There has been a great deal of talk in the office over the last two weeks about two subjects: the impending legalization of marijuana in Canada, and Velsoft account representative Marty leaving for ‘greener pastures’. I am able to say that these two events are not mutually exclusive!

As it turns out, Marty is leaving to become lead sales agent for one of Canada’s largest pot producers. He tells me he was surprised to get the job because he has absolutely no previous experience with selling marijuana or any other ‘food’ (already talking the talk), but the pay and incentives could not be passed up!

He tells me he will get an excellent base salary with commission (which he can take in money or product – his choice). The company also has a full medical plan that covers all sales-related injuries! As well, he will be provided with a cell phone, hoodie, sports leather jacket (his choice of team), nap sack, weigh scales, roach clip, switch blade and product samples (for potential customers only – he emphasized this a couple times!).

On top of that, he only has to work Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and his territory is exclusive to him. He will sell to a number of current customers, and he has a substantial advertising budget (AKA product samples) to gain new leads.

If you happen to be in the city anytime soon, you can find him any Thursday, Friday or Saturday night at the corner of Hollis and Sackville streets.

We wish you great success in your new job, Marty!

What’s in the Pipeline:

  • Ben is finishing custom projects and working with new client projects.
  • Carol is editing new courses, working on custom projects and writing blogs.
  • Jan is working on CA releases and QAing eLearning.
  • Sydney is working on custom projects.

Tech Topics:

  • Fixed issue causing the wrong voice to be used in the full course recording.
  • Fixed an issue causing the document upload form not to display in IE11.
  • Fixed an issue causing the organization branding page to not load in IE11.
  • Fixed an issue causing the TTS audio read unknown characters are the start of the recording.
  • Placeholders will now be calculated with the full course recording.

Course Count:

Courses released this month:

Here is the official count of courses for both courseware and eLearning, broken down by Computer and SoftSkills.

Computer SoftSkills Total Courses
Courseware 280 169 449
eLearning 879 164 1043

Marty Memories:

  • He accidentally dialed 911 his first week here. The cops showed up to make sure he was alright.
  • Most of his new customers thought Marty was a woman’s name, so they would refer to him as Miss Marty.
  • He once put an elastic band around the spray handle on the sink. When Dave turned the water on, it sprayed all over him. (Carol says if he had done this to her, she would have retaliated with something extremely painful.)
  • Dylan says he’s only talked with Marty a couple times, the first time was when they met at the Halifax office. They chatted about Marty’s music interests and Dylan’s videography business. “He took a genuine interest our discussion and offered some encouragement and advice. Pleasure to have had the chance to meet.”
  • “I met Marty twice and he told me I was cute.” (anonymous)
  • He holds the record for most sales by a Velsoft rep in his first month.