Patrick Lencioni (pronounced Len-CHO-knee) is the author of ten best-selling business books with over three million copies sold. After ten years in print, his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team continues to be a fixture on national best-seller lists and recently celebrated its 5^th year running on the Wall Street Journal list. His much-anticipated book, The Advantage: Why Organization Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, was released in March to favorable reviews and became an immediate best-seller.

Recognized in Fortune Magazine as one of the ‘ten new gurus you should know,’ Pat is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to providing organizations with ideas, products and services that improve teamwork, clarity and employee engagement.

The wide-spread appeal of Lencioni’s leadership models have yielded a diverse base of speaking and consulting clients, including a mix of Fortune 500 companies, professional sports organizations, the military, non-profits, schools and churches.

Prior to founding his firm, Pat worked as a corporate executive for Sybase, Oracle and Bain & Company. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and four sons.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

According to Pat, teamwork remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare. He makes the point that if you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time. Based on his runaway best-seller, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Pat uncovers the natural human tendencies that derail teams and lead to politics and confusion in so many organizations. Audience members will walk away with specific advice and practical tools for overcoming the dysfunctions and making their teams more functional and cohesive.

The VeloCity Garage program is designed to help teams kickstart their business ideas by providing office space, mentorship, and a community that cultivates entrepreneurship. We hope to see you there!

Follow us on Twitter @uwvelocity for a chance to win a pair of Dre Beats headphones through our social media contest.

This year, due mail migration to our new email server, we have decided to extend the registration for the lottery to the 18th of May to ensure all participants get an opportunity to join.

Please also note that if you haven’t received a confirmation through email from Kristen Gillett that your registration was received, we ask that you resubmit through email to golf@communitech.ca by noon on the 18th of May.

Want to network with other app devs and learn about the latest in development for RIM and BlackBerry including Playbook and the BB 10 OS?

The KW BlackBerry Developer Group is the place to meet. The Group has been meeting for about 18 months now and starts a new series of monthly meetings leading up to the launch of BB 10 later this year.

The KW BlackBerry Developer Group is the ‘official’ dev group for the area sponsored by local app developer Motek Mobile and coordinated by Wes Worsfold (@wors) and Attila Schmidt (@schmood). BlackBerry Developer Groups provide local area developers with the opportunity to share learnings and interests, network with other developers and receive ongoing support from other members.

This month’s meeting is being held Thursday, May 10^th between noon and 1 PM at the Communitech Hub, Jelly Bean room.

This meeting will focus on two topics – The first topic is BlackBerry 10 and the exciting events and announcements following last week’s BB 10 JAM and BB World conferences held in Orlando including some app demos on the dev alpha BB 10 devices. The second topic is developing apps for the BlackBerry Playbook. Local app developer and KW BB Dev Group member Daniel Bingham will share his successes and ‘lessons learned’ developing apps for the BlackBerry Playbook.

For meeting details and to RSVP, please visit http://on.fb.me/ICap9Y. ‘Like’ the Group page on Facebook to receive updates on group activities and meetings.  You can also follow the group on Twitter @KWBBDev.

For more information on the Group contact Wes Worsfold, wes@motekmobile.com or on Twitter, @wors.

Sweet Tooth CEO Jay El-Kaake: Setting a new standard for customer loyalty systems

Waterloo-based e-commerce startup Sweet Tooth has landed $2.25 million in seed financing from a slate of investors that includes OMERS Ventures, MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF) and Points International.

The funding, announced today, will help the three-year-old company meet fast-growing demand for its customer loyalty software, which is now in use by more than 1,500 retailers in their online stores.

“Sweet Tooth will be using this all-Canadian financing to hire more employees and support a new expansion strategy that includes a new subscription-based pricing model,” Jay El-Kaake, Sweet Tooth’s CEO, told Communitech. “This will also include a free version for small merchants.”

When profiled by Communitech last September, Sweet Tooth’s 17 employees were working elbow-to-elbow in the Accelerator Centre and were looking forward to moving into a larger suite. The company now has 28 employees and is still hiring, as revenue continues to grow at roughly 12 per cent per quarter.

Sweet Tooth will be available on multiple e-commerce platforms in the coming year, but in the longer term, the company plans to expand beyond e-commerce to offer integration with point-of-sale, enterprise resource planning, employee motivation and mobile systems.

“Sweet Tooth will soon be the standard for customer loyalty systems,” El-Kaake said.

OMERS, IAF and Points are providing $1.5 million of this seed round, with unnamed investors putting up the remaining $750,000.

For more information, see the official press release.