Thinkers, designers, coders, and friends – crafting the web every day.
View Our WorkIt takes great people and ideas, plus a little elbow grease and fairy dust to make something special on the web.
We love what we do, and each day we bring all of our creative energy to work – building web and mobile applications that help our clients meet their goals. We’ve honed our process over the years, demonstrating value early and often, using agile practices to deliver what is needed, and omit what is not.
Meet the Team
Not just computer geeks; we’re also travelers, wine drinkers, bike mechanics, musicians, soccer players, film buffs, and, of course, active business people.
Meet the TeamTestimonials
After 9 years, 1 month, 19 days, our clients are still our fans.
AGORACOM has become the web's leading small-cap community in large part due to the efforts of Dominic and his team at The Working Group. I can unequivocally say they are a true partner.
Agoracom.com
The Working Group has developed a very impressive modelling process that has exceeded the expectations of Framework Foundation. TWG was essential in making Framework a big hit with our volunteers, partner agencies and key-stakeholders.
Framework Foundation
I feel that I have found an organized company who are willing to listen, roll up their sleeves and work together. The team is obviously very capable and built exactly what I needed and they don't suffer from that often fatal malady, the inability to communicate with the client.
HeritageCookbook.com
Our Blog
Elbow Grease & Fairy DustOur Team
What happens when you do what you love
Every successful project needs a unique cast of actors. From the owners to designers, writers to coders, and testers to users, we’ve got a broad range of skills and haircuts. It lets us fit seamlessly with your team, ensuring that your project doesn’t get caught in an endless loop of uncertainty, but instead has the players to see the vision and direction through to a successful launch.
Dominic Bortolussi @dombort
Co-founder and CEO of The Working Group, Dom Bortolussi grew up in Halifax, studied biology and philosophy at Queen’s, and moved to Toronto to get into Web development when it was still dial-up modems and message boards. A gardener, chef, and a wine lover, Dom enjoys quality in all things, business included.
Aside from his years of experience in technology and consulting, Dom built The Working Group on the simple principle that you do good work because you enjoy what you do and you like your clients. As we turn ten years old in 2012, this business proposition is at our core – it has led countless happy customers to greater prosperity, operational agility, and community involvement online.
Andrés Aquino @eh_eh
Andrés was born in El Salvador, raised in Toronto, and has travelled throughout Europe, Latin America, Australia, and the Middle East. After a degree from Western studying Urban Development, he co-founded the successful online charity mall ClickGreener.com, which was courted and eventually acquired by Air Miles.
Andrés is a Partner at TWG, and in 2009 co-founded PostageApp.com, a SaaS-based Email Delivery service for web apps. Thanks to Andrés’ first-hand knowledge of the client-side experience, The Working Group has a distinct advantage in reading and advocating for the particular development and business goals of each client. Think of him as our in-house entrepreneur.
Joaquim “Jack” Neto @jack_neto
Jack was born in Coruche, Portugal. Before he moved to Canada in May, 2005, he did a BSc in software engineering at New University of Lisbon and worked for the European Space Agency. This gig required not only theoretical knowledge of electromagnetism and astronomical motion, but practical applications as well: “We had to know exactly where the satellites were at all times, so we'd go outside and watch them pass.”
Jack was employee #1 at TWG back in 2005, and is now a Partner and Tech Lead of a 10 person dev team. Jack’s a quick study, a perfectionist, and an old hand at information handling and graphic interfaces. He plays soccer, drums, and you'd be hard pressed to catch him without a smile on his face.
Chris Eben @ceben
Chris comes to The Working Group after 14 years in the Enterprise Software Market, focused on Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management. He’s held roles in product management, and client services - most recently as Director of Product Management at Actuate Corporation.
Born and raised in Toronto, Chris called San Francisco home for over 2 years, living through the first internet bubble, and then moved to London for 2 more years to set up his company’s operations in Europe. Chris completed his MBA at Kellogg and landed back in Toronto where he’s become deeply involved in the tech and startup community. Helping to bring Startup Weekend to Canada, Chris acts as the organizer for Startup Weekend Toronto and is a co-organizer of the LeanCoffeeTO meetup group.
Scott Tadman @tadmanter
A Toronto native, Scott studied computer engineering at U of T and today lives on Queen West not far from our studio. Scott gets satisfaction from making things work, but more importantly, he's interested in building tools to grow community online – in using technology to help people talk to each other.
Since 1990, before most of us had even heard of the web, Scott's been a database manager, network engineer, system administrator, software developer, creative director, writer, and electrician. Scott is TWG's Chief Architect, and in 2009 he created PostageApp.com, a SaaS-based Email Delivery service for web apps.
