Montreal Tech Watch

The BlitzDirectory project won the People’s choice award at Bltizweekend. Each participant to the event could vote for any project, other than the one he/she participated in.

Can you present yourself? What is your background?

Erik Wright: I’m an entrepreneur with diverse experience in the fields of software development and IT services. I operate a growing Montreal-based consultancy (Wright Technology Solutions) offering integration and software development services, especially related to Identity Management, Identity Federation, and Web Services. On the side, I am building StickyCal.com, a tool for promoting events online through social networking.

Hamish Macpherson: My name is Hamish Macpherson, and I’ve lived in the wonderful city of Montreal for the past six years. I got into web design and development not long after I moved here. Nowadays I’m a sort of designer/coder hybrid. I run my personal site at http://hami.sh and spend the rest of my time working at Radialpoint, and as a designer/coder for StickyCal.

Ivan Savov: My name is Ivan Savov and I am root. I recently graduated with a M.Sc in physics and now I am working as a freelance programmer. I am a connoisseur of the Debain GNU/Linux operating system, C, Python and SAMBA. I honestly believe that it is our duty, we the tech people, to change the world for the better by empowering and connecting people at the bottom of the pyramid. I am currently working on a distributed filesystem project.

Bassem Abi-Farah: I have 8 years of international experience, working with Siemens and Nokia Siemens Networks in,amongst others, implementing and configuring Mobile industry specific technologies like IP Multimedia Subsystems (SIP protocol) and WAP/Mobile Proxy.

My main software expertise is in UNIX/Solaris and my main hardware expertise is in Sun servers. I am interested in participating in innovative web/telecom/IT projects.

Tadatoshi Takahashi: I’m a software developer deeply into Object technology. Currently I use Ruby and Ruby on Rails. In the past, I worked on various Java projects. My awareness to the reality of software development is reflected to my solid experiences in Agile software development practices such as Test/Behaviour-Driven Development.

Can you describe what is the BlitzDirectory? How did you get the idea? What problem does it aim to solve?

BlitzDirectory aims to eliminate the barriers to SaaS adoption facing small and medium businesses. By providing a unified experience for both administrators and users, BlitzDirectory will provide service consumers an affordable, “better-than-desktop” experience that they can setup in minutes. For SaaS vendors, BlitzDirectory is a targeted, value-added sales channel that enables them to stand out from the crowd.

What were your objectives regarding Blitzweekend? What did you
expect from the event?

My main motivation in bringing this project to Blitzweekend was the opportunity to get feedback from the panel of experts. At the beginning of the weekend the team decided on a use case that best reflected the value of the product. We then focused on the development work that was necessary to make that flow work.

Can you talk us about your experience of Blitzweekend? any challenges? How did you overcome problems?

Trying to develop anything in two days is ambitious. Several of the developers were working with new technology. One important open-source component was only beta quality and lacked documentation. Another was alpha and didn’t work at all! We overcame these issues by continually focusing our attention on the key message that we wanted to present at 4PM on Sunday.

What is now your objective for the project? Any plans to continue the work?

The project received a lot of very positive feedback from the investors, the advisers, and the other participants. The next step will be to refine the idea and to reach out to the startup network here in Montreal for feedback and advice. I will also be making a related presentation at BarCampNYC3 on the weekend of March 15th. After Blitzweekend, I am more than ever convinced that this idea could be a success with the right partners behind it!

Erik Wright presents BlitzDirectory. As said earlier, BlitzDirectory won the most votes from other attendees. Congratulations!