Y-Combinator and The Five (or Six!) -Tool Developer

Posted by Andrés on November 15, 2011

When you love what you do, and who you are with, excellence will follow.

The #1 reason I adore coming to work every day is for the opportunity to work with an awesome team filled with smart, ambitious people who love what they do.

It’s a privilege I’ve been appreciative of every single day, week, month and year that I’ve been a partner at TWG, and today we’re celebrating a new team milestone: our first TWG’er, Dessy, is interviewing at Y-Combinator.

I know what you’re thinking, why would we be celebrating the fact that one of our developers might not be coming back from California?

But before I answer, let me muse on what makes a great developer.

In baseball, a five-tool player is someone who excels at hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills & speed, throwing ability, and fielding ability.

Players considered in this elite group have included Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Andre Dawson, and Duke Snider, as well as Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodrigues (in their primes).

At TWG, a five-tool developer might look like someone who excels at:

  1. Architecture & Planning;
  2. Back-end coding;
  3. Front-end coding;
  4. Mobile development;
  5. Communication – with stakeholders (someone who speaks geek & client); and

But wait.. There’s more.

There’s a bonus sixth tool.

6. Closing. I repeat… closing. Finishing. Completing. Shipping. Done for real.

When you run a company that builds Internet based software, you dream of having a five-tool dev. Frankly, if you have developers who excel in 3 of these categories, you’re doing great, and you can build a very successful team. If you have developers who excel in 4 or 5 of these categories, you hope to work with them forever – trust me. But a legendary six-tool developer, now your in “pinch-me” territory.

Back to the celebration.

One of our rising stars, Dessy Daskalov is well on her way to becoming a six-tool developer. She tech leads her own projects; builds back-ends and front-ends; develops in Rails and iOS; takes the project management burden off Dom, Chris, Jeremy and me because she’s so good with our clients; and she gets shit done!

Dessy also finds time on evenings and weekends to build side project she’s passionate about. These talents and efforts helped her get in front of Paul Graham at YC, and we’re very proud of her.

A year ago, Dom and I realized that personal and professional growth can’t be treated like a zero sum game. The goal is always for both sides to benefit and succeed, even if that means someone has to move on (one day).

We don’t know whether Paul Graham will be accepting Dessy and her team to YC, but we do know that opportunities like that don’t come around for everyone, and we’re extremely proud of her, and supportive of her efforts.

Go Go Dessislava!

 

TWG Goes Mobile!

Posted by Andrés on November 8, 2011

After 9 years of building great web applications, web sites, and system integrations for clients of every stripe, The Working Group (TWG) is expanding our service offering to include mobile application development.

Why are we getting into mobile?

Well, the truth is we’ve been doing it for a while. We launched our first mobile app about two years ago and have been developing them for select clients ever since. And for us, formalizing this into a full service offering just seemed like a logical progression given what we do: help organizations build and grow their business online.

Because right now it isn’t about web vs. mobile, it’s about combining the strengths of web and mobile together to help our clients get to where they want to be.  So we’ve decided to make it official and really put our backs into mobile application development.

Some New Faces at TWG:

We’ve brought on some great people to make sure our mobile application development is as strong as the web side of our shop. Chris Eben joined us in September as a managing partner and will be leading the business side of our mobile division.  We’re also privileged to have Jeremy Bower, formerly of Viigo and Polar Mobile, as our director of mobile development. Jeremy brings a wealth of dev chops to TWG, and will be tasked with building a world class team covering the major platforms, including iOS, Android, Blackberry and mobile web. Look for more information on Chris and Jeremy on this blog in the coming weeks.

Let’s Talk Mobile:

If you are thinking about developing a mobile app for your business, or if you just want to know more about our offering, please contact us at: 416.850.2500 /  info@twg.ca or checkout our mobile portfolio.

TEDxToronto – REDEFINITION

Posted by Andrés on September 23, 2011

TWG is a digital agency of thinkers, designers, coders, and friends – lovingly crafting the internet since 2002.

We’ve partnered with TEDxToronto since year one because it personally reminds and inspires us to keep looking forward, and to keep getting better. Like TEDxTO, TWG works with people that want to bring great ideas into existence – that’s what excites us the most.

