We’ve spoken with many charities and not for profits that are struggling to establish an effective internet presence. Every attempt they make results in something less than stellar. The sad reality is that most these organizations are probably still living off a website that someone’s 15 year-old nephew made in his parents’ basement.

It’s been well over ten years since the first pages were posted to the World Wide Web and yet the art/science of combining visual aesthetics with effective back-end engineering remains a significant challenge, particularly for those that cannot afford or identify a seasoned team.

What if a group of professionals came together, in one location, for 24 hrs, to build something that most charities could only dream of? Introducing, Code for Good, an innovative approach to give worthy charitable organizations the internet presence they deserve. The first event is in Toronto, followed by Atlanta.

Interested in leading the effort to bring Code for Good to your city? Contact info@codeforgood.com

This post was written by Bobby John

I have been building software development companies for over a decade and can remember a time when at least some classes of software were not considered mission critical. Much has obviously changed over that period time. The internet’s standardized communication protocols coupled with simple markup and scripting languages now makes it possible to develop software that can be used by millions. The flip side of this is that the internet also makes 24/7/365 availability of online software a requirement. Today even the smallest of companies are building and using web-based applications as the back bone of their business. It’s hard to find a project that does not need to meet very high quality and availability standards.

If you’re the person who is going to get the call when the web application suddenly stops working and business grinds to a halt, I feel your pain, the companies success may rest on your back. Trade Settlement,Inc., a client of Band of Coders, is a fully electronic syndicated loan settlement company. This company has a transaction-based revenue model, so if the technology is down, no transactions = no revenue. On top of lost revenue, a technology outage means a breach of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and a black eye in the market. With many large bank clients and billions of dollars being settled on the system, being down is not an option - so quality assurance is top priority.

When people think availability, they turn to the infrastructure team to make sure they have clustered web servers, failover db servers, power generators, tape backups etc. Only those of us with lots of experience and the scars to prove it understand the availability risk that can show up in the code.

For example, I once came across a defect that showed up after 100,000 transactions. This is something you would never see in your unit tests, manual or automated QA runs. This bug would only appear in a long running performance/stress test. It took 48 hours to track down and fix the problem; all the infrastructure redundancy in the world wouldn’t make a difference in this situation.

Clearly, a deep level of testing and an excellent understanding of code are required to keep today’s applications running smoothly. The clear business need for superior testing of applications is one of the main reasons Creation Step is supporting QA Room. QA Room is a group of professionals who understand their role in ensuring software quality and availability. The combination of manual testing, automated testing and performance/stress testing along with understanding how to effectively work with developers and business folks sets them apart. Contact them so you can stop losing sleep wondering if tomorrow will be the day your application fails.

This post was written by Bobby John 

The past 7 days has been eventful when it comes to Indoor Playground. As many of you have been tracking with, we got covered in Business Week, ABC Global News, and One Degree here in Toronto. In addition I had an interview with the National Post yesterday which I believe will be in print on Monday. It has been a wild journey trying to experiment and discover our way since we opened just over a month ago. It cost quite a lot in the renovations even though we bootstrapped as much as possible to keep the prices affordable to the community.

We have been hoping for a few people to partner with us and share this risk. Today that hope became a reality as Carissa Reiniger from Silver Lining signed up as our first strategic partner who will share the cost and risk of making this venture successful. I met Carissa several months ago and have been inspired by her vision and commitment to making the new entrepreneur and small business successful. I have to admit that she has about twice as much energy as I do and seems to channel it in the right direction. She has one of the best lead generating business development solutions for the small business that I have seen and is proving it to be working with their rapid expansion throughout N.America. We believe our partnership with SilverLining will prove beneficial as it will not only bring in new energy, insight, and expertise, but will take us beyond having a predominantly male influence and membership.

Silver Lining is not exclusively woman led (kudos to joshua and the lads) but will definitely help balance out the hormones and bring an important influence within what we do. All said and done it feels great to have someone who is willing to stand beside us that will take a financial risk to benefit the entrepreneurial community within Toronto.

