This series will explore how entrepreneurs get funding, make contacts and close their deals, all by tracking homegrown techie Ken Bautista

When you’re exploring the world of dealmaking, it helps to have a bit of a B-movie background. Consider, for instance, actor Bruce Campbell’s advice:

For would-be entrepreneurs, getting it – whatever it is – can seem like a vicious circle. You don’t have experience so you can’t raise money. You can’t raise money because you don’t have experience.

This is where Ken Bautista comes in. Bautista is the CEO of SeekYourOwnProof, also known as the Central Institute of Exploration. CIE is a subscription-based online community that also features real-world educational activities. Aimed at tweens, it uses the gaming model to educate school-age children on science and history.

By tracking Bautista as he schmoozes in L.A., meets execs in New York and jump-starts opportunities back home in Alberta, we’ll explore how exactly the deal gets made. But first, let’s meet the man.

The enthusiasm Bautista brings to projects is infectious. The man is one of the busiest people in Alberta, but he’s always smiling. And he’s also an assiduous networker. (Just check his LinkedIn profile. He has so many connections, the business-focused social network merely throws up its hands and says 500+.)

Bautista doesn’t mind a full calendar either. He’s been the president of Digital Alberta (an advocacy group for digital media) and he’s bringing three TEDx events to the public in 2010. That’s not to mention a gig as founding chair of artsScene Edmonton, an arts-business facilitator, and his role as the figure behind Startup Edmonton, an accelerator and seed fund.

Bautista recently raised $1M in venture capital, combined with over $600,000 in seed financing from the TELUS Innovation Fund, Telefilm Canada New Media Fund and personal investments. He’s also closed a long-term deal with a major US media company. (We’ll have more details to share in coming issues of Deal Maker.)

The specialty of Bautista’s team lay in creative compelling characters and stories. But, like most online startups, the challenge would be reaching a critical mass of users. So their approach was to find a key distribution and brand partner in the US whose network and reach could be leveraged.

Bautista suggests not being intimidated if you have a product worth talking about. The US deal happened because of a “cold email” sent to a brand manager. Bautista got a call back from the brand manager a few minutes later asking, “Do I know you?” Not exactly, but the manager thought CIE was a great fit and ended up connecting him with key decision makers.

Jeff Hamada has succeeded where so many web-savvy people have not. And he did it all by accident. Hamada took a blog, created a loyal, interactive online community and then monetized the whole deal. The result was Booooooom! – that’s seven Os – which gets 1.7 million visitors every month. A sign of how successful it is: GM advertises on the site.

Hamada trolls the net for work by virtually unknown artists and posts it under the sections Art! Design! Film! Music! Photo! Junk! and Projects! (exclamation marks are his). Unlimited talked with Hamada, a former Electronic Arts staffer who graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, about his unexpected international following.

How was Booooooom! born?
I took a year off school and worked at Electronic Arts. EA paid for my final year, but when I graduated, the company didn’t have a job open for me. I was sad about that. I started freelancing as a graphic designer about four years ago. I started Booooooom! about a 18 months ago as a personal blog to show all the art I made and the trips I took.

It’s changed a lot, though.
It changed early on. I didn’t think it was interesting for people to hear what I was doing, so I started posting art I liked, mostly work by lesser-known people on Flickr. I’d post something, email the artist to say I like his work and that I’d posted it on my site. The artist would get excited about it and mention it on his website. It became a conversation for art admirers. The site grew mostly by word of mouth. About six months in, everything went crazy, and now I get 1.9 million page hits a month. I wasn’t trying to make it grow. I just lost control.

Describe Booooooom!
It’s a daily inspiration site about photography and drawing. It’s different than a lot of other sites out there. I find artwork that I like by artists all over the world and I post it on the site, like an online art gallery. I really want to create a collaborative community.

I have another side to the site where we do group collaboration projects. I come up with an idea for a project and ask people to contribute. It’s an avenue for people to get inspired and make stuff that inspires others. I hope it becomes more of a focus of the site.

Could you describe a few group projects?
The last group project was a music video. Everyone downloaded the same music, filmed their own footage and submitted it. I stitched all the footage together. (See the footage here).