This year’s TEDxTO theme ‘redefinition’ resonates particularly well because we sense a paradigm shift happening within internet technology. We see the ‘internet’ continuing to be the primary information ‘network’, however we also expect the channels through which it is exposed and accessed to change radically in the next five years. PC-based ‘Web’ will be supplanted by mobile, tablet, console, and transmedia experience. If redefinition means changing our understanding and thus relationships to existing things, then we’re about to see that happen with the internet.

Redefinition is a challenge that every creative individual faces in their life; and in their career. So thank you TEDxToronto for inspiring and helping redefine TWG’s creativity.

Today’s Live Stream: http://live.tedxtoronto.com

Dom & Andrés talk TEDxTO in last year’s sponsor video:

Produced by: TheBizMedia.com

#nerdlearn 2.0: The Future of Mobile Dev

Posted by admin on August 22, 2011

Future of Mobile Dev

“Good Developers Drinking Beer and Learning from Each Other”, aka #nerdlearn, is back, and this time we’re going mobile!

On August 25th at 6:30pm, TWG is hosting #nerdlearn 2.0, a 3-person panel discussing “The Future of Mobile Dev“.

Signup on GuestlistApp.

We all know that mobile is the future, but what is the future of mobile? That’s exactly the question our panelists will answer (or argue over), while you sit back, drink your beer, and ask them as many questions as you please…

Who will be there?

#nerdlearn panel = Our moderator Dessy will be joined by 3 senior mobile developers from our own Toronto community.

#nerdlearn panel 2.0

We’re happy to announce our 3 panelists:

#1, Jeremy Bower, Founder & President Bower Labs:

An experienced software developer with over 10 years in the business, Jeremy has worked at three Toronto-based startups that were acquired; one of them by Research In Motion. He jumped into mobile in 2008, and has since launched apps on five mobile platforms for large media brands and sports teams. His new venture, Bower Labs, is a boutique software development company specializing in apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.

#2, Pearl Chen, Research & Technology Manager CFC Media Lab:

I love Android, especially that little green guy! I sometimes do Android dev but I tend to have 10 different things going on at once so I don’t have the time to dedicate to one single technology. I’m a big proponent for mobile web (over mobile apps, except where the need is actually there) and the future of webkit + html5. I’ve been working with frontend web technologies for over 10 years.

#3, Jeff Zakrzewski, Chief Architect & Co-Founder Five Mobile (now Zynga Toronto):

With over 10 years experience in the mobile industry, Jeff Zakrzewski has an immense passion for all things wireless.  Jeff’s experience in the mobile world has been sharped by working for companies including Redknee, 724 Solutions, and Tira Wireless.  Three years ago, Jeff co-founded Five Mobile, a company focused on providing strategic consulting for the mobile space, mobile applications and mobile web development for a variety of smartphone platforms.  Jeff has helped grow the company from 5 to 55 people, servicing customers such as Disney, Sony, MapQuest, Score Media, and Canoe Inc.  Jeff is now Chief Architect, Zynga Toronto after the Five Mobile team was acquired by Zynga in July.

You = A local developer who likes beer, pizza, and nerdy conversation

Nerd             Beer               

You + #nerdlearn panel = Funny YouTube Video

After lots of discussion and plenty of audience participation at #nerdlearn 1.0, The Future of Rails, a panel focusing on mobile dev seemed like the next logical step.

Summary:

  • Thursday August 25th 2011, 6:30pm @ TWG HQ: 639 Queen St. West #501 (panel begins at 7pm)
  • TWG will provide the beer and pizza (just like at #nerdlearn 1.0)
  • Our panelists will provide the insights & controversy
  • Be ready for interesting conversation, plenty of Q&A opportunities, and lots of beer.

Hope to see you on the 25th! You can follow updates on twitter at: #nerdlearn

Signup on GuestlistApp.

TWG welcomes Brian Gilham to the team

Posted by Dominic on July 5, 2011

TWG is excited to announce yet another piece of great news; Brian Gilham – developer, entrepreneur, inventor, funny and all-round great guy, has joined the TWG team.

