b2b from Red Canary

Did you know? (VIDEO)

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:27:42 GMT

Technology moves at the speed of change, and in this now-global community, that's very, very fast. How fast? Watch this video and see.

Is your career managing you? 6 key questions to ask yourself

Alan Kearns — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:46:02 GMT

Have you wrestled with trying to decide where to go next in your career? Maybe you have struggled with knowing whether the company or role that you are pursuing is a good fit?

This week's podcast is with Launi Skinner, the new President of 1-800-GOT-JUNK and one of the speakers at The 2008 Canadian Career Summit.

Launi recently left as President of North America for Starbucks. She had joined Starbucks when there were 15 stores in Canada, and was eventually leading 6,000 stores in North America. Launi has observed, as a leader in great organizations and in managing her own career, that:

She started to understand that the culture of the company played a part in her satisfaction with her career

"The person that cares most about your career, is you. Your company's role is to provide the environment and tools to enable you to succeed. It is up to you to maximize your own opportunities".

Reaching your potential in your career doesn't happen by accident, you need to take smart action.

With a strong talent for numbers and a desire to get her career on the right track, Launi went to business school and ended up earning her CGA designation. Her first role out of school was with Mohawk Oil. Over the next 7 years she was involved in a variety of areas within this small company.

Mohawk offered her great leadership and a supportive environment to develop and evolve her career. "I discovered that as much as I enjoyed managing the numbers in our business, it was leading and coaching people that I truly loved".

What Launi did was continually define what she wanted to do with her career and didn't let the market, money or career momentum decide for her.

Sensing that she was ready for the next challenge in her career, she connected with her network and joined The Bread Basket as the regional manager for B.C.

She was responsible for 17 stores covering a wide variety of areas from real estate, to hiring, to pricing and purchasing new products for the stores. She sensed early on that the fit wasn't quite right for her and she again reached to her network.

At the 10-year mark in her career, she started to understand that the culture of the company played a part in her satisfaction with her career. Speaking with a mentor of hers, he mentioned a new company called Starbucks that had recently entered the Vancouver market. Launi decided to visit one of the stores.

6 key questions to use to help you manage and evolve in your career:
What do I want out of my career?
Does the role I am looking at fit my strengths?
Will I learn and grow in the role personally and as a professional?
Do I respect the leaders and the culture of the company?
Where would I go from here if I take this position?
What is the worst risk for me if it doesn't work out in this role?

"Candidly, at the time I didn't like coffee, but there was this magic moment when I entered the store that I had a completely different retail experience. It was clever and smart and I really liked what it was. When I had my very first latte, I liked it!"

Through her network, she approached the company, and over the next 4 months she went through a series of interviews. She ended up getting the role at Starbucks and stayed for 15 years with the organization through a series of progressive moves and larger roles. She eventually became the President of Starbucks North America.

"They were a great company. They allowed us to evolve and try different areas within the company. Even as a small company, they were very supportive in helping employees to evolve within their career. They had a great succession plan to help people progress in their future development".

I think one of the keys to Launi's success wasn't her talent - many people are talented at what they do. What Launi did was continually define what she wanted to do with her career and didn't let the market, money or career momentum decide for her.

She also understood early on that you are in a partnership with your organization when managing your career. Like all partnerships, you both have responsibilities.

Great companies like Starbucks and 1-800-GOT-JUNK understand their role in helping employees to develop and evolve in their career. Great employees, like Launi, understand their role in being really clear about knowing their strengths and creating a set of criteria to measure opportunity with.

Launi then took this knowledge and went to the market to find opportunity and organizations that she thought could be a good fit.

Your ultimate decision making tool is your gut - listen to it. Launi's final piece of advice for evolving in your career is:

"If you take a role and you know that it is going to add value to your skill-set, don't be so concerned about the title. Ask the questions, will you like the role, will it add to your skill-set and will you become a stronger person? If the answer is yes, then good things will generally happen for you and your career".

Looking for an event to learn how to manage your career more effectively? I am excited to announce The 2008 Canadian Career Summit. Join Launi Skinner, Andrea Garson, Vice President of HR from Workopolis and myself.

Learn the latest job search strategies, discover how to make great career decisions and network with like-minded professionals in diverse industries. The Summit is being held Wednesday, Oct 15th from 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM in Ottawa at The National Arts Centre and Thursday, Oct 16th from 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM in Toronto at the Glenn Gould Theater.

You can also join our free, 1 hour teleworkshop based upon my book in my book Get the Right Job Right Now! from the comfort and convenience of your own desk. It can make a great impact on your career. Looking for more confidential one-on-one support? Book an initial consultation with myself. One hour can change your future.

Evolving, along the road with you!
Alan

PS. I am giving away a pair of tickets to both the Toronto and Ottawa events. Send me an e-mail on your thoughts on how your career has evolved (alan@CareerJoy.com).

Deloitte Tech Fast 50 Interactive

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:04:24 GMT

The 2008 Fast 50 is available to you here in an interactive format.

Deloitte & Touche: Growth Rates of Canadian Technology Companies Falling After a Decade of Remarkable Gains

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:59:56 GMT

See the ranking and results here Or play with our interactive data. See which cities and sectors are growing fastest.

"The hyper-growth of Canadian technology companies may be a thing of the past"

TORONTO, ONTARIO, Sep 25, 2008 MARKET WIRE via COMTEX Today's announcement of the 2008 Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) winners highlights a dramatic slowdown in growth rates after a decade of remarkable expansion. The Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM), the country's leading technology awards, ranks companies based on their five year revenue growth rates. Other categories include: Leadership; Companies-to-Watch and the Technology Green 15(TM). Markham, Ontario-based Nightingale Informatix Corporation, a healthcare service and software company, took the top spot with a 23,078% five year revenue growth. This is down sharply from last year's winner, Sandvine who topped the list with a blistering 42,120% five-year revenue growth rate. "The hyper-growth of Canadian technology companies may be a thing of the past," warns John Ruffolo, National Leader, Technology, Media & Telecommunications Industry Group, Deloitte.

Only a third (36%) of companies who made the list are VC financed and almost as many (32%) are backed by debt as by equity.

"In fact, our annual survey of Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) CEOs found that tech executives are predicting little growth in this sector, not only because of looming concerns about an economic downturn in Canada or the strong Canadian dollar, but also because of the weakness in Canada's venture capital industry and a tight credit market. This should be a rallying cry to find immediate solutions that will help this industry - often referred to as the industry critical to the success of Canada's economy into the future," explained Ruffolo.

Average growth rate down 1,276% compared to last year

Combined, this year's winning companies posted an average growth rate of 2,457%, down 1,276% from last year's average growth rate of 3,732%. "These are still great companies with an optimistic view of the future, but they have been hampered recently due to a lack of venture capital (VC) funding and a slowing worldwide economy," explains Duncan Stewart, Director of Deloitte Canada Research. "The private equity market has almost vanished and the IPO window is practically closed. Canada is home to the brightest minds in the business, but without financial assistance, we are going to lose out to more aggressive countries who know the true value of tech sector growth." Right behind top-ranked Nightingale Informatix Corporation, is Toronto-based PlateSpin (22,390%) a developer of data centre automation software, placing second two years in a row. Ottawa-based Level Platforms, which develops remote monitoring and management software ranked third (19,890%). Rounding out the top five are Toronto-based MyThum Interactive (see Red Canary profile) a mobile interactive media technology-provider (6,840% for fourth place two years running), and Vision Critical (5,298%), a Vancouver-based software company that develops interactive research.