We are still scheming and instigating with a few other key players who have some clever ideas about how we can give more to the community here in Toronto. This is turning into a lot of fun

This post was written by Mark Dowds

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

The value of co-working space has hit the media radar. Check out this ABC News clip and Business Week article that mention Indoor Playground. This comes on the one-month anniversary of Indoor Playground’s opening.

Six months ago Mark and I made the commitment to create a place downtown Toronto for entrepreneurs to work and connect with others. This involved signing a lease and putting up the funds to renovate a pretty raw space. We were excited and sure that we would get sponsors from large companies, angel investors, and others who were committed to Toronto’s entrepreneur community.

Fast-forward 3 months. Renovation costs ended up being triple what we originally expected, all the large companies we thought were interested in helping small business turned us down, and everyone else we were counting on to pitch in financially lost interest. Mark and I had that emergency meeting where we had to make the call: Were we going to continue to walk this financial road alone or bail? We coughed up some more money to complete the renovations and carry the rent for a few more months and held our breath.

Though we never did get financial assistance, many in the community helped with spreading the word, donating furniture, and cleaning the place up for launch day. Our first few members signed up at the open house and we purchased a chair and desk for each of them. The most rewarding moment was when we got the feedback, “I love the space.”

The experience we went through to setup Indoor Playground would have left many startups bankrupt. The Creation Step mission is to remove obstacles so people can break free from the misery of working in a cubicle 9-5, doing something they hate, and counting down the days to retirement when they hope to unlock all those ideas and passions. Our goal with Indoor Playground was to create a co-working space for people who had the courage to go out on their own.

With the community’s help, we hope that Indoor Playground will play a small part in the birth of many new businesses and the dreams that come with them. Thank you to everyone who encouraged us along the way and those early adopters who joined in faith.

Over the past couple of years Bobby and I have had the fun of getting a few companies up and running. Our first company was Band of Coders although the name evolved a few times through the process of discovering its real identity. It seems ironic that the guys that know the most about technology and web were the guys who were nameless and faceless within Creationstep.
But today they have come out of the closet and announced themselves and who they are with a lovely new website that includes the following statement:

The Band of Coders is a crack team of programmers and system architects that creates business applications, web applications, and front-end interfaces. We work with companies that know exactly what they want and are looking for the raw programming talent to make their vision a reality quickly and efficiently.

Our team has been stripped to the bare essentials: exceptional coders. No marketing team. No sales guy. No CEO. No fluff to keep us from the goal of creating first-rate software products for our clients.

Looking for cookie-cutter code assemblers or hyped-up marketing outfits? Look elsewhere.

Well done chaps…

Sign up for attendance at the Indoor Playground sneak peek and open house is available now on upcoming

Thanks for helping us get the word out

After much hard work and planning the Indoor Playground is almost ready to open its doors. We plan to open the doors officially on February 1st. We have taken some time to listen to feedback from potential community members and have deduced what we believe today to be an effective and helpful pricing model.

We named the space Indoor Playground | Centre for Innovation intentionally. We desire that the space is known as a social centre for the community as well as an effective co-working facility. This necessitates that we make room for some events as well as some space to work and collaborate within. The model below should make sense within this context:

Monthly Membership packages
$1500 – *Unlimited Corporate up to six members
$300 – *Unlimited Individual
$100 - 1 day per week + *Unlimited evenings and weekends
$50 – *Unlimited evenings after 5:30pm and weekends (Friday 5:30pm-Monday 7:00am)

Day Rates
$25/Day - Single day access to facilities - no guests
$100/Day - Single day access + 2 hour conference room + 4 guests for conference room time
$350/day - Small room + 12 guests
$1000/day - Large room + 50 guests
$1250/day - Entire facility + 65 guests

All prices are subject to GST

*Unlimited – except for up to 4 days per month (to make space for group rental and events)

We are opening the doors on Friday January 12th at 5.30pm for viewing (and an excuse for some of us to get together). We will be around for a couple of hours so plan on coming for as long as you desire. We will make some announcements and will have some Q&A at the earlier part of the evening. Please spread the word.

We will have both paypal and credit card options available to receive sign-up soon. If you plan to join as a member please go to www.indoorplayground.com and sign-up in the forum section.

For further information and details please contact: mark@creationstep.com