After a rewarding and valuable period of growth in his previous position at Espresso, Brian caught the entrepreneur bug in a big way by co-founding 2010′s StartupWeekend Toronto winner Task Ave. It’s an amazing iPhone app that lets you connect reminders to a geographical location, and then buzzes you when you are near those spots. Go check it out.

The Task Ave team executed a schedule-defying progression of presentations, iterations and releases, to successfully get the app from concept, to launch in the Apple App-Store. We were impressed.

After the success of Task Ave, we found ourselves constantly bumping into Brian at local tech meetups and events about town, and we decided to get serious about working together. So we sat down to talk about our approach to work, life, short and long term goals. Finally we gave him our “patent-pending” Iron Coder challenge. He passed with flying colours.

Brian brings a great set of front-end, back-end, and ‘just get it done in the end’ skills to our team. We’re also glad to know that he shares our entrepreneurial energy and ambition to create great new software and products. Please join us in welcoming Brian Gilham to the team.

TWG welcomes Chris Eben to the team

Posted by Dominic on June 28, 2011

We’ve been biting our tongues for weeks, but now it’s official. Chris Eben will be joining TWG as a senior partner at the end of August. We couldn’t be more excited, and so we felt the need to share and tell you a bit about how it happened.

About a year ago, I was attending the Mesh Conference after-party at the Drake. Over mouth-fulls of sliders, Mike McDerment introduced me to a deep-talking, sandy-haired guy standing next to us. Chris was in the Enterprise software space, but was interested in getting more involved in the Toronto tech scene. I spent the next couple hours fielding questions from this total stranger, telling him how much we earned as entrepreneurs, how much we paid developers, designers, project managers, and how we managed to keep a balance between client work and our own start-up concepts. Something in his nature made me feel comfortable giving him intimate details about our business and about how we were doing.

He, in return, admitted that while the enterprise software space was lucrative, and challenging, he wasn’t finding enough creative fulfillment from it, and that he had his own ‘big idea’ that he’d been working on for a long time and would like to explore. After a couple hours of beers, sliders, and discussion, we exchanged email addresses and parted ways to wobble home, promising to follow up in the weeks ahead.

The next few months found Chris and I exchanging many emails in a futile attempt to meet up, and it wasn’t until Startup Weekend in September, and then LeanCoffee Toronto that we finally began to meet regularly. In fact, the weekly LeanCoffeeTO sessions soon became the de-facto meeting point for a lot of us in the Toronto Startup scene. It needs to be highlighted just how valuable and important those days with LeanCoffee were (and still are) for us at TWG. The Thursday morning sessions, where we shared experiences with a bunch of great local entrepreneurs and thinkers like Adil, Andrew, Cam, Jason, Karim, Mark, Matt, Max, Michael, Satish, Tom, and many more, were a real catalyst in giving us the sounding board and confidence to really push our goals and expectations for the future. From these LeanCoffee meetings, Chris, Andres and I realized that we truly had a similar outlook on life and work and in short time we became good friends.

In the year since our chance meeting, TWG has continued to evolve. And as we grow and change, we’ve continually sought out great developers and strategic thinkers who can help us gracefully perform our highwire balancing act between web development and product development. So after a number of marathon meetings, and weekend get-togethers, we gathered our collective courage and together took the leap of faith to have Chris join TWG as a senior partner. It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to benefit from his expertise, and it’s a great opportunity for Chris to flex some creative muscle in developing some of the ideas and projects he’s passionate about.

We’re extremely excited and proud about having Chris join us and we’re now busy clearing the runway, and getting ready to accelerate into the next great stage of TWG’s development. Help me in welcoming our good friend Chris Eben to the team.

Chris Eben Bio

Chris comes to The Working Group after 14 years in the Enterprise Software Market, focused on Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management. He’s held roles in product management, and client services – most recently as Director of Product Management at Actuate Corporation. While Chris was born and raised in Toronto, he called San Francisco home for over 2 years, living through the rise and fall of the first Internet bubble, and then moved to London for 2 more years to help set up his company’s operations in Europe. Chris completed his MBA at Kellogg and landed back in his hometown where he’s become deeply involved in the tech and startup community of the city. Helping to bring Startup Weekend to Canada, Chris acts as the organizer for Startup Weekend Toronto and is a co-organizer of the LeanCoffeeTO meetup group.

