Buzzmath: Au Revoir, Mes Amis…

Sunil Singh
7 min readFeb 17, 2020

Today, February 17 is Family Day in Ontario. Quite appropriate to celebrate what has been my professional family these last four and half years — the great, creative folks at Buzzmath in Montreal, Canada. The celebration will be in the wake of my announcement that I am leaving the company for opportunities to continue my work in math history and equity.

The announcement will be challenging enough. The time to make it, even more so.

At the end of our 30 minute Monday weekly meeting, I will be given a few minutes to make this announcement and reflect back on my time with the company. Unfortunately, it would take me the whole 30 minutes to thank each person at Buzzmath that has impacted my life in both personal and professional ways. So, I am choosing Medium to share these reflections with the details they deserve for all of you to read, and absorb the emotional investment that has intersected my employment since the beginning.

When The Right Angle burned down, my math business that I started after I quit teaching, I went to a math conference in Toronto in 2015 in the hopes that I could export my math ideas to schools.

I got an Exhibitor’s table that I couldn’t afford(which would carry its own story for a few years in terms of outstanding debt with the organization OAME — Ontario Association of Math Educators). The table that was immediately to my right was the one that belonged to Netmath(the Canadian brand). I was immediately drawn to their colorful designs and avatars — every employee at the company had their own avatar. Truthfully, it was one of the main reasons why I wanted to work with them! And, then when I found out they were the only company at the time devoting attention to math history, well, I was sold.

The avatars spoke to me on many levels — from obvious creativity to communication of unity to dedication to improving math education. So, when I got hired by the company later that summer, I was excited to be part of an emergent entity in a digital math resource. Carl Malarte and Tom Trang, two of the four partners of the company, were the ones I met in Toronto. They both were fun and outgoing, and Tom especially seemed interested in all my math puzzles. In fact, even as recent as a few months ago, Tom messaged me for the simple reason of sharing his solution to a math problem I gave years ago. There were some challenging times in the beginning when I took on my new Sales role, but I am grateful to Tom for pushing me and showing me the ropes.

Pretty soon, I was coming to Montreal every few months to work at the office. I was the only uni-lingual person. Everyone else was bilingual. Unfortunately, I never did learn too much French, but my colleagues, even those whose English was minimal, always spoke to me with an earnestness and kindness that is symbolic of the company.

One of the first people that I started to work regularly with was Jonathan Lahue. He was many years younger than me, but he was much wiser than his tender years would let on. He helped me a great deal to learn about the editor platform, and while his background was not math education, he had a very strong insight into what constituted an equitable approach to learning the subject.

I remember when I used to eat lunch at the office, often Andre Lacasse would join me. His English was limited, but I always enjoyed eating with him. He could have easily sat with colleagues that spoke French, but he gave some of his time to me, and for that I thank him.

When I first met the third partner of the company, Jean Phillipe Choiniere, one of the most memorable things he said to me was to be careful to walk on the sidewalks because Montreal squirrels are notorious for attacking people. He said with such sincerity and deadpan delivery, that I believed him! Whatever I was signing up for was going to be one crazy, fun ride! No surprise it was his idea to rent an inflatable pink swan with balls for the office Christmas party.

Now you see why I wouldn’t have been able to properly document my time at the company with the color and memories that it deserves.

Every time I came to Montreal, I would always walk in through the doors that took me to the crazy duo of Jean-Francois Pateneaude and Jeff Pierre, the Customer Support team. I was always greeted warmly with bear-hug embraces and would laugh at least a few times before I settled into my desk space for my days at the office.

Eventually my role become more upfront in marketing, and that is where I got to bond and develop a lifelong friendship with Luc Goudreault, Sales Director. Our birthdays are only day apart, and really, that is all that separates us. We bonded over music, food, wine, and of course, math. We traveled to so many amazing cities in North America, taking our friendship on the road and right to our Exhibitor’s booth, where hundreds of people would get caught up in our energy and fun, often making us to forget to even discuss our digital platform.

We build relationships first. Nothing mattered if that wasn’t the priority.

Luc cooked so many amazing meals for the team, which facilitated the bonding of the team. We ate well. We spoke well. We were well.

Making a salmon lunch at CMC-South 2019, Palm Springs

There are so many people and stories that I am leaving off. I assure you, that your interactions have contributed well to my time at Buzzmath. The emotional connection to the company is symbolized by the many rich and memorable moments. And, while most of these moments have been on the road at math conferences with Luc, it would be negligent of me not to mention a late arrival to our sales/marketing road crew — Janie Masson Laprise.

She is the sociable Sufi in our team, dropping wonderful pearls of wisdom and color just at the right time. Her laughter is buoyant and infectious, which carries over in the time and attention she gives not only her team, but any prospective Buzzmath customer.

The last months of my job involved working with Natalia Gomez and Jany Tremblay. Natalia was a new hire to help support social media and Jany was an old school pro in design. Together, they helped organize and visually support all the content writing that I have done for Buzzmath in the recent past. They both make me look real good on the internet:)

Part of leaving a company means offboarding and all the technical stuff involving exit contracts, email deletion, etc. They are being done by Carl, who is not only one of the directors, but the CEO of the company. Last year, Carl had a very serious accident while on vacation that necessitated him being in a hospital for a long time, and being away from the company even longer.

Carl didn’t lose any of his personality after that near-death accident — he gained wisdom and perspective that can only come from such life changing events. As such, our meetings, which should have just been taking care of legal nuts and bolts, was more washed with emotion and reflection. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Thank you, Carl.

And, thank you all, from the bottom of my heart for giving me the opportunities you did and to allow mistakes and failures to be part of my own learning process.

Buzzmath makes a rich, interactive, and integrative digital math resource. As wonderful as the product is, it will never eclipse the people that made it.

And, the people is what I will always remember.

Fondly.

Until we meet again, mes amis…

Sunil

--

--