U.S. and global economic weakness taking a toll

71% of CEOs surveyed said that tight credit markets are affecting their growth plans and 46% said they are changing or reviewing their strategies as a result of a downturn in the global economy. Interestingly, Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) CEOs remain optimistic and confident about their own companies but 57% of them see the broader industry slowing down.

Changing trends in financing

Only a third (36%) of companies who made the list are VC financed and almost as many (32%) are backed by debt as by equity. This is a surprising trend when compared to 10 years ago when technology entrepreneurs could only rely on VCs to fund them. Due to the lack of venture capital today, more companies are accessing the debt market and using their own cash to grow. Furthermore, even when they do receive VC funding, they are not getting it from Canada, but from the U.S. and Europe. This contrasts dramatically from 1998 when only 3% of VC funding originated from foreign sources.

Rise in commodity/energy prices providing new opportunities

Most Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) companies are not being negatively affected by a rise in commodity/energy prices, but 42% are taking advantage of the trend to develop and sell new technologies that are energy efficient. Over a third (38%) of CEOs surveyed said they had created new opportunities or growth markets for their businesses due to rising energy and commodity prices.

GreenTech and CleanTech on the rise

A continuing bright spot in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) program is the increased quality and size of Technology Green 15(TM) winners. They have been able to attract venture capital and IPO attention. It appears as if any company that allows you to do more with less - conserve energy, produce more oil and gas, use coal more responsibly - will be the winners in the years to come. However, while other industries are working on their environmental practices, technology companies themselves appear to be laggards in this area. Less than half (37%) are implementing energy conservation techniques and the use of environmentally friendly energy sources for their own companies, while 52% are implementing waste reduction measures. Despite these figures, a full 92% say going green "is the right thing to do."

The wireless sector continues to thrive

The market for wireless products, applications and services continues to move forward with great promise. 58% of tech executives see wireless applications, services and solutions becoming a larger part of their company's business in future. Of course, this is a sector where Canada is truly a leader through the efforts of companies like Research In Motion, which has made the Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) ranking every year for 11 years running - earning it the exclusive "Hall of Fame" honour.

Federal government getting too involved in the wrong ways

When asked if the current Canadian tax and regulatory environment is a barrier to their ability to remain competitive and grow, 54% said "yes". In addition, 17% said the federal government keeps getting involved in the industry, changing the rules of the game and restricting growth with too many regulations. The same number cited a lack of federal and provincial government harmonization. "Working together, government agencies could do more to help technology companies grow, raise capital, reduce their tax burden and help them expand into international markets," explained Ruffolo.

Regional representation of Canada's technology hotspots

While the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ottawa, and companies from Southwestern Ontario combine to produce more than half of Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) winning companies (27), other regions also show strength. The Greater Vancouver Area has seven, four hail from Alberta and Atlantic Canada has one winner. Quebec boasts 11 winners (up from 9 last year), likely due to a more favourable VC climate.

Ottawa has an almost even mix of both Deloitte Technology Fast 50 winners and Companies-to-Watch that could graduate to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) ranking in years to come

In fact, Quebec's winners say they enjoyed more VC funding than those in any other province. It is also interesting to note that Ottawa has an almost even mix of both Deloitte Technology Fast 50 winners and Companies-to-Watch that could graduate to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) ranking in years to come. While the Ottawa region has long been known for its established tech industry, it's encouraging to see that innovation continues to thrive there.

Leadership Awards

Leadership Awards single out companies that are the elite members of the Canadian technology industry, whose ability to create a distinct competitive advantage in a high-growth market allows them to dominate their sector and quickly join the ranks of other Canadian global leaders. This year's four Leadership Awards recipients are: PlateSpin (recently acquired by Novell), a developer of data center management solutions; RuggedCom Inc., which makes rugged communications equipment; Evertz Technologies Limited, a developer of HDTV and IPTV equipment; and Westport Innovations Inc., an engine developer and manufacturer.

Companies-to-Watch Awards

Based on the same criteria as the Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM), the Companies-to-Watch (CTW) Awards honour early-stage Canadian technology companies in business less than five years, with the potential to be future Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) candidates. In this category, lack of financing is once again a critical factor. In the past, CTW have succeeded by developing solutions based on existing technologies but better, faster and more efficient. With the 2008 CTW Award-winners, the reverse is true. The majority are creating businesses in spaces that didn't even exist a year or two ago and are creating truly cutting-edge new markets. Ten companies are recognized as CTW this year: Blueprint, Embotics Corporation, Enablence Technologies Inc., Geminare Incorporated, In Motion Technology, OmniGlobe Networks, Paymentus Corporation, Planeteye, Sidense, and Storage Appliance. Impressively, one CTW winner from 2007, Brandimensions Inc., rose to the upper echelon of the 2008 Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM), ranking ninth this year.

Deloitte Technology Green 15(TM) Awards

These awards recognize Canada's leading GreenTech companies that promote a more efficient use and re-use of the earth's resources in industrial production and consumption. In doing so, they use new, innovative technologies to create products and services that compete with existing products and services on price and performance while reducing our impact on the environment. The 15 winners are: 6N Silicon Inc., Alter NRG, Aqua-Pure Ventures Inc., ARISE, Distech Controls, EnviroTower, GEEP Inc., Ground Effects, Hemisphere GPS, ProSep Inc., Questair, Sempa Power Systems, Sustainable Energy Technologies, Timminco, and Westport Innovations Inc. Of these companies, 33% are involved in the energy industry, 20% in remediation and 20% in smart building technologies with almost half based in Western Canada. In addition, there are more public Technology Green 15(TM) companies than private as the investment community is more accepting of early stage GreenTech companies than other types of technology firms.

About the Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM)

The Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) program is Canada's pre-eminent technology awards program. Celebrating business growth, innovation and entrepreneurship, the program features four distinct categories including the Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) Ranking, Companies-to-Watch Awards (early-stage Canadian tech companies in business less than five years, with the potential to be a future Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) candidate,) Leadership Awards (companies that demonstrate technological leadership in four industry subcategories: hardware/semiconductor, software, telecommunications and emerging technologies) and the Deloitte Technology Green 15(TM) Awards (Canada's leading GreenTech companies that promote a more efficient use and re-use of the earth's resources in industrial production and consumption.) Program sponsors include Deloitte, Gowlings, GrowthWorks, RBC Capital Markets, Wellington Financial, Stonewood Group, CATAAlliance and IGLOO. For further information, visit www.fast50.ca.

Why So Much Software Stinks

Alyssa Dver — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:00:00 GMT

All too often in the software industry, we have CEOs that are the product’s original parent. As a subordinate PM, its pretty impossible to tell that CEO what to do or what their baby should grow up to be.

In an age where customer is king, why does so much software fail to meet our expectations? After more than 30 years perfecting the science of software development, why is this industry still so amused by its own “opportunities”? Applications are often buggy, inflexible and incomplete. Programs are often difficult to use and ugly to look at. And are so full of features and so empty of usability that even the help files need help. I’ll give you one good reason: poor product management. I have spent more than a decade teaching people how to be better product managers. Between my book and presentations, I have reached well over 30,000 people, so if there is anyone to blame for poor product management – especially in software – its probably me. But I dare say, poor PM is rarely due to a lack of knowledge. It’s usually due to a few things that are more the fault of the company than the product manager.

Why Product Management hits the wall

1. First, product managers need to be empowered – and yes, this starts with having a product manager that has the confidence and existing respect to do the job right. By promoting the lowest man on the totem pole into the product management position, this isn’t a plan for success.

