Nmédia's 20th anniversary Our story from the year 2000 until now

Nmédia Solutions, our name at the time proposed by Carl Savoie, was founded by Bernard Robitaille. In the early 2000s, the idea was struck from the shared willingness of Drummond Info Plus (led by Bernard Robitaille) and the agency Tac.Tic Savoie Baril Inc. (founded by Louis‑Philippe Baril and Carl Savoie) to make the most of the web and digital bubble to have a strong presence across the board in marketing and digital printing. Thus it was, that by combining the efforts of this terrific team with allies such as Groupe Signet Plus (founded by Steve Patenaude), Pascal Genest (Tabasko) and the late Pierre Toutant (who already had a few years of web experience under his belt), that Nmédia was born.

Incidentally, our first offices were those of Drummond Info Plus located on Saint-Joseph Boulevard in Drummondville.

• Bernard Robitaille who founded Nmédia
• Pascal Genest, owner of Tabasco
• The late Pierre Toutant
• Steve Patenaude, founder of Groupe Signet Plus (and former Nmédia shareholder)
• Louis-Philippe Baril (current CEO of Nmédia), one of the two founders of Tac.Tic Savoie Baril Inc.

We had the idea to create our own CMS (Altitude) to design our website projects without using a major CMS of the time, such as Websphere.

Sounds like a big mission, you think? At Nmédia, we thrive on challenges, and you will see that it didn't take long before we got moving!

At Nmédia, we have created websites for many diverse sectors of activity. In the goal of creating a website for traumatology specialists and for the entire medical community within the francophone world, we launched traumaquebec.com (French only).

It is thanks to the Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur traumatology foundation and the initiative of Dr. Pierre Garneau at Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur in Montreal and Dr. Daniel Thauvette at Hôpital de l'Enfant-Jésus in Quebec City that we were able to achieve this project.

In February 2004, Bernard Robitaille accepted Louis‑Philippe's purchase offer. The transaction was completed before the attorney Gilles Lafrenière (today a judge at the Cour du Québec), a long-time Nmédia partner. This was made possible thanks to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and Investissement Québec.

During the transaction, Steve Patenaude also became an Nmédia shareholder. He and Louis‑Philippe have known each other since the age of 4, having played hockey together.

By the end of 2005, we had developed an Altitude website for the CHUM oncological gynecology services.

Google sometimes had various surprises in store for us with its algorithm to classify websites in searches. When we searched for "oncological gynecology services" on Google, Nmédia website came up first in the search results because of our press release that we published concerning the CHUM mandate. And if we searched for "oncological gynecology services CHUM", we came up 3rd in the Google results!

Among the rookies of the year, we find Vincent Beaulieu, Mélanie Gosselin and Patrick Bélanger, who are still members of the Nmédia team in 2020.

For Patrick, his first day at the office took place on the Saint-François River wakeboarding. 🏄‍♂ That's pretty cool when your onboarding day falls right on the activity for closing the summer schedule in a fitting way!

Later, Patrick became one of Nmédia's three shareholders, and today he is Vice President of Development, Technology and Innovation.

We decided to play a good prank on a colleague for April Fool's Day. At the time, we were actively seeking business partners to encourage an internet supplier to invest in our neighbourhood to develop a fibre optic network.

This colleague had made an agreement with Nmédia: if he succeeded in bringing fibre optic to our offices, he would receive a bonus to cover the fine he had received in March.

One of Patrick's friends called our colleague and pretended to be the Technical Director of Tuna Steel, a fictitious company located in Sainte‑Carpes‑des‑Marais. This fake business was going to open an office near us and wanted to be involved in bringing fibre optic to our neighbourhood. After the call, our colleague was jumping for joy and was very impatient to continue his discussion with the invented Technical Director.

Then, Martin Lamontagne, one of our clients at the time, decided to get on board with the April Fool's prank and he too called our colleague as Financial Director of Tuna Steel. They spoke about a budget, and he wanted to learn more about the project. After a good discussion with Martin, he just couldn't believe it. He was even happier and was cheering for joy because he was so glad.

