Lean Startup

How Are We Doing?

It’s been about a year now since we started using a Help Desk platform for inquiries and support, and besides being an invaluable tool for managing all of our conversations, it’s given us real insight into how our clients feel about our performance. The Help Desk has allowed us to […]

We’re Hiring!

Uncanny Owl is looking for an experienced WordPress Developer to join our team on a full time or contract basis. We need help with all development stages of WordPress projects, including creating and customizing complex plugins, modifying and styling themes, and even some front-end design. Experience developing large membership sites

WordPress Developer Needed

Right now we’re really busy at Uncanny Owl, so we’re building out the team to improve our capacity and capability. That means we have an immediate need for a part-time WordPress developer, ideally in the Toronto area. We need someone who’s done a lot of work with WordPress customizations. Great

Pitching eLearning to Small Businesses

I’m still new to elearning consulting and marketing my business. My partner and I have a really broad set of skills, so we started off by saying we did “everything”, which of course meant that nobody knew what Uncanny Owl did. Worse, our networks aren’t that big (I was at

How We Created Grade Hacks

Now that Grade Hacks is live, we’re excited to tell you more about what went into it. It wasn’t easy setting up a learning platform that lets us deliver engaging courseware at negligible monthly cost! Grade Hacks is built on WordPress. Cost and ease of maintenance were certainly big considerations

Introducing Grade Hacks

Uncanny Owl’s first product, Grade Hacks, went live this morning. Our experience suggested that schools focused too much on teaching information rather than teaching students how to learn and succeed, so we created Grade Hacks to address this learning gap. Using interactive e-learning lessons, videos, downloadable tools, calculators, progress tracking

When “Minimum” Trumps “Viable” – Risks of the MVP

Uncanny Owl is working on several new projects, and as a small startup, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) model certainly has appeal. By creating and launching a basic product, companies are able to assess market interest, leverage the community to shape its future into something marketable, and minimize their risk

An Experiment in Guest Blogging

Last week I decided to write an article on e-learning and see if a popular e-learning news source might be interested in publishing it. Even if it didn’t work out, I thought I might be able to get some feedback and insight on how guest blogging worked. And if it

Finding the Right Tools

We’re still on the hunt for the right tools for the right workflow – and we’re failing miserably. With so many SAAS products on the market today, it should be easy to find something that fits our needs, right? Surprisingly, we’re struggling. We’ve spent the better part of 2 days

Hypothesis Testing – Finding Participants

Further to the last Uncanny Owl post, we’re finding it more difficult than expected to get certain groups to complete our surveys. We’re trying to collect data for our Canada Translates project, and to do that we need feedback from 2 groups – translators and businesses that need translation. Finding

Hypothesis Testing – A Lesson in Hacking

Last week we recovered from a catastrophic data loss with one of our hosting providers. This week some of our hypothesis testing attracted the interest of a rather clever script kiddy looking to mine Amazon gift cards. We’re having lots of fun online. 🙂 We’re currently trying to get feedback

Hello World

Welcome to Uncanny Owl’s official blog! This is where we’ll informally talk about some of the things we’re working on and some of the things we’re learning. It’s also where we’ll ask for help from you.  

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