Chris was an OUA all-star Receiver for the University of Guelph Gryphons Football team, and provides a significant boost to the average weight and height of The Working Group. While continuing to be an avid football fan, Chris’ real sporting passions are in basketball and soccer (the real football).

Meet the Panel of #nerdlearn 1.0:
THE FUTURE OF RAILS

Posted by Andrés on May 11, 2011

On May 19th TWG is hosting, “Good Developers Drinking Beer and Learning from Each Other” code named #nerdlearn. Much akin to our Good People Drinking Wine events, #nerdlearn is for local developers looking to connect with some of TO’s best senior developers in a panel/Q&A format.

This inaugural #nerdlearn will focus on THE FUTURE OF RAILS (yes, in all caps), but going forward we’ll choose topics that influence the entire sphere of being an excellent developer.

RSVP here: http://guestli.st/55083

MEET THE PANELISTS:

Pete Forde, Unspace:

@petefordeIn 2004 Pete founded Unspace Interactive. Not long after, he transition from proprietary Microsoft development to becoming one of the first adopters of Ruby on Rails. He was the curator of the RubyFringe and FutureRuby conferences, and hosts the popular monthly “Rails Pub Nite” developer event — of which there has been over 50 to date.

An avid traveler and occasional touring rock drummer, Pete is passionate about music and film photography. He recently co-founded BuzzData, a data publishing and collaboration hub.

Pete also likes to explore places you’re not supposed to go:

Pete Forde
You can also find Pete at: twitter.com/peteforde & github.com/peteforde

—–

TWG’s own, Scott Tadman (brought to you by the number 4):

@tadmanterSince 1990, before most of us had even heard of the web, Scott’s been a database manager, network engineer, system administrator, software developer, creative director, writer, and electrician. So you can bet he’s involved at every stage of the projects TWG produces.

Scott is TWG’s Senior Architect; co-founder of PostageApp.com; and 4-time Science Fair Winner when he was a kid (unfortunately no photo available).

He is also the #4 Answerer on Stack Overflow for ruby-on-rails so be sure to ask him lots of questions at #nerdlearn – http://stackoverflow.com/tags/ruby-on-rails/topusers

#4 Answerer on Stack Overflow for ruby-on-rails

You can also find Scott at: twitter.com/tadmanter & github.com/tadman

—–

Kevin Faustino, Nulayer:

@kfaustinoKevin is a passionate programmer and craftsmanship advocate who works at Nulayer as a Senior Software Developer. He has been professionally developing for 6 years, with the last 3 years focused on Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

When not working, he is organizing the Toronto Ruby Brigade and blogging at adventuresincoding.com.

You can also find Kevin at: twitter.com/kfaustino & github.com/kfaustino

We also suspect that Kevin likes Lost:LOST DVD Set

Meet Kevin, Scott and Pete on May 19th, 6:30pm at TWG HQ: http://guestli.st/55083

Other upcoming Dev events you might be interested in:

May 20th: Ruby Job Fair at Unspace, featuring Rubyists, Employers, and Spiked Tea – http://rubyjobfair.ca

June 2nd: Technologic at UnSpace, featuring Giles Bowkett – http://technologicto.com

The BIG Goal – TEDxToronto at TWG

Posted by Dominic on February 8, 2011

I thought I’d add some important context for everyone who will be attending the TEDxToronto Salon at our studio this Friday Feb 11th.

“Something magic happens when you believe that your big goals are achievable and you make those goals public. You start thinking, plotting, and doing all the little steps that are going to take you there.” – Signal Vs. Noise

You guessed it! The theme for this salon is ‘The BIG Goal’, and we want YOU to share your goals and ideas.

Please don’t come to the TEDxToronto Salon expecting be a wallflower. Plan on participating.

It’s your opportunity to take the first step and state your BIG goal to an amazing group of people. Come prepared to briefly share your big goal, your ideas, your entrepreneurial dream, or what drove you towards your existing work. This gathering of like-minded, connected, and smart people will become a great resource and inspiration for all, and it’s membership into a group of people who will make big differences. Don’t miss this chance. Please participate.