Most product plans are built from the idea forward instead of the sales opportunities back

Often times, the CEO or hiring manager doesn’t know what a product managers does – or worse yet, they don’t want to hire anyone that may challenge their own standing. All too often in the software industry, we have CEOs that are the product’s original parent. As a subordinate PM, its pretty impossible to tell that CEO what to do or what their baby should grow up to be. This can be equally hard when the engineering management is overly opinionated or the sales team has the company by its ‘ears’. Therefore, organizations should make sure that they take time to hire the right product manager and then give him/her the opportunity to bring forward relevant data and the wisdom of the multiple crowds that the PM is chartered to interact with. 2. The second reason product managers can’t get the job done well is due to panic. Organizations tend to panic when the competition moves or the market shifts. Companies also panic at the possibility that if they don’t change the current course and stay ‘agile’, that one demanding customer could cause the company to sink. This panic happens in all sized companies and in all economic conditions. Why? Because most product plans are built from the idea forward instead of the sales opportunities back. Rarely are products built after market requirements have been gathered and understood and built into a well thought out and committed vision, strategy and roadmap. Because without a vision, a strategy and solid roadmaps, implementation is a result of reaction, and reaction is a first cousin of panic. 3. And the third reason product management is forever in a no-win zone, is that as an industry, we still don’t teach and support product management as a profession. We continue to pull people out of supporting roles such as pre-sales, engineering and other functions which are like the backup singers to the front man. Ironically what makes a product manager so great is that they are in fact, a bit like divas. They actually like to have the microphone and spotlight which is how and why they can carry off such a precarious role. This is why product managers often move on to be entrepreneurs and CEOs. So while professional product management is getting more and more organized through the many books, classes, certifications, and conferences happening these days, it is far from a consistent discipline from company to company and many CEOs still question its value.

Few benchmarks and high expectations: product management is easy to target as the reason why software products continue to miss the mark.

As long as product management isn’t appreciated and supported by corporate leaders, it will continue to contribute to the failure of so many software initiatives. Products will continue to be loaded with features that no one ever uses. They will continue to be late and unstable. Cross functional teams will remain dysfunctional as documentation will always be in catch up mode and the sales team will free wheel it by committing to things that aren’t in any existing business plan. And marketers will continue to position their products as the most robust when all the customer really wants is the one that is most reliable. It all points to the lack of good product management – sometimes because of the product manager but more often, due to a lack of support from the company they keep.

One Red Question - Is offshoring development a good idea for a startup?

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:48:20 GMT

This week's question was inspired by a conversation I had with a couple of very smart and very green young entrepreneurs. Armed with a great idea and limited funding, the two business grads decided to have their application developed overseas. Ultimately the founders felt they suffered for this decision and are now re-building parts of the app in-house, and have hired an experienced coder/project manager to transition the rest. I'll put the question to you: Are there situations where a fledgling app can be developed elsewhere? At what point can an application be parceled out? Is there better ROI for certain kinds of development?

Agile as a management method and organizational philosophy

Trevor Stafford, Scott Valentine — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:18:51 GMT

In the second installment of its focus on Agile (see the first conversation here), Red Canary hosts executives from DevShop, Point Click Care, and Strangeloop Networks. This is an edited transcript of a conference call held on February 20, 2008 and moderated by Scott Valentine. An unedited audio recording of the session will be available shortly.

Participants: •Craig Fitzpatrick Founder and CEO
DevShop (visit his blog) •Dave Wessinger Co-founder and CTO Point Click Care •Kent Alstad Co-founder and CTO Strangeloop Networks

Red Canary: Welcome and thanks to all for taking part in today's discussion. Let's dive right in. Gentlemen, how does Agile project management compare to other methods? Craig: "In traditional methods, the metaphor used to design software was around manufacturing; you did research up front and then you spent a number of months building the thing. The Agile method assumes that requirements can and will change. There is a fundamentally different assumption on the rigidity of requirements. I think the biggest value in the shift towards Agile philosophy is the attempt to push decision making away from trying to make predictions on the last 80 per cent of the project up front.

we found that our business started to adopt the language of Agile. We use it like a philosophy when we're trying to approach new areas and new problems

Kent: "I've worked in shops that have been pretty Waterfall, the idea that you had to not only hit the release date but call it nine months earlier. By comparison, Agile encourages faster production iterations, an emphasis on understanding over documentation, and really places a premium on interacting with the customer. On a waterfall project, I'd always be talking about where we'd like to be and where we thought we were, because there's always this big push to assess against some kind of definition. With Agile, our factory is this piece of software that grows in complexity and features with each build, each day. When we talk about what it does we're talking about right now. In my view, that emphasis on reality rather than hopes or plans has been very helpful for us as an industry because it makes us admit to ourselves that we really didn't know the requirements before we started. That can be a hard point to accept but once you get over it Agile lets you interact with the team and develop the right solution, not just "what we said it would be." Are Agile project methods inherently better suited to client-facing solutions than they are to in-house initiatives? Dave: "To add to where Craig and Kent were going, the value of Agile is getting something in the customer's hands out-of-the-gate versus down-the-road. And from the business side, there is tremendous value in getting real input from customers before you spend an inordinate amount of R&D dollars only to get six months along and realize that you missed the mark. Really, adopting a method at all as an organization is about where you are in your growth curve. When you only have three or four customers you can be a heck of a lot more agile.

As we brought on larger customers who were expecting a more formal process and longer time frames to accept and adopt new product, it sort of forced us to more of a waterfall approach

When we first started (in 1999) it was gun slinging all the way. But that eventually had to mature based on our business model. We loved the output we were getting, but it seemed to have some negative impact on the stability of product, and as we brought on larger customers who were expecting a more formal process and longer time frames to accept and adopt new product, it sort of forced us to more of a waterfall approach. Today, we're doing daily builds and releases back in to the product. The business team works with our customers and we make refinements as needed. So, as we've grown we've realized that a more formal approach is necessary if you want to entertain large, public customers." Craig, as a vendor you're in a unique position to observe the market for Agile. What are you seeing in terms of the types of organizations adopting Agile methods, and why?

At some point we have to recognize that communication is the biggest determining factor of success in software

Craig: "I think there's three ways of developing software: doing it in-house, on contract for-hire, or for commercial development aimed at a specific marketplace. I usually lump for-hire and in-house together; whether the customer is internal or external is moot. The real difference in commercial development is that you have a person like a product marketer whose job is to know the market better than they know themselves and introduce some unique things that you probably don't have in for-hire development. When you bring a commercial product to market, tipping your hand too soon and letting competitors see what you're doing can be a big risk. So, in terms of Agile, I think it's a bit riskier in the commercial development market than in the other two." Kent: "I don't know. At Strangeloop we do ship commercial product and if we're really worried about secrecy we just enter the customer into an NDA. In the long run, we work with pretty technical people and if you skirt around the issue too long they just get frustrated with you. If you investigate Microsoft, I think you'll see that they've actually gone to a Customer Technology Preview model where they ship software much earlier - with no intention of it being used in production - in order to get feedback. So we've seen models where you can integrate an Agile form of development that is very effective in responding to the changing market and taking advantage of insights. When I've used Agile before, it's been very specific to the in-house and for-hire categories Craig mentioned. But in this case we're using it quite effectively in a commercial product, so there is hope for that. But we also have a very experienced team." Dave: "With Waterfall, there was always a lot of finger pointing back-and-forth with development if the product went out the door and didn't hit the mark. “Well they didn't spec it right," met "No, they didn't build it right.". With Agile, although we have to hit the mark a lot quicker, the frustrations that we have is with developers pointing at product marketing and saying "Well they keep moving the yardstick." So, bringing the team together and working towards the same goal is unbelievably important. Sometimes it takes a little more vision than a less experienced coder may be capable of.

Bringing the team together and working towards the same end goal is unbelievably important.