How much time does it take to maintain the site?
Now it’s a full-time job. I spend eight to 10 hours a day working on it. When I had freelance clients, I’d work on the site all night. I set it up to have three posts a day, so no matter where someone lives, when they go to the site there’s something new for them to see.

Jeff Hamada’s own art work. Hamada has worked for clients such as Converse.

How does the site generate revenue?
This is something I’m still learning about. There are three ways to make money: You get paid to write about a product. I’ve never done that and I’ve turned down a lot of opportunities. Or you can run advertisements from networks. I work with three or four networks that represent a bunch of companies. They pitch campaigns to me and I pick ones that work for the site. The third way is by having local companies in Vancouver sponsor the site. This is a one-to-one relationship.

The trickiest partnerships are with networks, because the products a network wants to advertise on your site are not always a good fit. They also want to sign long-term contracts, meaning that you lose control of what ads appears. But I can be pickier the more popular the site becomes.

Why do you think the site is so popular and continues to grow?
I am obsessed with analyzing the site and improving things that aren’t getting lots of hits. I paid a friend to make it more searchable and the topic I chose helped. No big sites are collecting the work that I’m collecting and there’s nothing going on for the community side of a lot of blogs. I put a lot of time into the site to make it feel alive.

There’s a stigma about art that only experts can talk about it. I try and make art inclusive. No matter what your expertise, you’re allowed to comment about the stuff you see. You don’t need credentials. I think the overall feeling is open and accepting.

Content-wise, I was uncovering a lot of unknown people, like people with only 30 followers. But when I mention one artist, he tells all his followers and then 30 people are checking out the site.

What would you like to see Booooooom! become?
I want to take it offline. I want to see some of the art on the site be shown in a [bricks-and-mortar] art gallery. I want the site to generate interest in the artists I feature. Beyond that I want to travel and meet the artists I cover and write about it. I want to publish a book of art. I don’t want to get rich. I’m not a business person that started this site thinking I could make money from it. The site is a lot bigger than the site I originally imagined. I’m definitely missing an opportunity to monetize completely, but I don’t want to be the mega-corporation of art sites.

Why?
My audience is a tricky demographic. It can get turned off by advertising if it isn’t done right. I could lose credibility really easily, especially if I include some covert ads. U

Stuart Bailey is a private person – at least when it comes to work. In agreeing to speak with Unlimited about his job, for instance, he cheerfully and apologetically said, “I can only speak for myself, not for the government.” That’s because Bailey is an information management and privacy strategist for the Ontario Ministry of Finance, where he navigates the complex, sometimes intangible and often confidential world of data. Not that he’s necessarily trading in top-secret information – “I don’t have a lot of sensitive material,” he admits – but for someone whose work is all about managing, sharing (and sometimes not sharing) information, Bailey is sensitive to the challenges of describing what he does without saying too much. He gives it a try.

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Stuart Bailey’s official office at the Ministry of Finance

“My job is to help regular people in different program areas integrate practice and information into their daily work.” Huh? “Really, it’s helping people deal with information overload,” Bailey adds. Oh, right.

That could range from helping staffers manage email to helping colleagues understand the logistics and legalities around sharing information. “Storage is cheap, but finding it is very expensive,” Bailey says. A gigabyte of storage might cost only 20 cents, but a company will have to shell out another $1,300 or so to manage, share and protect that information. “It’s not just about an object sitting in a space.”

“The type of work I do is about understanding broad abstractions. Information,” he points out, “is always part of something else that you do.” In that sense, we are each de facto information managers, even though we might not consider this part of our real jobs. It is always, Bailey explains, wrapped up in our other tasks.

After earning a BA in cultural studies and philosophy from Trent University, Bailey went on to complete a master’s in information studies at the University of Toronto. Warm and engaging, his philosophy background quickly surfaces. “A large part of the work I do is – pardon me for lapsing into code – to understand basic metaphysics, entities, attributes and relationships. I have to operate in abstract areas. Privacy is not a monolithic object. It’s not a like a shoe,” he says. “A shoe will have certain dimensions, it goes on your foot, you can wear it in certain weather. But privacy could be a whole range of things.”

Bailey’s Virtual Office

Bailey, whose official mailing address is for the Central Agencies Cluster at the Ministry of Finance in Toronto, in actuality divides his time between three offices.

