Speaking with Chris Nadeau at Evolving Solutions was a pleasure. I found him to be modest and confident with an evident passion for what he was doing. 

What is Evolving Solutions?

My brother Adrian and I formed Evolving Solutions 7 years ago. In 2004 we moved into our office space where we are now in Saint John, NB. At Evolving Solutions we offer several products:

Big Santo - CMS web marketing system

Office Gateway - Online Office Project Management

Envoy - Email Marketing

YourTeamOnline - branched off of Evolving Solutions and is now it’s own company. It was originally created as Elite Coach, a product for coaches, but that evolved into the current YourTeamOnline which launched it’s beta on November 6, 2007 as a product for coaches and players to manage their teams and share with others.

Other services include web design, logo design, hosting and consulting.

I covered more of YourTeamOnline Recently that has links to a review from StartUp North and comparison with its competiton Team Page with this blog posting.

What makes you tick?

The web and sports.

Can you share some information about your clients? Success stories?

YourTeamOnline has 700 teams on it including a team in Italy. Evolving Solutions has severeral small to mid-sized companies that it provides products and solutions. Something that was very unusual compared to most other companies at ThinkNB is that 85% of it’s business comes from within Atlantic Canada.

What technology is used at Evolving Solutions?

Java integration, java api.

Are you funded or self-funded?

Evolving Solutions is Self-Funded. YourTeamOnline received a New Brunswick Innovation Fund of $50,000.

How are you marketing Evolving Solutions?

Primarily through building relationships. Although YourTeamOnline being a social networking aspect, it is virally marketed through blogs and other social media.

Who are your competitors?

Mighty Community and Spheric would both be local competitors.

Do you find it challenging being located in NB?

No

What does Evolving Solutions have that makes it stand out among everyone else?

Simplicity, no jargon and building relationships.

Chris really seemed to understand the value of relating to people in everyday terms. Their marketing reflects that and I think it will be an asset to them.

What’s next for you guys?

YourTeamOnline will continue to grow. There are lots of great features that we’ll be looking to grow and build on.

I think their passion and desire to really make a difference will take them far. You can also follow along with Chris on his blog.

Following up on my previous post about the Breakthru competition. I had heard through the twitter vine that the pitches were interesting, so I was looking forward to hearing who the winners were today. 

Brad Pierce and his partners in Greenlight Geomatics were the winners of Breakthru (Telegraph Journal news article), New Brunswick’s Business Plan Competition. 

Miramichi-based Greenlight’s is developing a GPS-based, automated technology for railway companies that meticulously map and controls herbicide spray without affecting environmentally sensitive areas.

The New Brunswick Innovation fund held the gala dinner last night and the platinum, gold and silver winners were announced. A quick summary:

Platinum -Greenlight Geomatics - $100,000 equity investment, $39,500 in-kind legal, marketing, accounting and IT servies.

Gold - Trivnet Media Systems - $50.000 equity investment, $16,500 in-kind services.

Silver - MassRule - $25,000 equity investment, $9,000 in-kind services.

Best Business Plan - Greenlight Geomatics - $2,000

Best Presentation - Trivnet - $1000

Most Innovative Idea - PlayDartsNow - $1000

Most Charismatic Entrepreneur - Justin Kennedy of PlayDartsNow - $1000 

thinkNB launched tonight for a mix and mingle with exhibitors and guests at the Aitken Center in Fredericton. Tomorrow is a full day event open to the public. I had the opportunity tonight to meet with a few of the exhibitors and talk to them about their businesses. It was all rather loose this evening and tomorrow I’ll dive more into specific questions when I talk to various technology industry demographics. I used this event as my first time trying out utterz.

I met Dan Martell from Spheric last year at a Wizard Academy workshop put on by the Fundy Group. We have always had lots to discuss about web 2.0, online marketing and social networking. Tomorrow I’ll be talking to Dan and the others at Spheric tomorrow to find out exactly how they’re lazy but for now here’s an utterz from Dan.

I was curious to see what there was for squidoo pages in this neck of Canada. For those of you unfamiliar with Squidoo, it’s  a brainchild of marketing guru, Seth Godin.

From wikipedia;

Squidoo is a network of user-generated lenses –single pages that highlights one person’s point of view, recommendations, or expertise. Lenses can be about anything, such as ideas, people or places, hobbies and sports, pets or products, philosophy, and politics. Lenses aren’t primarily intended to hold content; more emphasis is placed on recommending and then pointing to content on the web. Annotation and organization and personalization delivers context and meaning.

Squidoo has often been used by niche marketers and some have been very sucessful with earning revenue. However with Squidoo on the end of a google slap, it’s been much harder for sites to move up in google rankings.  

What I like about Squidoo is that it is a hub of resources. And for a tourism venue site like some of the ones below, it is a very fast way to have a good looking site with multiple media resources.

I’m VERY surprised that I didn’t find a lense on unusual Newfoundland place names. With names like Dildo, Come-by-Chance, Blow-me-down and more you would think that would make for an interesting lense.

A few lenses from ’round here.

NF

http://www.squidoo.com/newfie/

http://www.squidoo.com/rick-mercer/

http://www.squidoo.com/laurieleehane/

PEI

http://www.squidoo.com/DiscGolfing/

http://www.squidoo.com/fan-of-anne-of-green-gables-and-avonlea/

NB

http://www.squidoo.com/fredericton/

http://www.squidoo.com/chrisnadeau/

http://www.squidoo.com/fly-fishing-new-brunswick/

http://www.squidoo.com/sackville/

 NS

http://www.squidoo.com/novascotiafirstnation/

http://smartest.dentist.ever.com/  - this is the new evolution from Squidoo, the Ever Project with the best/smartest, etc.  .ever.com

http://www.squidoo.com/halifaxnovascotia/

http://www.squidoo.com/luckynovascotia/

I’ve started to build an Atlantic Canada twitter list of those in technology/marketing/ social media and related fields on the right sidebar. If you want to be added to the list, you can follow me on twitter or you can contact me. On the flip side, if you want your twitter removed from the twitter list, let me know and I’ll remove it.

If you’re new to what twitter is, from wikipedia;

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in March 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.

Caroline Middlebrook has a very comprehensive Big Juicy Twitter Guide. 

 My reasons for using Twitter:

1. it’s easy to use and doesn’t take much time
2. it helps build relationships with others
3. you’re usually the first to know what is happening
4. if you can’t attend an event, you can often follow a twitter on the event, ie. http://twitter.com/forrester
5. it’s fairly viral with followers and who you’re following, lots of marketing opportunities
6. it’s indexed by google, useful for seo

Most of all, I really enjoy the diversity of people out there and getting the big picture in a micro way of the world outside of mine.