One last point getting back to different styles . . . Cowboy or Extreme methods are really valuable if you're able to capture individuals that have both knowledge around the marketplace and technical ability. People like that are diamonds in the rough but if you can build a team around three or four of them - I think Steve Jobs said it best - one of those is worth 10,000 other developers. There's been one or two cases where we've been able to achieve that and it's had an incredibly positive effect." I'd be interested to know the prevalence of Agile methods in the smaller and medium-sized space where the pace of change is extremely high -- because if you're too rigid you get to a point in the growth curve where you simply can't manage change that quickly. At some point we have to recognize that communication is the biggest determining factor of success in software. If we're not focusing on valuing and teaching that, then there will be problems. When I'm interviewing and I find someone who is a great communicator and they really get it, that's just a huge deal. Even if they can't code it and have to explain it someone else, it still has a tremendous amount of value. To me that's the heart of what's going in Agile: openness, communication, relating to your colleagues and having a sense of team." Craig: "I really agree with what you've said Dave and I think that would shock all the developers that have worked for me over the years. Because what you're saying is that the ability to sit down at a keyboard and code is secondary to all these other attributes" Craig, as a project planning vendor DevShop gets to see a lot of sides to how Agile is used - in-house, client facing, hardware and software spaces - What's your take on how Agile is being used across the marketplace and are Agile methods making it out of the tech space and into "mainstream" business? Craig: "There's a direct correlation between Agile and smaller companies taking on bigger companies. If you think about it, a start-up is essentially an Agile business – you wake up every morning and never know what fire you'll have to put out or what change of plans you'll have to make. So many things have changed in the software biz around lower barriers to entry and the pace at which you can pump product out. All these things have now culminated to the point where the number one critical advantage you can have is to be an Agile business. If you are you'll be able to go toe-to-toe with the big guys and actually do some damage."

A start-up is essentially an Agile business – you wake up every morning and never know what fire you'll have to put out or what change of plans you'll have to make

How much are your own companies incorporating Agile methods into other areas of your business. For example, in product marketing or organizational planning? Kent: "We talk about being an Agile business at our board meetings, it's really crept out of development. When we began to describe how we wanted Strangeloop to behave in order to best react to our customers, we found that our business started to adopt the language of Agile. We use it like a philosophy when we're trying to approach new areas and new problems; it's very healthy because it's just enough control. As a small player among giants, we feel Agile is one of our key competitive advantages and we purposely let customers know that we will listen to the market and that we will change as time goes on. That has really led us to a change in our organization." Dave: "I'm in a bit of a different space. We compete with organizations that are a bit more mature and slower to react - I'd guess they were more Waterfall - it may take them two years to make a major change. Well, guess what? In the long term care space things change monthly and you have to be able to react from a business perspective. So for us, Agile starts with our strategic planning. We sit down at least monthly and see where are we. Is something missing? What do we need to re-prioritize? That kind of Agile strategic planning allows us to re-focus as an organization from the top down and we find that extremely valuable." Back in the 90s, we saw a real cottage industry pop-up around project management. And there's an argument to be made that modern practises such as Six Sigma are really just extensions of old-school project management practices. The question is: does Agile have the potential to cross-over and become a business model in and of itself? Craig "I think it's a bit of a slippery slope to talk about the cementing of Agile process in an industry. The more it gets written about and different flavours get taught in school, the more rigid Agile can become.

I think it’s a bit of a slippery slope to talk about the cementing of Agile process in an industry. The more it gets written about and different flavours get taught in school, the more rigid Agile can become

It comes down to adapting just the right amount of Agile process versus flatly stating “This is the agile methodology that we use.” If you go too far that way, you're not really Agile anymore because you're not continuing to redefine yourself." Dave: "I have a hard time believing that Agile is going to make any splash beyond the tech world. If you look at Six Sigma, it's been widely adopted but it's also been a miserable failure for companies like Home Depot. (Click for Google search on 'Six Sigma Failure Home Depot' Agile works well for companies that are small to medium-sized and its application as a software development technique is bang-on. But I cant imagine using it as part of a manufacturing process. A lot of interesting points raised here today. Any final thoughts on what makes Agile work, or predictions for what the future of Agile may hold? Kent: "Agile is where it's at is because it made sense and produced results for organizations, against almost everybody's belief that it could. I think that where Agile will be popular and continue to evolve is where it makes sense for businesses. If you can understand how it's agoing to work for you, you can make great progress with Agile techniques. Where you need more process, shy away from it and build the controls that are necessary. Ultimately, when Agile makes sense it gets used and that's why we're here talking about it today." Craig: "I don't know if I have any predictions but I have hopes. Agile is a better way to get it right for your customer. I hope it starts to become combined with a focus on general user experience in the software space.

Agile lets you interact with the team and develop the right solution, not just 'what we said it would be'.

It used to be you had delivered software when you'd ticked off all the requirements in a document. Where I hope it's going is towards a greater empathy for people who have to use the software. I think part of that is letting them see it and touch it sooner." Dave: "In the beginning we had to choose between doing the right thing or doing it right. I think that's been a common problem across all organizations. With this project methodology, you really have the opportunity to do both, and that's critical if you want to make inroads as a small organization. What we're all trying to do is solve problems at a lower threshold of pain for our customers. If we can make products that serve the business lifestyle and kind of hide between the walls, then we've achieved our goal. But it's really not about the technology. The difference between when we really engage with the customer and the market and when we don't is 1,000 per cent. With Agile, we can actually create caring for the ultimate user and achieve a human interaction that drives the passion to get it right. In a nutshell, I think Agile has an application for many business of many different sizes and it's just a matter of choosing what works for you." Thanks guys.

