Yesterday evening we undertook the very daunting task of moving our servers to a new location. If you experienced any down time as a result, please accept our apologies! We did our best to ensure that Podcast Spot was still up and running throughout the move, but I know there was an hour or two where that didn't happen. Please note we did intentionally turn off the Admin site however, and we made the system read-only until the move was completed.

Everything was fully up and running at the new location around 2 AM last night. All things considered, the move went quite well! We will continue to run both locations for a little while, as we did change some DNS information and it sometimes takes longer than we'd like to propogate. That said, the old location will remain in read-only mode, meaning you cannot add or update episodes. This shouldn't be a problem - everything happens automatically and you shouldn't have to do anything special to connect to the new location, but if you are still having problems, email us at support@paramagnus.com.

You might be wondering why we decided to move. There are a number of reasons, but the main ones are reliability and performance. Our servers are in a proper data centre now, on faster connections than we had previously. Podcast Spot should now run better than ever!

We've got more good stuff on the way too, feature-wise. Stay tuned!

As Dickson mentioned, we were invited to share our experiences in the VenturePrize business plan competition last night with a group of this year's potential participants. The presentation went well from our perspective, so I hope everyone found our story useful. If you'd like to find out more, check out our VenturePrize Experience blog.

We were featured in the Edmonton Sun's business section yesterday, in case you missed it! Here's an excerpt:

"We want to make it easy. You'll open up the program, click record, and then click publish. If we can make it easy enough for people to do, just like blogging, we think it's going to be really successful," said Male, president and CEO of the company.

You can read the entire article at the Edmonton Sun website. Happy Easter!

We've registered for Canada's first ever Web 2.0 conference called Mesh, taking place in Toronto on May 15th and 16th. Looks like it will be a great conference with some interesting topics and an amazing line up of thought leaders already on board.

Want to join us? There's still time to register!

We've been posting mostly on our VenturePrize Experience blog for the last couple of months, but now that the business plan competitions are over, we'll get back to posting here. But before we do that, here's a recap of the last couple months (the highlights anyway):

• 3.29.2006 - Paramagnus Press Coverage - Mack | Dickson
• 3.23.2006 - Paramagnus wins National Wes Nicol! - Mack
• 3.22.2006 - Paramagnus "edged" in VenturePrize Finals - Mack
• 3.06.2006 - VenturePrize Finalists, Local Wes Nicol Winners! - Mack
• 2.25.2006 - Local Wes Nicol Presentation - Mack | Dickson
• 2.24.2006 - VenturePrize Semi-Finals Presentation - Mack | Dickson
• 2.15.2006 - VenturePrize Semi-Finalist! - Mack | Dickson
• 1.31.2006 - Business Plan Submitted - Mack | Dickson

As you can see, it has been an incredibly hectic and rewarding month, with a strong runner-up showing in VenturePrize and a win in the Wes Nicol competition. We're really happy with everything that we managed to accomplish in the last month, and we're more excited and energized than ever to get our products released.

And now, back to the code!

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

http://ventureprize.paramagnus.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

paramagnus ventureprize business plan wes nicol competitions edmonton

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

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

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

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

We're really excited about making it this far in the competition, and we're going to do our best to blow the judges away with our presentation. If all goes well, I'll be posting again on March 3rd that we made it to the final three! No matter what happens, I'm proud of what we've accomplished already, and I am eager to see the feedback on our business plan.

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

Welcome to 2006! We're completely back to work now (funny how the holidays tend to be so busy with other stuff) and trying hard to meet our release schedule. Speaking of release schedules, we had some discussion lately about whether or not to release a beta version of Podcast Spot. Our previous releases haven't really been betas, they have been "previews" or "prototypes", but it's easier to call them betas. We haven't completely decided yet, but we're leaning towards going straight for primetime, for a number of reasons. Timely then, that I came across some discussion about the word "beta". From Michael Arrington:

Every company does things a little differently. Some rush the product out, features-be-damned. Others wait, and wait, and wait, until its “perfect”. Some companies are secretive. Others open. And so on.

I’ve seen hundreds of new products launch over the last six months, and I think I have some pretty good advice for companies that want to improve their beta release.

Michael goes on to list advice in a number of different categories, like "first impressions" and "landing pages". His advice is pretty good - I'm glad I found his post.

Stephen Bryant also talked about betas recently:

The vicissitudes of the public beta have been thoroughly discussed on the Web this year by Webloggers, columnists and reporters alike. I think 37Signals' Jason Fried put it best in when he e-mailed me to say: "Release your damn product, take responsibility for it and constantly improve it. The 'Public Beta' flag is a cover-your-ass mechanism that needs to go."

I couldn't agree more. So before we ring in the new year, I'd just like to say: In 2006, first thing we do, let's kill all the betas.

All of a sudden, the decision is becoming easier :) That said, I think a beta is still useful for a software application for Windows (or any other operating system), because they are much more difficult to properly test than web based applications.

Combined with the fact that we plan to have a free account for Podcast Spot that you can use to evaluate the service, I think we'll probably go straight to release. Applications like Podcast Wizard will likely still have a beta period however.

More soon!

Today Dickson and I attended TEC Edmonton's TEC Connector. TEC Edmonton is a joint venture of the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. Here's what the event was all about:

This TEC Connector event will showcase companies created from the results of University of Alberta inventions and technologies. In addition, the event is an active connector which will provide networking tools and tips, plus generate opportunities to connect with useful representatives in our community, including: university researchers, start-up company leaders, professional service firms, financial support organizations, government agency representatives, media representatives, inventors and entrepreneurs.

Obviously Paramagnus is not a spin-off company, nor we do use any University research or innovations, but we thought the event might be a great opportunity to do some networking anyway. We met some interesting people and found out more about many of the local companies we had only just heard of in the past. We also learned some interesting statistics about University of Alberta spin-off companies:

• As of March 31st, 2005 there were 69 active UofA spin-off companies
• There have been 84 such companies formed since 1963, including those that have merged, been acquired, or discontinued
• These companies employ more than 1000 high-skilled workers
• More than 80% of the spin-offs are based in Alberta
• Seven are publicly traded

Networking events are always lots of fun! This one was especially good because there was free food and drinks :)

TEC Connector   business ualberta tec edmonton edmonton edec