Finally, our Nmedian believed it right to the end. You should have seen the expression on his face when he finally learned it was an April Fool's joke. It was magical!🤣 And yes, he had to pay his own fine!

Patrick, Stéphane and Cédric were the first three Nmédians to receive the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification on the Microsoft .Net development platform.

Over the following years, many other Nmédians also received their certification as did Nmédia that is certified in Microsoft Silver Cloud Customer Relationship Management, Microsoft Silver Windows and devices, Microsoft Gold Development in applications and Microsoft Gold Cloud Platform!

• Marie-Pierre Vincent, for the interface quality of her project
• Maxime Paquette, for the functions integrated into his project

With a growing team and the creation of a UX and design department, we needed more space! So in August 2010, we bought a building offering about 8,000 sq ft located at 1047 Mercure Boulevard in Drummondville. We redid the interior from A to Z. There was only one rule to respect: do not pierce through the exterior walls! For the preparation of our new acquisition, we must thank Construction Bertrand Dionne, Les Constructions Allard, Un à Un architectes, RCL, Pero Maître Électricien and Aménagement Paysager Lambert.

We must say that this building has served a wide variety of purposes in its lifetime before becoming our IT headquarters: automobile garages, government offices and even a funeral home.

We moved in on December 17, 2010, a very cold winter day!

In addition to our new offices in Drummondville, we also had offices in Saint-Hyacinthe.

On the recommendation of his cousin Patrick, Louis-David made his entrance at Nmédia for his master's project in UX and interface design on the Underworld Skateshop e-commerce website. At the same time, he joined his twin brother Marc‑Olivier, who had arrived a few months earlier.

Louis-David later became one of Nmédia's three shareholders (with Louis‑Philippe and Patrick), in addition to becoming Vice President of Digital Experience. Marc-Olivier became Director of Web Operations (French only).

We had submitted our candidature for the prestigious IMPACT Awards competition from Microsoft, a contest that rewards excellence and innovation among Microsoft's Canadian partners.

Cédric, Patrick and Louis‑Philippe were in the hotel bar in Toronto when Cédric and Patrick asked Louis‑Philippe if he had prepared something if Nmédia won. Louis‑Philippe didn't think we really had a chance, but since doubts had begun to creep in, he scratched out a speech quickly before the evening event.

When the category "Web development partner of the year" was announced, the award presenter said: "And with their project Altitude, the winner is... Nmédia!". Let us assure you that Louis‑Philippe was truly surprised that a small company in Drummondville would be the winner of such a prestigious award!

Here's a funny fact: the day of the gala coincided with the last day of Movember. You may not be surprised to learn that Louis-Philippe's moustache had grown to epic proportions! 😂

First, we signed Armatures Bois-Francs as a client. Their Excalibur software development project was one of our largest. Not to steal the punch, but an OCTAS is never too far off. 😉

That year, we also signed a large contract with Aviva Canada. The future has many surprises still in store...

Silverlight, was the plug-in of the future for web search engines to offer a more interactive experience on a website and create more immersive mobile applications. We implanted this plug-in in our CMS Altitude with great pride! We were even one of the first Canadian companies to have more than one person certified "Silverlight 4" within the same business!

Unfortunately, Silverlight is nothing but a distant memory, and it was quite an adventure to remove this technology from Altitude!

The Fondation Gervais-Talbot, which raises funds to help various organizations, approached us for sponsorship. Rather than simply giving a donation, we decided to do a bit more. We wanted to allow the foundation to raise more money and improve the experience during fundraisings or silent auctions for Omnium Gervais-Talbot.

The online auction platform Followmybid was born! We designed the entire thing and developed it to be user-friendly and accessible to all. Also, the platform has been used by various organizations over the years.