Bailey telecommutes from his couch-office

+ This office in the picture is where I’m stationed, but sometimes I work with the rest of the team in Oshawa. I also work at home. My employer has a great teleworking project and a lot of flexibility. I spend more time focusing on work and less on additional stressors like whether I’ll make it home in time to pick up my daughter before her daycare closes.

+ I have one computer and BlackBerry. It’s not like I produce a certain number of widgets a day. Where I’m located is sometimes not as important. I don’t always have to be tied to a desk, but I do have to ingest, analyze and provide comment on information for colleagues.

+ Yeah, sometimes I can’t find things. It’s like asking a ditch-digger where you put the shovel. Well, you can just find another shovel.

+ That’s a tennis ball on my desk. I bounce it around to relieve stress or think about things in a different way. Sometimes the best way to focus on an abstract problem is not to focus on it. You have to let the brain refresh and let your mind wander.

+ Those boxes are filled with paperwork. Although I work a lot with electronic media, I like the tactile quality of reaching for an article. I have to stay on top of new developments such as the use of wikis or policy development or a recent court decision. I make sure I don’t keep more around than I need. U

One of Michael Sikorsky’s first business ventures, when he was seven years old, was what he calls Desk Sales. “I would open up the drawer where I put all my top possessions and auction them off to my brother and sister. I would bundle items or hold back items till the next desk sale. I loved it.”

Flash forward to 2009. Sikorsky has started six businesses, made two exits and was forced out of a company he founded. He is an angel investor, software programmer and self-professed hair product enthusiast. And he’s done all of this with a computer engineering degree from the University of Alberta and the help of books. Thousands and thousands of books. Based in Calgary, Sikorsky has created what you might call his own personal MBA-style reading list and, in the open-source tradition he comes from, posted it on Google Books for everyone to see.

Sikorsky’s list offers a peek inside the mind of a successful young entrepreneur. Unlimited talked with him about how he got started, which books have influenced him most and why he doesn’t read in the bathroom anymore.

Were you an obsessive reader as a child?
No, it didn’t really hit me till around 12. Until then, I think I had read – by volition – a few Encyclopedia Brown books. I got passionate about reading when I realized how it helped me do stuff, like learning how to program computers.

You’re not just a serial reader, but also a serial entrepreneur.
The first real company I started, when I was 26, was Servidium, which ThoughtWorks bought when I was 28. After selling Servidium, I entered what I like to call my post-exit depression. You’re supposed to be happy, so, you feign it, but on the inside I felt like my “meaning bubble” had just been popped.

Why did you post your reading lists on Google?
I love what Google is doing for books. And I knew that putting my books online would help other entrepreneurs. Most people guard their book lists or forget what books helped them grow. Being able to search the books I’ve read for quotes, for instance, is really powerful. When I search my books list for the word “enzyme,” I find one of my favourite quotes, by Gérard Bricogne: “Mankind is a catalyzing enzyme for the transition from a carbon-based to a silicon-based intelligence.” [This appears as an epigraph in Mark Buchanan’s book Nexus.]

Would you have learned as much only from school?
Reading is how I learned pretty much everything I know, so if you said I could only have one of the two, I would pick reading. But I loved university. Reading plus school plus doing is the secret combination. And doing is at least 50 per cent of the equation. Doing gives context to everything you read in a book.

What do you read in the bathroom?
I used to read in the bathroom. Now my 18-month-old twin daughters always want to come in there with me. Basically, we floss and do makeup.

If you were to write a business book, what would it be called?
Opposite George: The George Costanza Guide to Business. The premise is, basically, to do things opposite to what people expect. Why start a company when you’re 40? Start one when you’re 20. U

Jeff Hamada has succeeded where so many web-savvy people have not. And he did it all by accident. Hamada took a blog, created a loyal, interactive online community and then monetized the whole deal. The result was Booooooom! – that’s seven Os – which gets 1.7 million visitors every month. A sign of how successful it is: GM advertises on the site.

Hamada trolls the net for work by virtually unknown artists and posts it under the sections Art! Design! Film! Music! Photo! Junk! and Projects! (exclamation marks are his). Unlimited talked with Hamada, a former Electronic Arts staffer who graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, about his unexpected international following.

