and Telenor to create both compelling experiences and strategic proof of concepts. In recent years he has switched his focus over to mobile and has been lucky enough to work together with some great designers, developing award winning iPhone apps and reaching the #2 spot on the App Store. A few months ago he left the big city lights of Oslo for Brighton, UK where he has been setting up Jade Hopper, a micro agency focused on web and mobile, with his partner Niqui Merret.

Julian Dolce is a Senior Flash Developer at QNX Software Systems, specializing in mobile AIR applications. Julian has spoken at numerous conferences around the world where he has taught workshops on moving from Flash development to iPhone development, as well as a number of AIR for Android development workshops. He also maintains a personal development blog, www.deleteaso.com, where he writes about his life as a Flash developer.

Mo Jangda is an web application developer with an unhealthy obsession with JavaScript. During the day he builds mobile websites and social applications for Vortex Mobile, a Toronto-based Mobile Marketing firm. At night, he putters away at WordPress plugins and other coding adventures. You can follow him @mjangda or http://digitalize.ca

Tariq Zaid is the CEO and co-founder of SelectStart Studios – an Ottawa based mobile development studio. You can find their portfolio at http://selectstartstudios.com/work

Colin Melia is the Principal Architect for DreamDigital, a hands-on Architect for over 17 years, a speaker and trainer on Microsoft technologies, as well as a user group leader in Ottawa. He has expertise in the areas of rich UI with WPF/Silverlight, cloud development with Azure, and BI with SQL Server, along with in-depth knowledge of core technologies such as .NET, OData, WCF, WF, LINQ and WIF. He has developed award-winning simulation technology with rich UI, cloud-based learning portals and workflow-driven BI systems.  He also created the first streaming video community site with Windows Media. Colin has worked in the finance, telecoms, e-learning, Internet communications, learning and gaming industries, with his latest business solutions currently in use by thousands of users world-wide in corporations like GE, HP, O2, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft & Reuters.

By Aydin Mirzaee

Slide-Casts by Dual Code Inc.

Dual Code Inc., an Ottawa based start-up have recently lauched slide-casts.com, a free online service that allows people to easily convert their Powerpoint, Keynote or Impress presentations into multimedia slide shows and share it with others. By uploading a PDF version of your presentation and audio files, Slide-Casts allows you to share your presentations online, or limit access to your employees, co-workers or students.

By Carolynn Lacasse

Hiring: AffinityClick Social Media Sales Executive

Justin Shimoon (local internet rock star)  is hiring at AffinityClick.com – here is what he is looking for:

———————-

Do you tweet and use Facebook every day, all day? Is building social community so ingrained you just can’t stop? Do you take pride in customer service excellence and fancy yourself an entrepreneur?
 
We seek a highly a motivated individual with experience and fanatical passion for blogging, micro-blogging and community participation leadership. This position is full time salaried, including attending mainstream and niche’ conferences.
 
We promote our services by integrated organic optimization (SEO), social media optimization (SMO) and paid placement (PPC). Our Reputation Monitoring & Management objectives are comprehensive.
 
The successful candidate will join our sales and marketing team and interact with both our internal management and external partners. Our Social Media Sales Executive will focus on attracting bloggers and publishers to use our services by effectively communicating our value to through the social media channels (twitter, facebook, blogging etc.)  and traditional channels (telephone and face to face)
 
Qualifications and Experience

  • Should have a bachelor’s or associates degree in music, advertising, marketing, graphics, web development, communications, English, IT, music, theater, anthropology, history or related.
  • Excels at research, possesses excellent writing skills and the ability to crank editorial and technical writing output without brooding.
  • Worked in the online advertising space not a must but a valuable asset.
  • Demonstrated creativity and documented immersion in social media (really send the links)
  • Experience sourcing and managing relationships.
  • Understands social media universe including YouTube, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg, Reddit, Flickr, forums, twitter, Wikis, blogs, etc…We’re looking for a social media addict.
  • Has excellent verbal and written communication skills and an ability to work individually on a project or in a team environment.
  • Is eager to meet and exceed sales objectives and take on more responsibility
  • Ability to communicate results to management and in a fast paced environment

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

  • Recruit bloggers or publishers using social media tactics, phone, face to face to install and leverage our services.
  • Support customers through our customer support portal.
  • Negotiate advertising rates with leading merchants and partners.
  • Minute by minute participation in conversations that surround our content and brand, answer comments, be a mediator.”
  • Create content for feeds and snippets in various social media sites.
  • Create and update daily, weekly and monthly reports.

Please send resume to hr@affinityclick.com

By Scott Lake

Watch and Vote! Idea2Delivery

Idea2Delivery is searching for two dynamic entrepreneurs to feature in its upcoming web-based video series for entrepreneurs and needs your vote! Watch videos of the five presenters and then vote on who you think the Idea2Delivery video series should follow.

The series will follow the two selected entrepreneurs from idea to the business’s first sale. The series will be both educational and entertaining as we go through the steps needed when launching a business.
 
Vote Now!
Voting closes midnight, June 30th.
By Kelly Rusk

Ignite Ottawa Teams Up with the Ottawa Fringe Festival

Spend your lunch this Friday taking in a mash up of art and business speakers in Ignite Ottawa’s special Fringe Festival edition. The event is located at the Fringe Courtyard (corner of Daly and Waller) where you can bring your lunch to enjoy the show. All financial contributions collected at the gate will go to supporting the Ottawa Fringe Festival, which is a non-profit organization and a registered charity.

Team Art

Nancy Kenny - Branding the Artist

Sterling Lynch – Art Marks The Spot: Where Artists and Marketers Create Community
Barry Smith - The Muse Loves a Deadline – How (and Why) to Create the Art You’ve Been Putting Off

Team Business

Tyler Cope - Chief Technology Officer & Founder, Overlay.TV
Ram Kanda – Graphic Designer, Fuel Industries
Bob Ledrew – Public Relations Pro, Translucid Communications

You can register for the event here.

By Carolynn Lacasse

ThreeDify

ThreeDify, pronounced "THREE-DEE-IF-EYE",  a new locally based 3D software technology company that produces a variety of lightweight CAD and model viewing products and development tools. They specialize in the creation of software that allow users to create, edit, view and markup content in many different 3D formats. The foundation of their software is creating something that simplifies 3D design for everyone; providing a lightweight and easy to use solution. Want to see it in action? Check out some of their product videos.

By Carolynn Lacasse

Gowlings Seminar Series…

Luke Clare from Gowlings just got in touch to let us know about an interesting event they are hosting on June 24th.  The title of the event is:

Starting and managing a company in the current environment – Tips and tricks to survive and thrive in the current environment

Here are the topics that will be covered:

Financing and Structure for Small to Mid sized companies

Cost – Effective Protection of Intellectual Property

Licensing Basics for Small to Medium Companies

Employment Contract Essentials

Andrew Waitman, the CEO of The Pythian Group will be a special guest and provide lots of great advice for young companies.

You can get more information about the event here.

You can register for the event here.

By Scott Lake