Primal Fusion – Connolly Design

March 3, 2010October 31, 2020

Primal Fission

It’s been about a year since I started writing this blog. Many of the posts in that time have been about my experience at Primal Fusion. This post is one of those, but it’s a significant one as I’m now no longer with the company. From fusion to fission, so to speak.

Working at Primal Fusion has been a great experience. I was able to work on challenging projects and did so with with smart and devoted people, many of whom are still with the company.

I’d like to extend my thanks to Bob Barlow-Busch, who brought me to Primal Fusion, and to Shane O’Neil, who gave me a team to run. It was wonderful to work with them both. I’d also like to say thanks to my team, working with whom has been a great gift and a privilege for me. I learned something from each of them, and as a team we did great things. I’m proud of what we accomplished and will miss working with them all. If you’re reading this, guys, thanks for everything. Finally, thanks to all the other Primates who have made the Primal Fusion what it is and made my time there so meaningful.

Best of luck to all of you.

January 29, 2010November 1, 2020

That was a fine night in Guelph

DemoCampGuelph has a great combination of demos, atmosphere, conversations, and just plain fun. The 12th edition this past Wednesday had all that, and made for a warm event on a cold January night. As usual, the event was well-organized and inspiring.

At the start of the evening I spent some time planning the next UX Group meeting over dinner with a friend and colleague who will be leading a workshop on guerrilla usability. Should be a great event — more details to come in the next few days.

DemoCampGuelph proper got off to a great start with a talk by Tara Hunt about the social world. Good stuff. My takeaway? Don’t be an evil robot!

The demos were entertaining for a variety of reasons. Harry Scanlan’s demo-as-standup-comedy (or is it standup-comedy-as-demo?) is just as funny as it was the first time I saw him present/perform. On a more serious side, I particularly enjoyed seeing my former Primal Fusion colleague Alex Black demo his new product Snapsort. That’s him in the accompanying photo, responding to Brydon’s introductory questions.

The only downside of the night for me was that I couldn’t stay longer — family commitments took me home sooner than I would have liked.

January 18, 2010November 1, 2020

Primal Fusion a hit at EpCon

In my earlier post about January events, I forgot to mention EpCon, organized by and for students from the University of Waterloo and which ran this past Friday and Saturday. Primal Fusion was one of the companies that participated, and I was lucky enough to spend some time at the conference.

I started off late Friday afternoon when I joined three of my colleagues at a booth where we evangelized Primal Fusion to interested visitors. And there were a large number of interested visitors. In a room that featured representation from giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, it was gratifying to see how many folks were interested in what we’re doing. Many of them were also interested in joining us for a co-op work term.

On Saturday morning, Primal Fusion founder Peter Sweeney gave a talk in a session that was, again, well-attended. The engaged and enthusiastic audience seemed genuinely interested in hearing Peter’s ideas about the industrialization of the Web. At the end, he gave a demonstration of a Website Generator, which is currently in Primal Labs (and which I had shown in an earlier form at StartupCampWaterloo last fall). The demonstration was well-received and, despite having a time slot right before lunch, many folks from the audience wanted to chat with Peter after his talk. It was, by any measure, a fine morning.

EpCon looks like it was a great success. Congratulations to the organizers for a job well done. EpCon was certainly well worth the visit for Primal Fusion.

December 18, 2009October 31, 2020

Cloudy, with a chance of thoughts

We have something new at Primal Fusion this week. It’s another Primal Labs release, in this case an interaction prototype that enables you to build what we call a thought cloud to express your thinking on a topic.

We’ve released it into Primal Labs, rather than as a part of our main thought networking service, for a couple of reasons. First, we want to get feedback from our community of users on whether this a is a useful way to express your thoughts. Second, it’s not finished, and there are many things that we could do with it. Rather than take it in a particular direction we want that community feedback as quickly as possible to help us prioritize what we do.

We can certainly see using this in our main service, and we have other ideas about how to use it as well. For now, though, please try it out in Labs area and let us know what you think.

December 1, 2009November 3, 2020

Instant websites! Just add water!

I recently wrote about a demo that a colleague and I gave at StartupCampWaterloo, showing a prototype that we had created at Primal Fusion. Yesterday, our founder Peter Sweeney showed this prototype at NextMedia in Toronto.

We’ve released that prototype into a new area at the Primal Fusion site, Primal Labs. It’s still not a product yet, and it’s still pretty rough around the edges, but it does show some of the promise of thought networking.

Our Automatic Website Generator does exactly what the name suggests. It takes a user-supplied topic, builds related thoughts using our Primal Fusion platform, and then searches the web for related content. The results are then almost instantly presented as a website on that topic. It works reasonably well, though the fact that we’ve put it in Primal Labs should make it clear that we have more work to do. Still, it’s a fine start and we wanted to share it with the world and get feedback from people. Do try it out — you’ll need a Primal Fusion account at this point, but signing up is easy and it shouldn’t be long before you can try both the Automatic Website Generator and our original product as well.

November 20, 2009November 3, 2020

Primal Fusion gets out of the house

This week was active on the Primal Fusion front, with two milestones of a sort.