INTERVIEW: RapidMind's founder, Dr. Mike McCool

Scott Valentine — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:11:04 GMT

Dr. Mike McCool is co-founder and chief scientist of Waterloo's RapidMind, the world's leading provider of multicore platform solutions to the software industry. McCool was born in Ohio but grew up in tiny Edmundston, New Brunswick, before moving west in his teens to study computer engineering through the University of Waterloo's inaugural co-op program. McCool picked up his BASc in Applied Sciences from UofW in 1989, before tackling graduate studies in parallel computing and medical imaging at the University of Toronto, where he received a PhD in Computer Science. McCool's academic c.v. includes additional studies in fields as diverse as human physiology and biochemistry. Let's have your founder's story I started my career as a professor at the University of Waterloo in 1994 when it was just getting to be reasonable to make videos with computers and process them. My area of research was interactive graphics . . . the history being that SGI was the dominant player of the time. During my first few years at Waterloo, inventors started making graphic accelerator boards, which were basically little parallel computers on a chip. I was interested in all the computations happening on those chips -- how they were used for different algorithms. In 1999, myself and a grad student, Jan Kautz, mapped algorithms on to a GPU directly. It was a horrible experience, we got it working but the hardware could barely handle it. We figured that eventually developers would want to add [other] features, so we talked to some people to get a list of desired features and built a simulator - a low level virtual GPU - called SMASH, the idea being to "smash" preconceptions." Eventually that becamethe RapidMind platform. What kind of people do you like to surround yourself with? First, ego is unacceptable. People need to be honest when they can't accomplish something and ask for help. At RapidMind, we try and enable our customer's application experts to do their thing. The people we look for here need enough experience to deal with those applications specialists. Our platform is generally capable but really it’s like clay. It needs to be sculpted into a solution for a specific customer. The trick for us is to engage customers with people that translate business needs and platform capabilities into a solution that fits in the customer's space. Multicore is complex stuff. Can a student or recent grad cut it with RapidMind? What we are doing is so new that experience helps but it's not critical. Some of our best people here are relatively new and young. In fact my co-founder was one of my grad students, and I still have six students active in research. One of the biggest things is, you don't get into this (multicore) for the technical interest as much as you do to solve customer's problems. In the beginning, I had pretty limited business experience and I had to learn a lot of hard lessons about how to interact with customers. People fresh out of school need time to understand these other aspects of business. You have to have strong people skills and the ability to understand customer requirements. Our solutions architects need technical skills, but they also need to be great listeners and be able to ask the right questions. What's your management style? I'm a collaborator and kind of a hands-on guy. I still do a bit of coding every month to make sure I'm current on what's going on. I also talk to people a lot and make sure everyone is aware of what the priorities are. We use Agile methods, though in my role as chief scientist I'm not really involved in project management. Reliability and performance are very important . . . I like visibility and I try to identify early-on if something is going off-the-rails. Does diversity help you straddle the fence between scientist and entrepreneur? My background is quite broad and I think that helps. When I first decided to commercialize (the multicore platform), it was clear to me that trends were pushing towards a need for the solution. But quantifying that and translating it into a business plan that made sense was very challenging for me. Explaining the technical concepts and finding enough information to justify that we felt was an obvious opportunity - that there needed to be a tool to allow the transition to parallel computing in the near future - was tough to get into a business plan, and we got turned down a couple times for grants. It was then I realized the importance of bringing in business expertise. The important thing is to recognize your limitations. The best thing anyone ever said to me is that you have to put ego outside and think about what is best for the company. If that means that you bring in other talent, it's the cost of doing business. Part of the growth curve of a start-up is realizing that you have to be a constantly changing organization." Talk about balancing your passion for innovation and research with the dull realities of company building? The excitement is to make it all the way from idea to reality. A lot of the time when you're doing research you get so far then stop and do something else. It's nice to see products being used the way they were envisioned. When I did something in graphics that showed up in a product or a game, that was satisfying. But it's extremely satisfying to think that RapidMind can make a difference by allowing developers to do all kinds of things for people all over the world. I think it's about maturity. Research is like falling in love for the first time. Building a company is like being married. It's a more mature satisfaction. What other Canadian companies or innovators impress you? There's been a really good set of innovations out of Alias (purchased by Autodesk). . . one of the better Canadian success stories, I think. Generally speaking, I'm impressed with the graphics productivity of the Stanford group. The Imagine processor was particularly interesting. I was impressed with how they stepped back and questioned basic assumptions about computer hardware to fuel innovation. What is innovation anyway? Innovation is all about asking the dumb questions like "Why has it always been done this way?" A lot of the time I think innovators are cross-pollinating. I came from graphics, which is a certain style of computing, but I also a have a hardware background. One of the things about computer science people is that they often don't know about the underlying hardware they are writing on. I think the fact that I had a hardware background initially and then switched to graphics and back to computing again gave me a different perspective. I think you'll find that many innovators have pretty eclectic backgrounds.  What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to a young Canadian tech company or entrepreneur? I'll go back to it again: ego is not useful. Confidence and persistence are. Always be thinking really hard about the things you need to accomplish in order to succeed, and if you need help, get it. You should always be going back to that key question of "What is the most important thing I can be doing right now to move my business forward?" Fact or fiction: plug-and-play auto-parallelization is a reality in the next 5-10 years? Sure, if AI is invented. The problem is that developing almost any software program is a quite creative activity. There's lots and lots of ways to look at a problem but most people have been trained to think sequentially and address problems in a sequential fashion. The fact is that there are huge differences between serial and parallel algorithms. So, a tool that addresses serial code would effectively have to understand and choose a better algorithm for parallelization. Auto-parallelizing tools can probably pick up some of that, and certainly there are tools that could assist, but I think for ultimate performance it has to involve a human in the loop to look at a problem and rethink it. Down-the-road, will multicore face a platform-splintering conundrum similar to what mobile developers are dealing with now? I think industries go through splintering and consolidation for various reasons. Splintering happens when people want to try different things and they are competing. Consolidation happens when the options have been tried and there's some agreement as to approach. There are a lot of ways to 'do' parallelization but some of them aren't very good - O.K. from a tech side but no good from a human side - these things are really hard to figure out in advance. Splintering is appropriate for this stage of the market. It may be inconvenient for someone trying to pick a platform but it should not be unexpected for this point in time. There's growing consensus in terms of a what unified (multicore) platform may look like, but the truth is that what's right for a Web2.0 server may not be right for coding media or whatever. We're just at the cusp now, people are converging on solutions that make sense. I think RapidMind is well on the path towards platform maturity. Thanks Doc.

One Red Question: Which business book influenced you most?

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:23:53 GMT

The smiling faces of CEOs, thought gurus and accidental millionaires gorge the business section of every bookstore. Most of the volumes are self-aggrandizing tripe or neu-think, but some emerge as essential, influential reading. What business book do you most often thumb through? Which magnum opus changed your approach to career or professional conduct?

PROFILE: Strangeloop Networks

Scott Valentine — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:57:15 GMT

Hang around the world of emerging technology long enough and you’ll stumble upon a collection of odd starts and strange coincidences.

For example, most of the staff showed up hung over on the day Sandvine opened its doors. And the man behind one of Canada’s coolest technology companies, RapidMind, is actually named McCool.

But a story where identical twins team up with a physicist-quoting CTO? Now that’s strange.

Strangeloop to be precise.

Fast performance or feature-rich? Strangeloop says ‘yes’.
Most current web development projects incorporate blogging, social networking, instant messaging and file-sharing, all of which are server intensive and bring with them network-mangling volume spikes.

Strangeloop’s AppScaler, or AS-1000 accelerates Microsoft AJAX applications, improving the user experience and allowing software developers to focus on features instead of painstakingly optimizing code. But it isn’t simply a speed-booster.

By intelligently managing server calls, Strangeloop also helps clients reduce bandwidth consumption, further reducing costs.

Joshua Bixby

“Our product has [the] ability to watch what goes through a box, [recognize] performance problems and then decide what to do about [them],” says Joshua Bixby, co-founder and vice-president of product development.

The executives get back in the loop
Strangeloop was co-founded by Joshua, his identical twin brother Jonathon, and CTO Kent Alstad. Alstad worked with the Bixbys at IronPoint Technology, which they founded and later sold to The Active Network less than 30 months after startup.

“At IronPoint, we were kind of at the bottom left of the dynamic content arc,” says Joshua. “Strangeloop is an outpouring of trying to solve that problem between performance and interactive features.”

According to Alstad, the name Strangeloop comes from Gödel, Escher, Bach, a book by Nobel-prizewinning physicist Douglas Hofstadter.

“He talks about recursive logic with inherent problems that ultimately breed awareness,” says Alstad. So Strangeloop really stuck with us,” he says.

Das cool.

Solving real-world problems
Organizations that are trying to make the jump to Web 2.0 often don’t know what they are getting into.

“[One] client was a big university under pressure to offer a dynamic, interactive environment to students,” says Joshua.

“The solution they bought worked great on a demo box, but once it was rolled-out across the enterprise, it was taking 10 to 20 seconds for a page to load. Their only options were to go back to the vendor, buy 50 really expensive servers, or spend huge on bandwidth pipe,” says Bixby.

Each of those options meant more money, resources and time.

“That’s where Strangeloop [came] in,” says Joshua.

The nuts and bolts

Typically, application providers try to solve the performance/features conundrum through code optimization.

The AS 1000 uses intelligent caching with user-defined constraints to manage the otherwise cumbersome load of system calls and messages to-and-from applications servers.

“It starts learning right away and it continues to learn,” says Joshua. “That’s important with dynamic applications because the nature of how and when they are being used is always changing.”