How was Booooooom! born?
I took a year off school and worked at Electronic Arts. EA paid for my final year, but when I graduated, the company didn’t have a job open for me. I was sad about that. I started freelancing as a graphic designer about four years ago. I started Booooooom! about a 18 months ago as a personal blog to show all the art I made and the trips I took.

It’s changed a lot, though.
It changed early on. I didn’t think it was interesting for people to hear what I was doing, so I started posting art I liked, mostly work by lesser-known people on Flickr. I’d post something, email the artist to say I like his work and that I’d posted it on my site. The artist would get excited about it and mention it on his website. It became a conversation for art admirers. The site grew mostly by word of mouth. About six months in, everything went crazy, and now I get 1.9 million page hits a month. I wasn’t trying to make it grow. I just lost control.

Describe Booooooom!
It’s a daily inspiration site about photography and drawing. It’s different than a lot of other sites out there. I find artwork that I like by artists all over the world and I post it on the site, like an online art gallery. I really want to create a collaborative community.

I have another side to the site where we do group collaboration projects. I come up with an idea for a project and ask people to contribute. It’s an avenue for people to get inspired and make stuff that inspires others. I hope it becomes more of a focus of the site.

Could you describe a few group projects?
The last group project was a music video. Everyone downloaded the same music, filmed their own footage and submitted it. I stitched all the footage together. (See the footage here).

How much time does it take to maintain the site?
Now it’s a full-time job. I spend eight to 10 hours a day working on it. When I had freelance clients, I’d work on the site all night. I set it up to have three posts a day, so no matter where someone lives, when they go to the site there’s something new for them to see.

Jeff Hamada’s own art work. Hamada has worked for clients such as Converse.

How does the site generate revenue?
This is something I’m still learning about. There are three ways to make money: You get paid to write about a product. I’ve never done that and I’ve turned down a lot of opportunities. Or you can run advertisements from networks. I work with three or four networks that represent a bunch of companies. They pitch campaigns to me and I pick ones that work for the site. The third way is by having local companies in Vancouver sponsor the site. This is a one-to-one relationship.

The trickiest partnerships are with networks, because the products a network wants to advertise on your site are not always a good fit. They also want to sign long-term contracts, meaning that you lose control of what ads appears. But I can be pickier the more popular the site becomes.

Why do you think the site is so popular and continues to grow?
I am obsessed with analyzing the site and improving things that aren’t getting lots of hits. I paid a friend to make it more searchable and the topic I chose helped. No big sites are collecting the work that I’m collecting and there’s nothing going on for the community side of a lot of blogs. I put a lot of time into the site to make it feel alive.

There’s a stigma about art that only experts can talk about it. I try and make art inclusive. No matter what your expertise, you’re allowed to comment about the stuff you see. You don’t need credentials. I think the overall feeling is open and accepting.

Content-wise, I was uncovering a lot of unknown people, like people with only 30 followers. But when I mention one artist, he tells all his followers and then 30 people are checking out the site.

What would you like to see Booooooom! become?
I want to take it offline. I want to see some of the art on the site be shown in a [bricks-and-mortar] art gallery. I want the site to generate interest in the artists I feature. Beyond that I want to travel and meet the artists I cover and write about it. I want to publish a book of art. I don’t want to get rich. I’m not a business person that started this site thinking I could make money from it. The site is a lot bigger than the site I originally imagined. I’m definitely missing an opportunity to monetize completely, but I don’t want to be the mega-corporation of art sites.

Why?
My audience is a tricky demographic. It can get turned off by advertising if it isn’t done right. I could lose credibility really easily, especially if I include some covert ads. U

On my last stop of the trip, autumn arrives in the form of a cold wind ripping through Saskatoon’s streets. I head to the Mendel Art Gallery, not for the art per se, but for the coffee (I’m told its cafe, Museo, serves the best espresso in town). While the rest of the city is quiet this Sunday afternoon, visitors jam into the gallery to see three new exhibitions. I flag down a curatorial assistant, who introduces me to Troy Gronsdahl, alone in the basement, away from the crowds, where he plans the popular programming of the Saskatoon’s best arts institution.