Jeremy Bower @jeremybower
As Director of Mobile Development, Jeremy brings 10 years of experience building great software products to TWG. He has worked at three startups that were acquired; one of them by RIM. Since 2008, he has launched mobile apps on 5 platforms for startups, large media brands, sports teams, and businesses.
Jeremy has called Toronto home for most of his life. He studied computer science at Queen's University in Kingston, and later added a business degree from Ryerson University in Toronto. Jeremy also loves to travel. His numerous trips to Italy have given him an appreciation of fine wine and fine food... which fits in well with the rest of the TWG team.
Oleg Khabarov @GroceryBagHead
Oleg moved from Lviv, Ukraine to Ontario at age 17 and did a BSc in computer science at U of Windsor.
On weekends, he bikes rough trails by day and surfs the web by night, probing the latest developments in code, architecture, and user interface design. Critical in approach and exacting in character, Oleg insists on only first-rate conception, design, and execution.
Hesham El-Nahhas @he5ham
Born in Edmonton and raised in Cairo, Hesham got his BSc in Egypt and is working on a Master's of information at U of T. His area of research investigates how knowledge is organized and shared culturally, both online and off.
Hesham loves a puzzle. He has immense fascination for the intricacies of code, and better ways to create it. Hesham’s dignified patience with detailed troubleshooting goes hand-in-hand with a knack for technology.
Stephen McLeod
Stephen grew up drinking milk and bailing hay in the small town of Lindsay, Ontario! At a very tender age, Stephen went to the University of Guelph to study Studio Art. A self-taught developer, Stephen started out by creating modifications for video games and moved on to programming. Stephen is a musician, an artist, and a sweater-afficionado.
Stephen is a part of a collective of artists called VSVSVS (pronounced versus versus versus) where he crafts songs, organizes events, and builds strange and wonderful new instruments.
Dessy Daskalov @dess_e
Dessy studied Mathematics and Engineering at Queen’s University. She’s also a girl. It’s very rare. A self-proclaimed nerd, Dessy is very opinionated and can often be found having heated discussions regarding politics. Originally from Bulgaria, Dessy visits the homeland every two years.
When not busy being a crack developer, she can be found cooking vegan meals, wandering around museums and art galleries, or randomly taking an art class. One day, Dessy plans to bring the delights of poutine to Bulgaria, open a chain of franchises, and retire fabulously wealthy.
Jon Lim @jonlim
Jon was born in the Philippines, immigrated to Toronto at the age of six and grew up surrounded by blinking lights, technological gadgets and battery powered doodads. A graduate of the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Management co-op program with a specialization in Marketing and Strategic Management, Jon is The Working Group’s Marketing Department. Specifically, for PostageApp.
During his spare time, Jon enjoys learning to cook delicious food (and eating it all), playing video games, or participating in various sports and performing feats of strength.
Brian Gilham @bgilham
Brian Gilham is a developer, entrepreneur, inventor, funny and all-round great guy. Now he's a TWG guy.
Brian caught the entrepreneur bug in a big way by co-founding 2010′s StartupWeekend Toronto winner Task Ave. It’s an amazing iPhone app that lets you connect reminders to a geographical location, and then buzzes you when you are near those spots. Brian brings a great range of front-end development skills and is now hard at work brushing up his coding chops with the big boys. His voice, heart and biceps are legendary.
Peter Sobot @psobot
Born and raised in the riveting suburbs of Toronto, Peter is currently studying Software Engineering at the University of Waterloo.
When he's not at the office, he's probably making, learning about, listening to, writing, or otherwise working with music. He likes music. Peter also enjoys merging music and technology in new ways, and is always hacking on musical projects like his online music remixer (go check out the.wubmachine.com). Some say that he likes Dubstep, and that he only listens to music that you've ever heard of. Peter really likes music. Music.
Zameer Manji @zmanji
Zameer was born in Toronto (Canada). He's currently studying at the University of Waterloo but has actually been programming since shortly after birth.
When he's not working as an co-op intern for TWG, Zameer can be found reading all sorts of books - paperback, hardcover, and tablet based, arguing about everything under the sun and listening to music. He spends the rest of his time plotting to one day start his own firm and take the suck out of everything terrible.
Anthony Wong @anthowong
Born and raised in Calgary, Anthony decided to ride off into the sunrise to study Software Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Having been around computers since he was 4, developing software seemed a good next logical step. His latest passion is mobile development.
When Anthony isn't at the office developing software, you can probably find him catching up on those long lost ZZZZs, hacking (and sometimes breaking) his latest gadgets or training his finger dexterity by playing video games.
No egos and drama over here. We like solving problems with you, and then doing the heavy lifting.
About The Working Group
Since 2002, TWG has designed and built web sites, web applications, iPhone apps, and system integrations for entrepreneurs, mature businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations.