Since 2012, we've been lucky to count on big-hearted Nmédians who give their time without counting it. To raise funds for Leucan, we have had various ski and snowboard teams that take to the slopes for many Leucan Ski Challenge (French only). We have also attended delicious initiatives to collect donations with Nmédian BBQs and breakfasts that include pancakes/waffles/eggs/potatoes/sausages!

To crown it all, various Nmédians have been volunteers for different Leucan Ski Challange in terms of managing social media and SMS, wearing mascot suits, helping to build or dismantle the site, handing out snacks and more!

Alex Cyr is a guy we must truly thank. He literally opened the doors for us at Microsoft. He helped us better present ourselves to Microsoft and better understand the company and its particularities. We met Alex in a rather unexpected way:

Louis‑Philippe and Patrick were invited to Houston by Microsoft for their WPC event. After a private Lenny Kravitz show, they were looking for something to drink to continue the evening 🍻 when they heard about some Quebeckers in the stairway who were looking for the same thing. It was Alex Cyr with the guys from Solulan, an IT management company in Quebec. From there, Nmédia's access to innumerable Microsoft resources began. It would seem that this coincidence was a stroke of good fortune!

• OCTAS winner in Solutions d’affaires – Développement à l’interne 500 employés et plus category for the Armatures Bois-Francs Excalibur project
• OCTAS finalist in Solutions Web category for the Aviva Canada Leisure Quote project
• Reached the rank of 210th in the PROFIT 500 emerging Canadian leaders rankings that groups the fastest growing Canadian companies

With Aviva Canada, we had multiple projects underway, others in mind, and many future development plans. In 2014, the Vice President, Elan Satov, was passing through Drummondville to stop by our offices and talk. After the visit, he dropped the bomb: "Guys, it's over with Aviva." They decided to centralize their IT development in India.

The news was still resonating in Louis‑Philippe's office a few hours later, but he decided to roll up his shirt sleeves and get to work calling his contacts. Results: we signed various new projects, including the web portal for Transport Bourret (Thanks, François Bourret!), and we increased resources for the Armatures Bois‑Francs Excalibur project (Thank you, Claude Collin!).

Cascades Tissue Group had given us the mandate to create a mobile application allowing distributors and clients to access their product information at all times. By scanning a product's barcode with a smartphone or tablet, the user would then have access to the product specifications in addition to seeing other similar products.

Our biggest feat was to simultaneously launch the application on Windows Phone, Windows 8, iPhone, iPad, Android phone and Android tablet!

Some contracts get signed more quickly than others! That's what happened one afternoon in February 2015. Patrick and Louis‑Philippe had planned an exploratory lunch with Martin Paré from SSQ to discuss various potential projects and present Nmédia's expertise. Patrick had already met Martin a few times and had everything in mind to start the discussions. But he got hit by the flu and left Louis-Philippe to go to the meeting by himself, even if he had no idea what he was going to say!

They talked about this and that, and at the end of the meal, Martin said: "So, when do we start? With which project? I see a beautiful opportunity for partnership ahead of us with the business needs we have. We're going to evaluate a few projects and initiatives, and we will be able to evaluate if we have a fit!".

That was also the beginning, with Martin, of our first small mandate to review the presence of the SSQ brand on Wikipedia. This was quickly followed by the beginning of a promising project with Microsoft Dynamics, which a few months later would become the SSQ Travel Insurance website.

• In the Solutions d’affaires – Développement sur mesure – PME category for the Online services project from Transport Bourret (French only)
• In the Solutions Web category for our GPC module project Altitude3.net

Music is such a great way to transmit emotion and keep one's balance in life. And having a balance in life is so important!

We were involved in sports, education and health. All that was missing were the arts to complete our quartet. By investing in the Drummondville Symphonic Orchestra, we felt that we could make a difference to allow these musicians to do what they love most: make music with pleasure and passion (2 values that are very important at Nmédia!).

Louis-David was the winner of two beautiful awards when he was elected "Best Business Coach" at the Gala des Napoléon and as the first recipient of the "Mérite drummondvillois" L'Express, a local newspaper.

