My name is Randy May and I am the Principal at Blaazin Software Consulting Inc., and one of the grateful winners of smOffice!
It is hard to believe that a month has flown by since this picture was taken! It was an exciting day of meeting the other winners, Hattie and Tristan of Subit and Charles of Charger Foods, as well as all the sponsors and mentors supporting the smOffice contest!
Getting started during our first week, it was great to see where everyone was with their businesses and sharing resources that were helpful to them along the way. One thing I was pleased to share was the idea of a morning Stand-up meeting. In the IT world we do this as part of our process to help everyone be accountable for the day’s work. We’ve implemented that now and I like that as a new addition to taking my business venture to the next level. Without the smOffice initiative I wouldn’t have this opportunity to ‘creatively collide’, as Chad Ballantyne likes to say.
In true ‘techie’ style I came in with an almost complete Minimum Viable Product but really needed to catch up on the business side of things. The focus for this month has been to bring that level of business detail forward in more tangible ways. It has been a few weeks of head down work in terms of collecting customer data and creating the basis for the product moving forward. The Creative Space has been a really great atmosphere to get that going. Everyone here has a focused energy which feeds my own work to make this Sports Scheduling Application less of an idea and more of a reality. Being situated in the middle of the downtown core has allowed me to take in a bit more of what our city has to offer. Even little things like buying your coffee from the many choices around the office helps to bring you a little closer to all the other fantastic local businesses we have here. We have really enjoyed partaking in the offerings from sponsors like Topper’s Pizza and Swirleez! Both locations serve up delicious fare; we highly encourage others to check them out! One thing my wife is wanting me to do with her is yoga, and thankfully one of our sponsors is Anne Green Yoga, they are going to have your hands full with me!
Now that I have more in the way of business data I am excited to have my first sit down next week, with one of the smOffice mentors, Barb Stuhlemmer of BLITZ Business Success. My plans are to try and meet with all of our mentors, next on my list would be Serial Entrepreneur and CEO of Maintenance Assistant, Mark Castel and CTO of gShift, Chris Adams!
It’s really hard to believe how far things have come in such a short amount of time. I started with an idea and now it’s becoming something which has the potential of being so much more. The simple act of creating a video and submitting to smOffice has brought forth so much opportunity and growth in such a short period of time.
Thank you to all the sponsors, mentors and creators of smOffice… we are literally Blaazin’ a trail!