VITALS: Troy Gronsdahl, public programs assistant, Saskatoon

For those unfamiliar with how museum programming works, could you explain your job?
I handle a range of programs, write interpretative texts, help with the website and develop new media. I manage our drop-in DIY art space called StudioXPRESS. People can work with professional art materials and the activities are designed to dig deeper into the themes of the exhibitions. I also spearheaded and launched a podcast that’s sort of like Mendel Radio. I interview artists or curators and play music by Saskatchewan artists. Museums are constantly going through self-critical analysis: What are we doing? How can we do it better? Are we reaching our audience? Are we responsible to our community?

How did you become a jack-of-all-trades Saskatoon’s art scene?
One of the great, but also most challenging, parts of working in the arts is that is is chronically understaffed. You learn a lot of different jobs and take on many roles.

As an artist and musician, I’ve always worked on DIY projects. I run an indie hip-hop label, Clothes Horse Records and an online record shop which used to have a bricks-and-mortar shop. It was a vanity venture that ended in… [laughs] personal failure. I’ve also had about five years of gallery experience before the Mendel, doing arts communication and a website, installing shows, running an arts placement program, working with artists, organizing talks. I’ve picked up a lot of skills along the way.

You’re definitely immersed.
My pet peeve is when art organizations hire from outside the community. Art jobs are rare and competitive, so it creates a fracture. They’ll parachute someone in from Toronto with a more illustrious professional background and that person doesn’t know anybody here or the needs of the community. They don’t have the sensitivity that comes from being a part of a place. So, yeah, I’m glad they picked me. U

Laura Trethewey is riding the train from Toronto to Vancouver and meeting regular Canadians along the way for our Job Training series. Every city she stops in she’ll ask one regular person about what they do for a living. Unlimited is posting the conversations on our interactive map.

At a showing of recently discovered films by the late Vancouver artist Kate Craig, I ran into a gang of girls who worked for Lululemon. I should have known. The screening, followed by a dance party, enforced a strict dress code of pink and leopard print all night. Lululemon design assistant Niamh McManus still managed to stand out from the crowd, hoisting a giant leopard print shoe that doubled as a seat over her shoulder.

VITALS: Niamh McManus, design assistant, Vancouver

Tell me about your job as a design assistant at Lululemon.
I work on the Run line. The line’s lead designer comes up with the direction for the season and I pull images and help create a theme. The lead designer then looks at all that trend info and decides what the direction is. Then we start production, and make samples and detailed technical drawings. After that, we collaborate with technical designers, pattern makers and product developers to create the final product.

Is working in fashion as competitive or glamorous as it seems?
There are a lot of people who want to be in the industry because of that perceived glamour. It’s hard for me to say because I was handed a good opportunity right out of school. Everyone works long days. It can’t be a nine-to-five job because you care – and that consumes your life. But I try not to think about the harder aspects of my job. One of my fears of working in fashion is the relentless pace. At the same time, you still have to squeeze creativity out. Creativity is delicate. I’m paranoid that if I’m not gentle with it, then one day it will just leave.

Getting hired out of school? That still happens?
I know a lot of people who have had a harder time than me. What I’m learning now is that design is only the tip of the iceberg in apparel. There’s not much room in fashion for designers compared to all the other people you need to create a product. For instance, there’s 17 of us on the design team at Lululemon. On the production side there’s around 60. I always thought during design school that starting my own line was my goal, but I think that I couldn’t be as successful if I had my own business straight out of school. There’s just too much to learn. U

Laura Trethewey is riding the train from Toronto to Vancouver and meeting regular Canadians along the way for our Job Training series. Every city she stops in she’ll ask one regular person about what they do for a living. Unlimited is posting the conversations on our interactive map.

Donald Gutstein is all for capitalism. He just doesn’t like the way it’s been done in the past 30 years and wants the propagandists, policy wonks and media to account for themselves. He is what was called a rabble rouser in the olden days and today is called, well, something else. Now the media critic and author of the new book Not A Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, talks to UL about abandoning a career in architecture, the problem with think tanks and how capitalism should really work.

+ It was a different universe when I was in school. Education was cheap, jobs were plentiful, nobody had to worry about what they were going to do with their lives. Now you need a career plan. We used to take a course because we were interested in the subject, not because it would help us get a job.