The AS 1000 has four key technical differentiators, according to Alstad.
“First, the technique used to modify requests and responses is kept inline,” he says. “Instead of having calls to other servers we optimize data transfer between the application server and the AS 1000.”

Differentiator number two is that the AS 1000 sits at a strategic place in the network, ”. . . so we get to see all the traffic,” says Alstad.

“Third, the AS 1000 measures performance data coming through the network and adjusts in real-time,” he says. “And four, we’re experts at ASP.NET. We’ve already had all those long nights of coding pain.

At the business logic level, Strangeloop’s value is its flexibility.

“On the browser side, you can set static stuff (content that doesn’t change to cache), and grab dynamic stuff through auto updates without the need for a whole bunch of coding,” says Alstad. “If you decide you don’t want some pre-set rule followed anymore, flick a switch.” Try and do the same thing with code and you’ll constantly be recompiling, and sacrificing time, money and end-user goodwill.

Joshua adds one more key differentiator to the list.
“Our box can get into an organization, powered-up and optimizing in under 20 minutes. We’ve actually timed it.”.

Strange days, indeed
Jonathan believes that helping their clients deliver that experience will propel Strangeloop forward as a key tool for the entrepreneurial gold-miners of Web 2.0.

“I think we’re pretty unique,” he says. “[We’ve] had success in trying to push around the pain point from our last business, and the pain point in the ASP.NET market today.”

The company has been previewed in Customer Technology Preview, with beta-launches scheduled for October 2007, and Strangeloop has already picked up a significant award and a big war chest of cash.

In August 2007, Strangeloop won a Microsoft Best of TechED 2007 award. “We credit that to our vision and pre-beta testing,” says Jonathan. “ASP.NET is such a clear pain for business . . . it’s a big honour for us and we’re excited to win many more.”

Jonathan Bixby

And in July 2007, Strangeloop picked-up CAD$11.5 million in Series A funding, one, of the largest rounds of private Series A financing for a technology start-up in Canadian history, Jonathan says that Strangeloop plans to spend the money broadening its virtual office of senior staff, and quickly accelerating the company’s sales mission.

“It used to take that university’s web site 20 seconds to load [a page],” says Joshua.

“We put the AS 1000 in – with zero code or infrastructure changes – and the page loads in two seconds,” he says. “And a server that could handle 100 transactions per second can now handle 1000, (which creates a need for fewer servers)”.

“We’re trying to be the leader in the dynamic acceleration market,” he says. “The opportunity is big enough and we have to go after it quickly.”

That’s a lofty objective for a technology that’s yet to move to full product launch. But the market potential is there and, hey, stranger things have happened.

PROFILE - RapidMind: the foresight and science behind a multi-core monopoly

Scott Valentine — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:57:07 GMT

What’s the number-one challenge facing the software development industry today?

Skittish venture capital markets? Fierce competition for high-end tech talent? A global shortage of energy drinks?

According to Ray DePaul, President and CEO of Waterloo’s RapidMind, the challenge is the advent of multi-core processors.

Software performance has traditionally benefited from increasing processor clock speeds. That’s changed.

“Instead of turning out faster processors, vendors are now cramming multiple CPUs on one chip,” says Depaul. “The theoretical performance is great, but software developers have no idea how to use it. Software companies kind of a had a free ride for the last 20 years, that’s over now”.

To keep up with Moore’s law, software development companies now have to ‘parallelize’ across multiple cores, a complex procedure with a steep leaning curve, even for experienced developers.

Companies who want to be market leaders either have to code for multi-core processors themselves or find a platform that will let developers code in a standard environment, which can then be parallelized.

If they lag behind, their software is going to do the same.

A comparison of hardware and software performance

The founder’s story
Meet Dr. Mike McCool. McCool is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, and RapidMind’s founder and chief scientist. Dr. McCool understands things like global illumination, parallel computing, and Monte Carlo methods so you don’t have to.

Dr. Mike McCool, founder and chief scientist

He started researching the challenges and opportunities of multi-core in the late 90’s, about five years before the rest of the software world caught on.

“It was clear when we started that there was a need to solve the potential for multi-core” says McCool. “Being able to map code to a parallel platform, without sacrificing structure and modularity for performance, [was] key.”

McCool developed the early iterations of his platform with the help of a few graduate students before incorporating his intellectual property in the form of RapidMind.

In January of 2006, DePaul joined RapidMind from RIM and, very quickly, the race was on to commercialize product and ship to the first customer.

Partnerships with IBM, the Business Development Bank of Canada and others who ‘got it’ helped launch the company, as did the supportive climate of Waterloo’s tight-knit tech community.

A multi-core monopoly
If you really want to wrap your head around what RapidMind brings to the multi-core table, consider this: Every top-end software development company in the world knows it has to master multi-core soon if it wants to stay competitive.

And RapidMind is the only company in the world with a commercial platform that can help them.

“We really don’t have to explain our value proposition to customers anymore,” says DePaul. “Our potential market is every software company in the world.”

PeakStream, the only other company in RapidMind’s space, was acquired by Google in June, 2007, to help manage that behemoth’s own requirements.

And that leaves RapidMind standing all alone at the top of the multi-core mountain.

“I like the view,” says DePaul. “In a way it reminds me of launching the Blackberry with RIM. We had to go out and create a market by getting people to think differently.”

The key for both Rapidmind’s technology and business model is keeping things simple.

“Yes, it’s rocket science,” says DePaul. “But people don’t need to know that. They just need to know how to make multi-core work.”

How it works
RapidMind’s platform delivers expedited multi-core programming through a three-step process.

First, programmers key in standard C++ code into RapidMind’s proprietary API. This stage requires the developer to replace numerical types with the equivalent RapidMind platform types. The average programmer needs just 30 minutes of training to get going.

RapidMind’s process*

Next, the RapidMind platform captures the user’s application while it is running, records sequences of numerical operations, and compiles them to a program object within the platform.

Finally, the RapidMind platform manages parallel execution of program objects on the hardware platform, which can be a GPU, the Cell processor, or a multi-core CPU.

RapidMind’s platform has increased processing speeds by a factor of 3x to 30x over traditional single core platforms, an enormous leap forward for the software industry.

The result is multi-core optimized code developed in a fraction of the time it might otherwise take a developer to write across several parallelizations, and at a fraction of the cost.

As a technology, the value proposition of RapidMind’s platform seems bulletproof.

So what’s the catch?

First-to-market pains: the bleeding edge can be sharp
DePaul says that big software developers are “somewhat concerned” with limitations being placed on their future development efforts.

Actually, they hate it.

One of the hurdles his sales team has to overcome is vendor lock-in, a kind of technological fear-of-commitment.

In this case, software developers fear being shackled to RapidMind’s API and platform if something better comes along.

“It’s something we’ll continue to address as a company,” says DePaul. “The moment you think you’re done and say, ‘here’s our offering,’ someone else will come along in the space. We keep a healthy dose of paranoia at hand.”

RapidMind also has a significant gap in their platform in that it doesn’t work with single-core Intel and AMD. Not yet at least. “We actually introduced some new ideas at SIGGRAPH’07”, says DePaul. “Nothing that is scheduled for launch yet, but some interesting teasers.”

Finally, there is the matter of defining what may well become the de facto standard of multi-core programming. While it’s always great to be first out of the gate, the reality is that multi-core programming is still very much in its infancy, and the jury is still out on what the final technical standards may be.

“There is just so much stuff involved in multi-core.” says McCool. “The level of detail required just to program a machine is grotesque”.

“We try and focus on what the most important elements of multi-core are to expose and automate the rest,” he says. “Really, we want to focus on the most important decisions and help developers avoid costly errors.”

