Classrooms without Borders

Imagine attending school in real time without leaving your house or collaborating face-to-face with people on the other side of the world. Elluminate Inc. makes this and much more possible. More than 800 institutions across North America use the Calgary-based company’s products and services for live online collaboration and learning

May 2, 2008

by Tracy Hyatt

Elluminate makes virtual- and distance-learning with real-time interaction possible regardless of location and type of Internet hook-up. It has even helped conquer teacher turnover at an aboriginal school in northern Alberta that has graduated more students in the last few years than in the previous 20 to 30. How? By allowing students to interact online with educators. For CEO and co-founder Nashir Samanani, it’s feedback like this that makes the work worthwhile. That’s why, together with business partner Mike Mabey, he has built social responsibility into the core of the company, donating products, services and time.

Nashir Samanani: CEO and co-founder, Elluminate Inc.

AV: What is Elluminate all about?
NS: Our mission is to transform learning through technology. We believe technology is a great enabler and equalizer on a global level. At its best, technology can make a significant difference in communication, collaboration and education worldwide.

What interested you in this business?
Mike and I have been working together for over 20 years, starting at the Advanced Computing Technology Centre at the University of Calgary. We had the good fortune of running some of their large-scale projects. In 1995, we decided we wanted to do it for ourselves. Ever since then, what we’ve found is that the incredible talent of the people that work with us allows us to create technology that is truly recognized on a global scale as leading technology.

Was this your first business startup?
This was not our first initiative. Our last company was Arasoft Technologies, which we sold to a U.S. publicly traded company. We manufactured everything inside the box for Symantec Norton 2000. One year later, we picked up the [same] people and infrastructure. We had this great team that had just gone through the process of creating a world-class product and they had not just successfully developed the product, but also had marketed it globally. We found the real-time collaboration space was growing very quickly, and so that’s how we decided on our focus.

What’s most rewarding about your job?
We fully recognize the technology we have developed has significant commercial viability and application, but we also realize that this technology can potentially assist those in society who otherwise may not get access to education.

Schools in other countries too?
Our Fire and Ice initiative, for example, is a program where we work with schools from around the world – Brazil, Canada, Africa. We connected these schools with the David Suzuki Foundation, and each undertook a local project dealing with environmental issues. Now there’s ongoing collaboration between these students in terms of global environmental issues. It’s quite an amazing way to engage students that you might not be able to do otherwise. We do not charge our clients for this program.

Biggest challenge?
In the beginning, there are only ideas. The intellectual property comes from the work of the team. When you have a great team, it makes every challenge that much easier to deal with.

How’s business?
This market is still very young, though the global marketplace is expanding fairly rapidly. We have an opportunity in this marketplace, so we’re here to stay. Alberta is a great place to develop technology – there’s a significant talent pool here, and there are federal tax credits for R&D. But you can’t confine your business to our borders if you want to be an international player. For our technology, the world is our marketplace.

How do you define success?
When you tie a powerful vision together with the organization, that becomes a very powerful ingredient for success. But life at the end of the day isn’t just about success; it’s about what you do with that success and whether you actually impact others.