First up, we released an update to the alpha version of our thought networking service. Our initial version was launched last Spring at the DEMO09 conference. We’ve received a lot of feedback since then, and have made improvements that address the biggest issues. You can read all about the details on the Primal Fusion products blog.

Next up, my Primal Fusion colleague Tom Ayre and I demonstrated a brand new Primal Fusion prototype at StartupCampWaterloo. The prototype is an automatic website generator (“Instant web sites! Just add water!”) that’s built on our thought networking platform. While still quite rough, and not yet released in any form, we feel good enough about this prototype to have shared it with the community at this great event and get feedback. There were interesting questions, some great suggestions, and even a little healthy skepticism. It was all appreciated, and we do listen closely to what we hear. We also appreciated all the votes that we received after we made our pitch to demo — great pitch, Tom! We both also enjoyed the rest of the demos and conversations. If you haven’t been to one of these events, it’s well worth a visit.

October 19, 2009October 31, 2020

Co-op students at Primal Fusion

As I’ve mentioned often in this blog, I work at Primal Fusion. We’re doing some pretty cool stuff, some of which you can see in our alpha products. We have a committed group of folks in the shop, and we’re not afraid to take on tough problems. That’s not to say that we aren’t always open to getting help and hearing fresh ideas. One of the strategies that we employ in that regard is to hire students through the University of Waterloo’s co-op program.

As we approach the mid-way point of the current work term, it feels like a good time to reflect on what Primal Fusion gets from co-op, as well as on what students get from spending time at Primal Fusion.

We’re a still a small startup, and we can’t afford to waste resources. We need everyone who works here to contribute, and that includes our co-op students and interns. On the research and development side, that means we look for smart and engaged students to help us solve big problems for our products, not just take on side projects.

In exchange, our students get to do work that makes a valuable impact on real products. In some cases, the work that they do gets released in a product during the course of the work term. That’s quick validation of a job well done.

Are you a student looking for a fast-paced and challenging work term? Primal Fusion may be the place for you.

October 5, 2009November 1, 2020

Primal Fusion sponsors Cory Doctorow at the Quantum To Cosmos Festival

I mentioned the Quantum To Cosmos Festival some time ago when it was first announced. I’m lucky enough to have secured tickets to a few events and I’m looking forward to taking them in.

More exciting for me is the news that Primal Fusion is sponsoring one of the events. Cory Doctorow will be speaking on Thursday October 22 at 4:00pm on the subject Copyright versus Universal Access to All Human Knowledge and Groups Without Cost: the state of play in the global copyfight.

We’re so excited at Primal Fusion, in fact, that our founder Peter Sweeney’s most recent blog post, Want to Build a Better Internet? Stop Searching for Solutions, takes a cue from an article that Doctorow wrote earlier in the summer. Have a look, and then let Pete know what you think. Is he on to something big? Is he way off-base? Is he somewhere else?

If you’re not able to get to Doctorow’s festival presentation in person, keep in mind that Q2C will be streaming events live over the Internet. Check it out and set aside some time to drink from the metaphorical cup of learning offered by Quantum to Cosmos.

August 21, 2009November 1, 2020

Ten thoughts on what matters at a startup: Deliver

Why does deliver matter at a startup?

Not everyone has to deliver. I have three little boys, the two oldest of whom play soccer. I go to the games and I have a wonderful time watching them run around, get the ball, occasionally score, and generally try to play the game. When they’re done, I tell them that they played great, and I ask them if the had fun. Effort and having fun are what they’re going for; I don’t expect them to deliver goals or a win at this stage.

A startup is different. Effort is great, but results are what matter. Effort can, of course, lead to results; in the end, being able to deliver matters more than anything.

In a sense, the other posts in this short series are really about behaviours that support being able to deliver results.

At Primal Fusion, we saw how making an effort delivered results when we launched at DEMO. All the work and preparation were invisible to the world, though, and what mattered was what was visible on stage: our founder showing our thought networking service live on laptop computer. The effort would have been worth far less without that successful demonstration.

We have more milestones to reach in our journey at Primal Fusion, and we know what it will take to reach them and to deliver results.

This is one in a short series of posts called Ten Thoughts on what matters at a startup. The thoughts started life as a presentation I made at VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. While they’re far from definitive, and aren’t a top ten, they’ve mattered to me in my software startup experience.

August 18, 2009November 1, 2020

Ten thoughts on what matters at a startup: Respect

Why does respect matter at a startup?

At Primal Fusion, we talk about having respect for each other, our customers and users, our competitors, shareholder investments, and the opportunity we have to build something meaningful. Beyond the obvious truth that respect is something that we all deserve, these people and things are important to us at Primal Fusion and it just makes good business sense to be respectful of them.

For example, I periodically respond to user issues in both email and on our public presence on GetSatisfaction.com. Knowledgeable responses are a requirement, but respect is the key to successful interactions here. I’ll let others judge whether I’m delivering, but it’s certainly a goal that I aim for.

In the end, respectful interactions with people are just easier and more productive.

You do need to know where you stand, though, and realize that on occasion you’ll encounter a situation where you just can’t get alignment on an issue. You need to be able to respectfully agree to disagree.