+ I wanted to make a difference for our environment, and I had a dream to design beautiful structures for people. But I found out that architects are just cosmeticians. By the time an architect gets a project, all the major decisions have been made by the planners, by the developers and financiers. Really, there wasn’t room to do much in architecture.

+ As a citizen activist fighting developers in Kitsilano, one of the things I had to do was find out about the developers. I kind of became an expert in research. I happened to know a faculty member in the SFU School of Communication who was teaching a research course, but she wanted to do something else. So I started teaching a documentary research course and worked my way into the field of communications that way. I don’t think you could replicate that [career trajectory] today.

+ Capitalism worked really well in Canada and the U.S. from the 1950s to the 1970s. The economy was growing, there was almost full employment, people had good wages and they could buy houses and cars. That was a great period in capitalist history, so Not a Conspiracy Theory is not an attack – it’s a critique of what’s happened since.

+ Capitalism works best when government is in control, when there’s proper regulation of some of its excesses. I mean, just look at what happened last year in the financial market; that pretty well happened because of deregulation over the past 20 years. So maybe it’s time to reinvent capitalism, but they need to know what to do in order to have capitalism actually solve people’s problems.

+ Repetition is one the key aspects of any successful propaganda campaign; so any kind of an index that [think tanks] can put out every year is excellent. I fault the media most for never laying out the relationship between think tanks and funding sources. Like, for instance, ranking hospitals as good and bad, like they do in British Columbia. It’s expensive to accumulate all of those statistics, and manipulate and analyze them. Who’s paying for those rankings? Who would benefit from those rankings? Nobody asks those questions.

+ The issues that the mainstream media give the most coverage, well, those are the issues that the public think are the most important and then become the issues that the decision makers turn to. It’s calculus. If a newspaper has a story on the front page for a few days, people will tend to think it’s an important issue.

+ The right to know is critical. You just need to know what’s going on, so you can make your own decisions. U

While checking in my cumbersome bicycle at the Jasper Train Station, the VIA Rail agent asks what I do for a living. I’m used to asking other people that question, so I stumble, “Uh, um, well, I’m a freelance writer.” He’s intrigued, and asks if I’m working on any stories. I tell the agent about Unlimited’s Job Training series and he says immediately, “You should talk to Janice. She’s a character!” I’m glad I did.

VITALS: Janice Branch, station service attendant, Jasper

What does a station service agent do?
Half the job is customer service: checking in luggage and answering questions. When the train is in the station, it’s an intense hour of switching luggage on and off the train and assisting passengers. The work pace is a challenge. The first few hours of your shift are relaxed and then the train pulls in and we have to get it serviced as fast as possible.

What are the perks of the job?
I never want to work a 9-to-5 job. I work 25 hours a week for Via and then as a server at a restaurant in Jasper the rest of the time. Some days I work at the station from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., which means I can mountain bike or hike in the morning. Everything I want to do is just outside my door. Other days I work from 11 to 3 and then rush over to the restaurant and serve until midnight. I like having a varied schedule. Plus, my “office” has a great view of the Rockies.

Right now this job only runs six months a year because there are fewer passengers during the winter. It takes about five years to work up the ladder and get a full-time senior staff job here. During the summer, I save on gas money by riding my bike to work. Then during the winter I live comfortably on my savings and travel. Last winter, I went to Nepal. Right now, it’s important that I have the flexibility of half a year off. At the same time, I know that in a few years I’ll work a steady job.

Does travelling help your job?
I’ve lived on every continent, so I can put myself in other traveller’s shoes. Sometimes people will ask you a question about bus service or something that isn’t related to Via, but I understand that. When you’re travelling, you just need information and I happen to be standing there, so I’ll help out. I also speak French and Spanish. That comes in handy quite a bit!

Working for Via means you can live anywhere in Canada. Are you tempted to hitch a ride somewhere else like, say, Pukatawagan, Manitoba?
I can’t imagine living anywhere other than Jasper. When I was looking to settle down in Canada, I visited Jasper for two weeks and I just knew I was staying for good. I do miss friends and family in my hometown, Bathurst [New Brunswick], but sometimes a position opens up there and I’m like “Nah. I’m here to stay.” U

Laura Trethewey is riding the train from Toronto to Vancouver and meeting regular Canadians along the way for our Job Training series. Every city she stops in she’ll ask one regular person about what they do for a living. Unlimited is posting the conversations on our interactive map.