Value based development.
We’ve worked hard to shape a culture that produces great results for our clients, by keeping things flexible, collaborative, and focused on delivering the highest value work first. We offer thoughtful, realistic and valuable options to our clients, not pie in the sky dreams that won’t deliver benefits.
Agile, open source culture.
Much of our cultural growth over the past few years comes from the research into, and implementation of Agile practices in creating software. We’ve embraced Agile Software Development techniques, and regularly revisit our processes to refine and improve.
We like to use Ruby on Rails as a web development framework because it offers superior testing and debugging tools, deployment management, extensive and growing libraries of open source code, as well as proven measures to maintain high security on your website and applications.
Web
We’ve worked with clients big & small – from entrepreneurs to universities, ad agencies to charities.
Each project is unique, but what’s constant is the need for clear goals, a good plan, and then the right people to deliver.
We’re always happy to sit down with a coffee and discuss your ideas. Give us a call.
PostageApp
PostageApp is the easier way to send emails from your web apps. It manages sending, it tracks delivery and gives you analytics so you can better manage the thousands of emails your web app sends out.
It started out as a simple service for sending email from our own web apps. As months went by, we migrated all of our projects, found the bugs, and made it faster, more stable, and prettier. Once we were really happy with it, we opened it up to other developers and web shops with the same issues.
PostageApp now has a thriving subscriber base, a growing open source community, and a ton of great features in the pipeline.
Dark City Coffee Co.
Since 1987, Dark City Coffee has been roasting some of the best coffee in the world! Dark City partnered with us to re-think their online presence and help them expand their thriving business with an online shop.
We delivered a beautiful site that introduces the visitor to the world of premium roasted coffee and delivers the Dark City philosophy of fresh roasted coffee delivered to your door. Through the integration of a very capable e-commerce platform called shopify, Dark City can now track and manage their online store and get customers they may have never reached before.
Agoracom
Agoracom, an online resource for small-cap investors, needed to grow quickly and attract more people and participation. They came to us with an idea but needed the technical muscle to get it done. We designed and developed their dynamic new platform and took the site from 20,000 to 300,000 daily page views in just six months.
Our solution is a completely custom Ruby on Rails application that not only looks good, but has scaled to meet Agoracom’s growth and has grown to accommodate the requests and needs of their user base.
Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Program
The Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Program is a CIHR awarded national program to educate the next generation of research scientists. The system combines our ‘Sofa’ Content Management System (CMS), with a community learning management system (LMS). Adopted at over 20 research centres across Canada, the system provides a specialized set of tools for both Mentors and Trainees to collaborate within a Case based curriculum and evaluation structure.
Civic Footprint
Over the past six years, we've worked with the Framework Foundation to build and maintain a number of web sites and tools like timeraiser.ca and civicfootprint.ca that give their small and committed team the ability punch way above their weight in the world of charities and volunteer management tools. The Civic Footprint calculator is our latest collaboration with Framework, and guides people through an exercise to see the impact of their monthly commitments of Time, Money and Participation.
Campus Perks
Dave Wilkin and the talented team at Redwood Strategic have dramatically changed the landscape of Youth and Campus marketing and they approached The Working Group to help them design and build a platform to support their vision. CampusPerks.ca was born as a way for brands to connect with students in a fun and meaningful way.
Tightly integrated with Facebook and Youtube, Campusperks.ca lets students post text, photos and videos as contest entries, and then spread the word to gather as many votes as they can.
The Big Picture with Barry Ritholtz
Barry Ritholtz regularly lands among the top 10 financial bloggers in the world. Barry approached The Working Group a couple years ago to rework his popular Wordpress site, optimize the code, tune the database, and help him manage the millions of visitors he gets every month.
Wordpress started out a number of years ago as a simple blog engine, but today has matured to be a versatile web platform that millions love. Because of it’s growing popularity, we’ve built a custom server stack to run Wordpress instances with high security, reliable backups and around the clock monitoring.
Ad Agencies and Communications
Over the past decade, we’ve worked with many of Toronto’s top agencies, helping them with some technical wizardry or design challenge, often under tight timelines.
Turns out we’re nice, well adjusted, people, and we like to work with other teams. From design to code to prototypes, we’re available to work with agencies and help them round out their skill set.
Over the years, we've worked with: High Road Communications, Cossette, John St., Extreme Group, Sequentia, Brain Rider, Evoke Solutions, Milestone Integrated.
Mobile
It isn’t about web vs. mobile...
...it’s about combining the strengths of web + mobile together to help our clients get to where they want to be.
Modern day apps require deployment across multiple platforms and devices.
TWG customers receive the benefit of our experience across web + mobile based software. Let's talk mobile.