On the athletic side, our hockey team won the Thursday Night Hockey League tournament in Saint-Liboire. And in terms of inter-company activities, we won first place at the Défi Classe Affaires in the, "Équipe de rêve Performance" category.

After Raspberry Pi for Nmédia canteen management, we decided to push the machine a bit further... by implanting it in an arcade! Thanks to the talents of Vincent, Antoine, Stéphane and Patrick, we can now play over 30 retro video games dating from 1980-2000 in our arcade terminal 2.0 (French only).

Still using Rasberry Pi, Alex created a giant Nintendo remote (French only) for the game Super Mario Bros at the Défi Classe Affaires. The remote operation was simple: a player controlled Mario's direction, and another player controlled the speed and jumps.

The Remarkable Employer certification is one of the most beautiful signs of confidence that exists. We obtained it in 2018, thanks to our lovely team's efforts and openness during an exhaustive survey.

We wanted to offer them the best possible work environment. The survey allowed us to learn their current level of satisfaction, know what we were doing right and where we needed to improve. It was such an honour to receive this certification at our very first attempt and with such an excellent score! We need to shout out a big THANK YOU to our wonderful team and the incredible environment they have created over the years!

July 2, 2019, will remain deeply engraved in our memories for a long time. Nmédia was the victim of a cyber attack aiming to destroy everything we had built. Thankfully, as usual, Nmédians responded to the call by doubling down and getting Nmédia back on track and getting back into projects as soon as possible. With a great deal of resilience and many hours of lost sleep, we got back on our feet together in record time after this situation. Internally, we have nicknamed this attack The Hackening.

We will always remember the way our team was able to manage the situation. And we will never again forget Olivier Lussier's birthday, that's a promise.😉

Impossible to ignore the COVID-19 subject! From one day to the next, we went from having everyone in the office to everyone working from home. Once again, the team showed their strong ability for adapting quickly. We noticed once again that we can count on our soldiers and that we have an extraordinary gang that will never give up and always finds a way to get things done.

Starting a few days after confinement, we were able to continue our work from home while continuing to deliver projects.

• Supper from a local restaurant for their entire family
• A crate of local fresh fruits and veggies
• A gourmet box to celebrate our 20th anniversary from a distance
• Masks so they can all stay safe

We also organized a virtual cafeteria, quizzes, virtual cocktail hours and even had yoga and CrossFit classes online!

Our Nmedians are our most important wealth. We have always worked hard to offer them the best: remote working, telemedicine, mental health care, games area, themes days, various activities, Friday afternoons off during the summer, flexible hours, group insurance, group RRSP and much more.

On October 22, 2020, our efforts were rewarded by winning Best HR Practices awards (French only) at the E36 gala organized by the Drummondville Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Drummond - CCID)!

Thanks to this recognition, we can say that we are heading in the right direction to reach our goal: Nmédia becomes a place where work and fun cohabit and where our Nmédians go every morning with a smile on their face 😊.

On December 11th, we lived our very first 100% virtual Christmas, brilliantly organized by Caroline Bazinet. Although we all stayed home, we had a whole party under the theme Aloha‑Tiki: Coconut and warm sand.

To set the mood before the festivities, we got a video invitation made by Arianne Dion, advent emails, the delivery of a Piña Colada surprise box from Monsieur Cocktail (French only), a box from Miss Jujube Confiserie (French only), and an envelope with gift certificates for local restaurants. A few days before the party, the caterer Le Carnet Noir (French only) delivered dinner to the Nmédians' families' doors.

During the evening, we were able to talk to each other as if we were in person thanks to virtual tables. Isabelle David animated like a pro: presentation of the management videos and comedy clips directed by Olivier Lussier and Maxime Isabelle, musical performances by Marc‑André Morin, drawing of the 86 gifts, presentation of the 2020 recruits and awarding of prizes to the finalists of the peers' and management's choice. To close the event, Randolph (French only) animated 2 hours of virtual group games. Even at a distance, we had a lot of fun (French only)!