Eric Poulin had never attempted a back flip until he tucked into a giant terrain park jump at the Lake Louise ski area. Some of his first attempts were not pretty and the falls should have hurt, maybe even broken a bone. Instead he said, “Falling felt great.”

Board Member: Aaron Coret (bottom left, in ballcap) of Katal Innovations

Poulin is an adrenaline junkie with a high tolerance for pain, but his confidence is more than an athlete’s brash ignorance of the risks of the sport. Lining the landing zone – the place where Poulin’s body should have collided with enough force to paralyze him – was a five-foot-thick air pad designed to cushion the worst terrain park wipe-outs. “It’s like landing in deep [snow],” Poulin says. “When you fall the pad absorbs all the force you give it.”

Known simply as the Landing Pad, Poulin’s cushion was designed with intimate knowledge. Aaron Coret, one of the designers of the pad, is in a wheelchair today from a bad crash in Blackcomb’s terrain park. As he lay in a hospital bed, Coret came up with an idea for a product that would help other people avoid the dangers of the sport. Along with Stephen Slen, his business partner and a fellow engineering student at the University of British Columbia, Coret’s nightmare evolved into a school project and now into Katal Innovations, the company the duo started in 2007 to sell the Landing Pad around the world.

The 15-by-27-metre pad is anchored below the lip of a terrain park jump and runs to the end of the runout zone. An air compressor fills two chambers to a combined width of 1.5 metres. Miss a jump and the pad softens the landing; land properly and it feels like landing on snow. Coret and Slen hope Landing Pad will help prevent accidents like the one that cost Coret his passion, but they have two other objectives: to create a safer way for top level skiers and boarders to learn new tricks. If they succeed, Landing Pad could open terrain parks up to a whole new group of riders. “The terrain park is a fantastic place, but it can also be a scary place,” says Coret, who looks at the Landing Pad as a way to give back to the sport he still loves. “I want to bring people into the freestyle, who are afraid of going in the terrain park or half pipe because they’re afraid of getting hurt. I want to create a new safety standard.”

With the help of an angel investor, Katal was able to build its first prototypes. After a few private test sessions on the Blackcomb Glacier in summer 2008, Katal rolled out its latest incarnation in May 2009 at Lake Louise’s terrain park. On what is traditionally one of the slowest weekends of the year, more than 365 people showed up to give it a try.

Bolstered by that success, the duo is now busy balancing fourth year engineering courses and launching a company. A private investor has come forth with a much-needed injection of capital. (The specifics haven’t been finalized and Coret declined to provide details.) Factories have been sourced and they’re working now on finessing the business model and pricing.

“We realized that if all we did was sell Landing Pads we won’t be able to support ourselves in a few years. We need a continual income,” Coret explains. The plan is to lease to resorts three sizes of pads – the original size, a smaller “beginner” version and an off-snow model – on a yearly basis, providing a service and warranty to go along with the product. For Katal this plan ensures they don’t sell themselves out of work and that they retain some control over how the pad is advertised and used.

This control is about more than monitoring their image – it may help limit their liability. Katal Innovations will train ski resort staff to properly set up and manage the system, help create guidelines for use and develop signage and instruction for the public. Coret’s wants the Landing Pad to become an industry standard that will work with terrain park signage. In exchange, he says, ski hills get a new product to offer their customers, a safe program that should reduce injuries, first aid costs and liability, along with additional revenue by charging a service fee to use Landing Pad.

Now all they need to do is make some sales. Ski resorts and camps all over the world, from New Zealand’s Snowpark to Lake Louise, have already perked up and Katal is taking the Landing Pad on the road this winter to resorts across North America. Coret and Slen will measure lift ticket sales to use in their sales pitch and create a grassroots interest among riders. “Ski hills rely on snow to draw crowds,” says Coret, adjusting his straight brimmed ball cap, just off centre. “But weather patterns are changing. In a bad season they need something else to create the draw. We think this is it.” U