Mobile Monday (iOS)
Mobile Monday, referred to as MoMo began back in 2000 as a group of 50 mobile innovators getting together to talk and share stories on the mobile industry. The concept spread and now exists in cities around the world.
TWG created a simple iOS application to allow MoMo attendees to be alerted to upcoming events, including the ability to register, read up on each event and, most importantly, network with fellow attendees. Networking is an important aspect of the MoMo event series and the application allows attendees to connect using their LinkedIn profiles. The app also allows users to follow the event twitter stream and easily join the conversation on twitter.
Dan Garson's Woodstock Experience (iOS)
Dan Garson's Woodstock Experience is an interactive iPad app which tells the story of that seminal event through Dan's nearly 200 amazing photographs and narration by Michael Lang and Rona Elliot. Users are able to create slideshows set to their own iTunes music, email pictures to friends, and read Dan's original manuscript. It's an engaging account of a young man's trip to the concert that changed everything.
1THING
(mobile web)
1THING app is a gratitude diary that lets you appreciate your life, 1THING at a time... right on your mobile phone. 1THING also shows you what pieces of gratitude are trending in your life, and even a look into what others in the 1THING community are grateful for.
Our solution is a mobile web application to allow for cross-platform use, right out of MVP. The back-end is built on Ruby on Rails, and the front-end is optimized for iOS and Android mobile devices.
iVision Manager (iOS)
Grace Hill, a provider of education and networking services for the multifamily industry, needed a way to allow clients to browse their employee training data while out of the office. The solution, a custom iPhone and iPad app, allows clients to browser detailed employee transcripts, view a summary to see training compliance by employee or property, and plot property locations on a map. iVision Manager has become an indispensable tool to many of Grace Hill's clients.
Agoracom (iOS)
Agoracom, an online resource for small-cap investors, needed to grow quickly and attract more people and participation. They came to us with an idea but needed the technical muscle to get it done. We designed and developed their dynamic new platform and took the site from 20,000 to 300,000 daily page views in just six months.
The natural extension for a site like this is to make the same information easily available through an easy to use mobile app. From this, the Agoracom iPhone app was born.
Partners + Clients
TWG is proud to work with our design partners: Jet Cooper and Studio Function on mobile + web development projects.
Our Services
In a nutshell, we help organizations build and grow their business online by providing strategic guidance, design, mobile + web application development, and ongoing support and hosting.
Strategy & Design
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Business Canvas
Problem validation; Customer Segments; Unique Value Proposition
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User Experience Design
We design UX to highlight your product's unique value proposition
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Interface Design
Making interactions simple, efficient and brand sensitive
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Analytics
Conversion Strategy, Measuring success, SEO
Mobile + Web Dev
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Mobile app development
iOS, Android, Blackberry and mobile web.
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Web application development
Planning and building an application that is tailored to your business goals.
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Content management systems
Simple online tools that allow you to manage the text, images, videos, and pages, on your website.
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E-commerce systems
Online storefronts, product and inventory management tools, payment gateways, and merchant accounts.
Support & Hosting
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Hosting
Scalable, well-priced, reliable hosting options for your apps.
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Application & Server Admin Support
On demand application and server support
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Infrastructure Support Tools
Server monitoring; daily backups; recovery systems
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Training
We'll train your dev team to support your app after we've built it
Depending on the project and your abilities, we can take an advisory role in strategy and development or do all the heavy lifting. In all cases, our attention to detail and obsession over quality ensures a great result.
How We Do It
TWG works using Agile methodologies. Agile separates each project into short, discrete ‘sprints’ of work that allow for frequent feedback and modification. In short, you get results early, we get feedback early and any unforeseen changes are smoothly integrated into the final result.
For entrepreneurs, we’re an ideal consulting partner. We’ve worked with dozens of successful entrepreneurs and start ups, and have earned our stripes in the trenches. We’re well versed in the Lean startup movement, and can work with you to get the most out of your idea. In the past, we’ve acted as a technical partner to help secure early funding, and we’ve worked with clients to develop nascent ideas into full-fledged business plans.
Discovery
First, we get together to talk about your overall business goals. Every project has various business goals - some explicit, some implicit. This discovery process allows us to define the primary goals of the project and get to know each other a bit better.
Armed with a strong understanding of your goals, we run an afternoon workshop - brainstorming and researching ways to deliver the greatest value and meet your goals. We identify the technical and content features of the project and we allow you to rank the ones that are most important. This forms the foundation of our Agile sprints and future collaboration.
Let’s have a coffee
Like what you see? Got a great project in mind? We’d love to hear about it. Give us a call and let’s grab a coffee.
+1 (416) 850 2500
The Working Group
M5V 2B7