Northern exposure helps create software designer

Life in remote Fort Vermilion, a mostly Métis community about nine hours north of Edmonton, helped a former resident become a successful software designer.

 “When building software you constantly need to communicate what’s in your head to others. If you’re not an effective communicator, you’re not an effective entrepreneur, manager, or software developer. I can trace my ability to communicate back to what I first learned in high school,” said Dwayne Mercredi, partner in Invisible Software, which operates under the name Attassa.

Taking math through Distance Learning on computer also helped. Since he was a whiz at math and the computer-based course allowed him to work at his own pace, he completed Math 20, 30 and 31 in Grade 11.

It also taught him the value of working independently.
“In the process I learned how to teach myself something substantial and how much I can get done if I just jump ahead on my own initiative – I didn’t have to wait for someone else to tell me to do the work, I should just do it,” he said.

“When I got out of school I was ready to jump into a startup and test myself and what I knew in the real world. This mindset has been absolutely essential when building my own company, because now I truly have no-one to tell me what I should do; I need to figure that out as I go.”

One of the recent successful ventures Attassa has had is selling the application Whole Contacts for iPhone or iPad. It is billed as the “fastest and easiest way to manage the communications with your email, Facebook and Twitter contacts.”

Invisible Software, founded with partners Rod Frey and David Quail, is working on ways to improve usage of email, specifically Microsoft’s Outlook, the default service used by the business community.

“The initial vision was to fix problems with email-based collaboration but we’ve since refocused on helping other companies easily bring their apps right into Microsoft Outlook and email,” said Mercredi, in an email interview from his home in Seattle.

While there has been consumer demand for exactly that type of service, companies haven’t acted on it because it is “difficult and costly.”

“We’ve made it quick and easy,” said Mercredi.

It lets users find any email, attachment, Facebook update with a few taps no matter how old it is. Whole Contacts shows all contacts, whether email, Facebook or Twitter, in one place. It can also be hooked up to where ever a cell phone is.

Mercredi is the eldest son of Wayne (Butch) and Pat Mercredi, life-long residents of Fort Vermilion.

Mercredi would like his sons to experience a more Canadian lifestyle, snow, spending time in the bush and playing hockey but given the concentration of the technology industry in the western US, Mercredi said he, wife Shawna and four boys will remain residents of the US for a while.

While software can be created wherever there is fast Internet, it almost always takes a team. And right now, Mercredi is in the right place.