Mazatlan, here I come! Sadly, only for 9 days though. I am so busy keeping so many plates spinning it's not funny. The summer was one of the most stressful periods of time in my life - but I survived. Mike spent several weeks in Florida on contract and the first payment on that job was delayed for about a month due to the client not handling the setup of the purchase order/invoice/payment process properly. It was a lot of money, and we weren't able to absorb the gap in receiving funds. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a huge line of credit! It screwed up our finances for a while, but all is back to normal now (our "normal").
Andy, our lead programmer, took off on one his expeditions across the US in his camper in September, and he hasn't come back yet.....However, he still does a lot of work from the road - he just finds a campground with good internet and codes away. He stays on Skype all the time and communicates that way. We now have another programmer working part-time from Mexico (Carlos), and he and Andy actually work together while "talking" on Skype. They both dial into the software development server and put their coding on it. Kind of cool.
Our focus for the software has morphed into something new as a result of working with a marketing/business-plan advisor over the summer and fall. He really forced us to narrow down the best market and we ended up with a whole new identity. But OneFileEverywhere is still going to be a product onto itself and has been developed quite a bit in the last few months. Its in Beta testing now and available to use for free at http://demo.onefileeverwhere.com We've been getting a lot of work done on things like logos and website design, and creating a brochure and writing the business plan.
Its been great that Mike has had 2 months at home between consulting gigs to put a lot of time and focus on the software companies. We are working out our condo office and enjoying downtown living. Being here has really allowed us to just keep our focus on working. No house or yard to upkeep. The dogs get us out of the office several times a day for walkies.
But now life is going to change gears again - Mike is off to Sacramento for a 3 month engagement, and I am heading to Mazatlan for a break and then back home for a couple of weeks before going down to join Mike for a couple of weeks. Then it will be Christmas. We might just head to Vegas for Christmas.....
Housecarers.com
Friday, 29 October 2010
Saturday, 7 August 2010
No more Burbs
We've talked about this for a year now but the perfect opportunity presented itself just a week and a half ago. A friend told me she wanted to sell her house and pay off some debts, but doubted she could find a place to rent that would take 4 dogs and several cats. She casually asked if we wanted to rent our house to her. After a brief discussion with her and Mike, we decided to go ahead and started looking at rentals in or near the city of Calgary. We have two dogs too, so choices were limited for that reason. After 2 days, we found our condo in the heart of the city, on a leafy green avenue in an older 6 storey building. It is owned by a young woman is moving to Victoria. It is completely renovated, laminate wood floors, and painted in modern earth tones. And a good size: 825 square feet. We move in Sept. 1. This will be a big lifestyle change - neither of us have lived so close to the downtown of a city. The street is a quieter one, but I guess we'll find out how we adjust to a noisier environment. (The burbs are soooo quiet!) But we are actually going to save money by living there, especially on gas. (But maybe we'll spend more on eating out - so many more tasty places to go!) We still intend to spend some time this winter in Mazatlan too - at least I do.
But how much time remains to be seen. There is so much going on with the business(es). We have had an amazing break-through - just yesterday. Through a series of serendipitous connections, Mike sat down with his egg-head soul-mate for a meeting of minds. This guy is a serial entrepreneur who has started and sold several software companies in Alberta. He is working on his Phd in Computer Science. His interests include Artificial Intelligence. He knows his way around all of the local government funding programs and the investment community. He loves our software ideas and is going to write a business plan for free that will get us funding he says - he's done it several times before. He just raised 2 million for another business that is far less interesting than ours. After that, he may come onboard as CTO/CEO or be involved in some other way, but for now he'll get the engine started. Whoo hoo!
Just before this meeting, Mike dropped off an RFP package to an Alberta government agency that is the technology centre of the universe (so to speak) of the Province, in Edmonton. They want to completely renovate their business processes and information technology systems from the ground up and come into the 21st Century. This is the bid Mike and an associate put in for. Whatever this agency does, the whole Alberta government will be watching and adopting. When Mike walked in, one of the heads of the agency came down from on high to meet him. This is NEVER done. He spent a half hour chatting with Mike about Qtility and what we do, our history and experience, since, he said, he had never heard of us before and was intrigued. Apparently, word that we were submitting an RFP had gotten around. He actually outlined to Mike the entire big picture of what the agency wanted to do and asked if we could handle it. This is REALLY never done. Mike said "YES, with f-ing bells on!" Well, not literally. Anyway, I hope we hear back from them next week.
But how much time remains to be seen. There is so much going on with the business(es). We have had an amazing break-through - just yesterday. Through a series of serendipitous connections, Mike sat down with his egg-head soul-mate for a meeting of minds. This guy is a serial entrepreneur who has started and sold several software companies in Alberta. He is working on his Phd in Computer Science. His interests include Artificial Intelligence. He knows his way around all of the local government funding programs and the investment community. He loves our software ideas and is going to write a business plan for free that will get us funding he says - he's done it several times before. He just raised 2 million for another business that is far less interesting than ours. After that, he may come onboard as CTO/CEO or be involved in some other way, but for now he'll get the engine started. Whoo hoo!
Just before this meeting, Mike dropped off an RFP package to an Alberta government agency that is the technology centre of the universe (so to speak) of the Province, in Edmonton. They want to completely renovate their business processes and information technology systems from the ground up and come into the 21st Century. This is the bid Mike and an associate put in for. Whatever this agency does, the whole Alberta government will be watching and adopting. When Mike walked in, one of the heads of the agency came down from on high to meet him. This is NEVER done. He spent a half hour chatting with Mike about Qtility and what we do, our history and experience, since, he said, he had never heard of us before and was intrigued. Apparently, word that we were submitting an RFP had gotten around. He actually outlined to Mike the entire big picture of what the agency wanted to do and asked if we could handle it. This is REALLY never done. Mike said "YES, with f-ing bells on!" Well, not literally. Anyway, I hope we hear back from them next week.
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