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September 24, 2018 Alex Keats

Week 3 - Settled In

Let’s discuss the progress of this week’s three main goals.


  1. Tax accounting - confirm whether or not I have an HST number. If I do, find out when I need to remit my taxes.

After a few failed attempts at surfing the CRA site and making phone calls, I finally got through to a gentleman on Friday who helped me in finding my business number, corporation number and HST number. We also confirmed out fiscal year end, and when I need to remit my taxes by (March 2019). This is quite the relief, as the fact that I hadn’t paid my texts yet has been looming overhead for quite some time.


  1. Finalize the competition processes - finish the document in its entirety with a checklist, supporting documents, and determine how to ease email sending.

This is taking a lot more work that I had anticipated, that being said I did finish my documentation for how to run a competition. I still need to do the supporting processes though such as:

  1. The email system for emailing competition winners (might want to create cards and hand them out at competitions, rather than sending emails)
  2. The email templates for emailing competitors and volunteers prior to the competition
  3. Signage for competitions is style nothing
  4. Certificate templates for all competition winners
  5. Merchandise apparel

  1. Edit and post the first vlog - this is a project I’ve wanted to start for a little bit, I think it would be fun and beneficial but the first step is editing my footage.

I have edited and posted the first vlog type video on my channel. The goal of this series is to show cubers the behind the scenes and the lifestyle of what it’s like to run a cube store. This series will also keep me in check and act as further documentation for what I have been up to. I don’t expect this series to reap great benefits, but it is a personal project that I’ve been looking to do for quite some time now.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTk8UfH3Pds&t=38s


Aside from the goals that I mentioned, I also worked furth on CANcube Custom and made huge progresses in that department. We launched the site and I’m really liking the look of it. This took about 5 meetings from Michael and I over the course of the week to figure out. The form at the bottom of the page is still off skew but I’m unsure of how to fix it right now. On top of designing and posting the website, we’ve also created plenty of procedures for finding customers, reaching out to them, managing them and strategies for marketing. We’ve also built out the beginnings of a pricing model so that my friend Michael can begin reaching out to clients and offering them some of our products.

Overall I’m really happy with the progress that I made last week. I accomplished 90% of the goals that I set out to achieve, fell into a much more comfortable workflow, and managed to still be active and balanced. Lots, lots of progress was made this week and it feels really good.


Ideas that were suggested to me this week:


  • The competition experience - Darin from the Laurier Library Makerspace is quite the font of good ideas. He suggested that we overall the entire competition experience. We keep the basics that will keep everything in check with the WCA but turn it into a crazy experience that will wow the guests that come. He referenced tech events and how they are over the top, well organized. They shuttle you, they feed you great meals, they have amazing speakers, it really is quite the show. How do we turn a cubing competition into an event where everyone comes and talks about how it was the greatest one they’ve ever attended. Darin mentioned having a building that is specifically meant for running competitions, it’s optimized in such a way that it is perfect for hosting these events. Take in a ton of people, have paid (Select certified) staff, have amazing food, have entertainment for those who aren’t solving in the form of other games, or speakers, giveaways, or things like that. Make everything feel big, have a giant Rubik’s cube. I was thinking of also having http://cubeworks.ca/ exhibit at the show. Host this competition semi-annually or annually and charge a lot for entrance. So here’s how it would work from a business perspective. My business would charge the WCA a fee to put on this competition and manage it. This fee would in turn be covered by the registration costs. If we had 300 people come, at $50-100 a ticket, that could generate some serious revenues and should probably cover the costs of that kind of event. This is something I definitely want to look into further.

    • This upcoming week is going to be another stressful one. I’m in NYC until Tuesday for leisure but while I’m here, I now need to do a lot to prepare for the Vancouver competition on Sunday. That will be my entire job this week. Making sure that I get to Vancouver with everything that I need and that Vancouver Select can run as a very well organized competition.


    I need to:

    • Design certificates
    • Print, cut scorecards
    • Print, cut name tags
    • Ensure we have extra equipment that’s needed like gloves, hand sanitizer, elastics
    • Email competitors and volunteers
    • Organize Niagara Select
    • Figure out what to do with LaunchPad, further steps.

    This boils down to Vancouver Select 2018, Niagara Select 2018 and LaunchPad orientations.

    Previous article Week 4 - Getting ready for Vancouver
    Next article Week 2 - Setting Up