These concerns aside, the software world has taken notice, and RapidMind is well on its way to becoming the 800-pound, geeky gorilla of the multi-core programming space.

Racing ahead
Over the last several months, RapidMind has hit the trifecta of emerging tech companies: funding, recognition and personnel.

In April, 2007, RapidMind secured US$10 million of private venture financing to build out their technology and expand the sales mission. “Investors always make you dumb things down so much more than customers,” says DePaul. “It was a great experience to help us understand our business plan.”

Ray DePaul, President and CEO of RapidMind

In June, 2007, the company won a prestigious Best of Tech-Ed Awards 2007 in the Most Innovative Product category by Penton Media’s Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Magazine and Office & Sharepoint Pro.com – a significant endorsement of both the RapidMind platform and the challenges that multi-core represents, according to DePaul.

And finally, RapidMind is adding to their bank of human capital by hiring for both technical and business roles.

Generally, tech companies go through a human resources cycle that dictates expenditures on technical talent early-on, then migrate to recruiting key sales staff once products are more mature. But because RapidMind is the lone player in what is set to be an explosive space, the company is building its talent pool from both ends simultaneously.

“Because we are still early-market it’s a different kind of sale,” says DePaul. “We heavily recruit sales engineer types . . . we think investing in our customers early-on will yield results down the road.”

Given RapidMind’s market potential and its revenue growth, can an IPO be far behind?

“Our goal right now is to build a healthy business,” says DePaul. “But if there is one thing I learned from people like Jim Balsillie, it’s not to undershoot,” he says.

“Build a world leader and good things will happen.”

Put your best pitch forward -- proposal best practices for B2B

Cristina Howorun — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:42:37 GMT

If you’re running an emerging B2B technology company, you know that your first ‘early-adopter’ clients are critical to your survival. So you lock yourself in your office at the first sign of a Request for Proposal (RFP) or strong sales lead.

You commit resources and get your best people on board. Your proposal is perfect, the pitch is perfect — and then you’re rejected.

What went wrong?

p<. The answer could be a number of things, starting with pitching for business you couldn’t hope to win, says New York-based entrepreneur and proposal expert “Daniel Schutzsmith”:http://www.redcanary.ca/person/9533.

Schutzsmith outlined six best practices for both identifying proposal dead-ends and putting killer pitches together.

Six Best Practices for B2B Proposals

1. Watch out for window shoppers

Daniel suggests you start by avoiding ‘reconnaissance’ requests or leads.

“Informal requests are usually the deadliest,” explains Schutzsmith. “There might not be a deadline, there might not be a budget. It could be so off-the-cuff that they’re just asking because they thought about it last night while watching TV. You could end up spending three days of your week working on a proposal that goes nowhere.”

Formal RFPs tend to lay it all out: missions, objectives, technical requirements and sometimes even a budget.

2. Don’t be the third wheel

Daniel Schutzsmith

Your proposal may be perfect, but the company may already have their sights set on another firm.

“A lot of companies have a three-bid minimum and they can’t give the job to any company unless they get three bids,” explains Schutzsmith.

“As soon as I figure out that I’m the third bid in a three-bid situation, I back out.”—Schutzsmith

3. Let the professionals do their job

You may be a technical genius, but writing isn’t your forte. Put your best foot forward and get a copywriter to put your pitch on paper. You don’t need to break the bank on this one; you can hire freelance copywriters on an hourly or part-time basis.

4. It’s all in the delivery

No matter how technically sound your product is go beyond Microsoft Word and Powerpoint and add some flair to your work with graphs, images and colour. Showcase your company’s innovation right from the start.

“Believe it or not, e-mail isn’t the only way to send out a proposal,” advises Schutzsmith. Take the time to get it bound at a print shop and deliver a hard copy of your work.

5. It’s all in the process

“Put more emphasis on your process, rather than your strategy,” advises Schutzsmith. Strategy and objectives are important, but your process can set you apart. Give them a step-by-step process that you’ll be following, along with a milestone schedule outlining things like alpha and beta builds.

6. Tell them what they are paying for

Include a list of deliverables that you’ll be including with the project. These should be very specific things. Not only does this establish what you’re getting paid for, but it also shows an eye for detail.

And details are what sets apart the successful bids from others. But getting it in on time can go a long way too.

“Daniel Schutzsmith”:http://www.redcanary.ca/person/9533 is a design management consultant, among many other things, and a seasoned pro when it comes to writing proposals. He’s a regular speaker at tech conventions; including the “2007 Toronto FITC conference”:http://www.fitc.ca/event_detail.cfm?festival_id=12 where he delivered a talk on this very subject. For more on David’s take on client relations and the proposal process, visit “http://www.graphicdefine.org/”:http://www.graphicdefine.org/

Building your B2B Brand (it's all about your reputation)

Chris Herbert — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:58:49 GMT

Don’t be led to think that branding and advertising are the same thing. Branding isn’t about what you say. It’s about what people think and feel about you, your people, your product, and your company. Whether you sell to consumers or to businesses, the most important “brand attribute” is your reputation. I’m amazed at how companies pick mascots, have stupid characters, or use silly slogans that don’t tie back to the companies value proposition/customer experience. Let’s take a look at examples from each extreme: Pets.com During the .com/.bomb craze we all had more money than sense and branding meant superbowl ads, “eyeballs”, and business plans on PowerPoint. So let’s benefit from hindsight, shall we? What does this sock have anything to do with the benefit of shopping online at Pets.com? Nothing! The fact that they couldn’t come up with something that represented the value/benefit of shopping online should have been the first sign that Pets.com was doomed! Red Bull Drink a few of these puppies (pun intended) and your heart beat will be racing! Whether you agree with taking external stimulants to increase energy or not, Red Bull gets it from a branding perspective. They sponsor sports performers including drag racers, F1 drivers and daredevils. These “hero endorsements” (a term coined by my 10-year-old daughter) represent people at the razors edge of speed, performance and exhilaration. I sure hope nobody overdoses on this stuff though! Tylenol Years ago some idiot decided to poison some Tylenol tablets in a US city. What did Tylenol do? They pulled every bottle off the shelves across North America (maybe globally). Tylenol then began producing tamper proof packaging. To this day, I trust Tylenol.

“Branding” is not a fad and not something you do with a creative director at an ad agency. It is a sum of all the experiences and interactions your customer has with you!

Here are some things to think about as you build your “brand”: 1) What is it that your company or product does for your customer? 2) How do customers feel and think when they use your product or service? 3) What do they experience when working with your professional services organization? 4) What is unique about your service experience over your competition? Do your customers view it as unique? 5) What is it like for your customers to conduct business with your company? 6) What do your sales and services people think are the most important things you should do for your customers? If you can’t answer these questions, find out! Build your reputation and your brand will look after itself. How do you do this?

The key building blocks to building your reputation are the following: 1) A customer reference program – a formal corporate program that tracks customer satisfaction and builds a pool of reference accounts that will endorse your company. 2) Word of Mouth – buyers of B2B products and services seek advice from people they know and trust. Your reference program will help create word of mouth but you’ll need to think about how you can also get unbiased mindshare from industry leaders. 3) Thought Leadership – producing value add content and experiences that position you as an expert in your field. 4) Feedback loops – talk to your customers, talk to your sales reps and talk to the founder of your company…regularly. Learn what is working well and what isn’t. Find out why. Building your reputation occurs one day at a time and it depends on customer interaction, input, and doing the right things to help your customers be successful. That’s what you advertise.

5 keys to a great B2B marketing event

Chris Herbert — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

It is obvious that B2B marketers must create awareness and demand. In the eyes of your CEO this should translate into revenue generation.