The Plan. From 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm:

1. Wine and Food – In the spirit of TWG’s periodic ‘Good People Drinking Wine and Talking to Each Other‘ events, we’ll be opening the event with a quick introduction to some favorite Ontario wines. There will also be a table of delicious appetizers and finger food.  This is time to say hello to people around you, and quench your thirst after a long week.

2. The Speakers - The music will rise to a crescendo and and TEDx speakers Drew Dudley, and Neil Pasricha will stand to talk about their Big Goal, or a moment in their life that was a turning point to something greater.

3. Feedback – You’ll get to ask Drew and Neil your own questions, offer feedback, connect with others.

4. Your Goals – Drew will work his magic to encourage us all to stand up and state our own BIG goal or  BIG idea. Inspiration, perspiration, hillarification ensues.

Tickets:

Free, but space is limited…in fact it’s already full. If you’ve RSVP’d but can’t make it, please let us know so that those on the waiting list can get in.

We’re looking forward to meeting you and hearing all the entrepreneurial dreams Toronto has to offer. See you Friday.

- Your friends at TEDxToronto & The Working Group

Tweet this with: #TEDxToronto

Logistics: http://www.meetup.com/TEDxToronto/events/16381661/

TWG Graduating Class

Posted by Dominic on October 31, 2010

Today marked another celebration at TWG.. Vivian is graduating.

But it didn’t start as a celebration. In fact, when Vivian first told Andres and I that she wanted to embark on her own, to grow her own business as a designer, we were taken aback, and the self-inspection began..

“Why wouldn’t she want to do that with us? Have we been taking her for granted? Why can’t she stay?”

A couple beers and many late night conversations later, I realized that personal and professional growth shouldn’t be treated like a zero sum game. The goal is always for both sides to benefit, and while change is tough, the relationship we have, and the great work we accomplished with Vivian won’t go away. We’re using this as an opportunity to start the next evolution in TWG, just as Vivian is about to embark on her own.

Let’s talk about Vivian..

Vivian joined us a year and a half ago. It was after many years of furtive glances and much mutual admiration, that Vivian left her previous position, and promptly joined us to give us a boost in our design abilities, and take us over the top. Her design skill, creativity, understated brilliance, humility, organization skills, off-colour humour, willingness to shotgun a can of beer, coupled with uncanny punctuality, and occasional clumsiness, make her one of a kind.

We <3 Vivian

TWG is a community of designers, developers, thinkers – people who love what they do. For some of us, TWG will be a life-long commitment, and for others it will be a fun post-university fling in the Greek isles, but without the lingering itching. We’re building our own post-modern company, and it needs to be a happy place to work and grow. That’s one thing we don’t want to change, and that’s what makes this special.

The great news is that Vivian’s going to be a superstar, and we got to work with her along the way. Also great news is that in the months ahead, she’ll continue designing a bunch of exciting new projects with us as a (superstar) freelancer, she’ll show up at our parties, and send us cool links. It was a great 18 months .. and I’m looking forward to the next.

Cue inspirational words from Shatner…

Good People Drinking Wine and talking to each other – Rioja Recap

Posted by Andrés on May 11, 2010

Good people; check. Drinking (great) wine; double check. Talking to each other; yes!

TWG would like to thank:

Anil Patel: for sharing his expertise in working with Google Apps/Salesforce.com/Echosign.com and other SaaS tools for his small, yet influential non-profit, Timeraiser.ca. Check out their full IT portal here: http://it.timeraiser.ca. AND a big thanks for pitching in a case of the delicious Ontario white wine blend called Sibling Rivalry.

Rob Ballantyne: for sharing his photos, experiences, and deep rooted passion for Rioja wines. Not to mention the delicious bottle of 1987 Lopez de Heredia, Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva, and the bottle of 1995 Gravonia by Lopez De Heredia.

Rebecca Baran: for her flattering photo booth shots, and persistence in getting all our guest’s in front of her lens. Check her out at http://rebeccabaran.com

And to all of you; our guests, colleagues, neighbours, and fellow creative professionals: thank you for making the second installment of “Good People Drinking Wine and Talking to Each Other” a resounding success.

Until next time, (we’re thinking 2 months)
Your friends at TWG.

*all photos by Rebecca Baran

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