The primary way to do this is through campaigns and events. Lets take a look at events.

"There are two core audiences you need to take into consideration. The first is your customers, the second is your sales force."

The primary directive for all events is to provide customers with meaningful informational/educational content that will help them in their businesses....period. Adding entertainment of some form will enhance the overall experience for some customers. It can also make the experience more memorable.

Good sales reps will use these events to socialize with their accounts. (Note: you may choose to exclude sales reps, I disagree with this approach. Good sales reps are valued by the customer not despised).

Take a lesson from the hotel industry and overbook your events. 10 to 20 per cent of your audience will be no-shows or cancellations

Some additional things to think about:

1) The Presentation - in my years of experience I've learned that the most important part of any presentation is the presenter! Put someone in front of your customers who is an expert in their field and/or on a particular topic. The presentation must be balanced so that it informs/educates and links your offerings in a logical fashion. The customer is expecting a bit of a "pitch" so don't be shy...but don't be pushy!

2) Go over the agenda- tell the audience what you're going to cover and get their feedback.They may have a few things they want to ask and learn about that aren't on the agenda.

3) Make it interactive - encourage audience participation. This is sometimes tough because some folks don't want to ask questions for whatever reason. How many times have you been in a presentation where the speaker asks "does anyone have any questions" and there is silence? The way to deal with this is to ask the audience a question first or even better have one of your own employees ask a question. This helps break the ice.

4) Measure, measure, measure - get feedback from the attendees. Do it through surveys but also go up and ask! This is the primary thing you should do during the social event that follows the presentation.

A minimum ROI target should be 10 to 1

Goodmarketers measure the impact the event has on the sales process. An event can uncover an opportunity and it can also advance one. You must get your reps to provide this information.

Sales opportunities need to be tagged to events to help justify the expense and determine ROI. (this point will be expanded in part II of this series)

5) Location - make sure that the location is close to your customers, is well known, easy to get to and don't scrimp on quality (food, decor, service etc.). Make sure the quality of the delivery is HIGH.

The Sandvine way

Scott Valentine — Mon, 07 May 2007 07:00:00 GMT

On August 31, 2001 – eleven days before 9/11 and fresh on the heels of dot-bom; Sandvine Inc. opened its doors for business. They had no product, no business plan, and the entire staff was hung over. We'd had a little BBQ the night before to kick things off, says Dave Caputo, President and CEO of Sandvine. "It may have been 10 or 11 a.m. before anyone made it in to work." The 30 people that did show up for work may have been bleary-eyed, but their long-term vision was crystal clear: create a winning product and a successful company. "We just said, Here's a group of smart people. We don't know what we're going to do but we need money. And we got it," recalls Siim, Sandvine's COO and vice-president of engineering. Sandvine's genesis is rare if not unique among Canadian startups - a talented collection of people with a track record of success brought together to invent a commercial product. In 2001, even major companies with sexy product suites and established clientele were having trouble raising capital. But Caputo, Brad Siim and a handful of other dot-com survivors had something a lot of the "old school" dot-com-ers didn't have. Each other. "It probably helped that we were all coming from good places," says Caputo. That investors had faith in Sandvine's team is evident in the $19.5 million in startup money they were able to raise in the middle of an investment dark age. SANDVINE'S TECH PEDIGREE Sandvine was founded by the same management team that had founded Pixstream in 1997 and sold it to Cisco for more than half-a-billion. A few months after the deal was done, the dot-com bubble burst and Cisco had its first quarterly loss in company history. Seemingly moments later, the Pixstream operating unit was shut down.

Dave Caputo, Sandvine Co-Founder and CEO

"It was like we had gone from the best of times to the worst of times almost overnight," says Caputo. "But we also saw that the tech crash had created a huge pool of talented people that all of a sudden had some time on their hands." So, Sandvine's founders reached out to their peers in the tech world and secured commitments from about 30 people with several hundred years of collective experience and success between them. "Getting the money was pretty easy after that," says Caputo. "These people had made a lot of money for a lot of people, so investors were amenable to keeping the team together." MARKET ANALYSIS AND PRODUCT MANAGEMENT 101 Sandvine's success is a case study in analyzing an emerging market and building a product to capitalize on it. Because there was no product the core team was able to operate exclusively in the realm of opportunity. "We split everyone into four teams and asked each time to focus on a potential product area," says Caputo. "They spoke to industry analysts, engineers, customers, other founders . . . really, they just got out there and dug around." The teams gathered once a week to exchange findings and zero-in on opportunities. Everyone learned from what everyone else was doing and ideas pulled forward from one area began to feed in to another. Eventually, one course of inquiry was discarded and the four teams became three. "And then there were two, and then there was one and that team became Sandvine," says Caputo. A SOLUTION FOR BROADBAND PROVIDERS Today, Sandvine's solution puts an intelligence layer across the networks of broadband Internet providers, helping them identify bottlenecks, improve efficiency and apply actions and policies to traffic management. "User experience goes up, operating costs go down, the network is more secure, and there's a better opportunity for the ISP to deliver services the consumer actually wants," says Caputo. Sandvine thinks there is a better and more profitable way for broadband providers to manage and scale their services: stop worrying about building out what you have and focus on delivering a quality user experience. "Multimedia downloads and such create big network packets," says Caputo. "Users don't want to know what it takes to deliver them to their desktop or what-have-you. they just want to watch a video or play an online game that's smooth and doesn't freeze up on them." Full screen shot here "The typical approach [for broadband providers] is to throw more bandwidth at it," says Caputo. "But the problem isn't about having a big enough channel to deliver through. It's about optimizing packet delivery in a way that gels with user preference and experience." Sandvine makes existing networks more efficient, reducing build-out expenses. According to Caputo, that means lower capital equipment costs, more intelligent traffic management and - key to the future of broadband service providers - superior customer retention. "People don't really switch broadband providers much yet," says Siim. "The mentality is that a broadband connection is a fragile thing and people are kind of afraid to touch it." Think: circa mid 1990's when the long distance market de-regulated. At first, consumers were hesitant to make a change. But within a matter of a few years, billions of dollars in consumer services shifted hands. "The highest correlation to profitability in the consumer facing portion of the tech world is churn," says Caputo. "I'm here to tell you that pretty soon broadband is going to be no more complex to the consumer than any plug and play function. When that happens, the quality of experience is going to be the biggest driver of customer churn." "People's kids are going to go to them and say, 'Hey, all my friends have way better connections to play Halo 2 . . . you pay for the change and I'll take care of hooking up the little box.'" THE PAYOFF

Brad Siim, Co-Founder, COO, VP-Eng, Sandvine

Nearly six years down the line, the human-centric experiment in company-building that defines The Sandvine Way has paid off in spades for investors. Today, Sandvine is a profitable company with a market cap approaching the $600 million mark. Almost the entire original group of 30 is still with the company and Sandvine now employs nearly 200 people. In April of 2007, Canadian Business Magazine named Sandvine as one of the Top-50 Great Places to Work in Canada, recognizing the company's unique approach to building a fun and productive environment for employees. It might have been luck, or the benefit of good historical relationships with investors that helped get the company rolling, but it is unquestionably the culture of Sandvine that continues to define the company today. "I don't know that it would be possible to replicate a lot of what we did when the company was first started," says Caputo. "The investment market isn't all that friendly to the idea of simply putting money into people." But, six years and a complete re-shifting of the technology investment market later, "The Sandvine Way" - as unique as the company's story may be - seems to have worked. "It's not that hard," says Siim. "Hire intelligent, creative, kickass people. You shouldn't care about what language they know or whether you have a position that's right for them." "Get a team together and the rest will play itself out."