How we got our name

The Montreal Artists Loft Scene

The first time I heard the words Universal and Cake together was during a frenetic discussion with French artists Olivier X, Laurence C. and communications specialist Vrajesh H. While Olivier vanished after returning to France the idea remained within our group of friends.

Universal Cake

At the time the term seemed to mean many different things to all the individuals in the discussion but in my mind Universal Cake gave voice to a sort of product that was all things to all people.

IZM Communications

The concepts for this mythical Universal Cake product where further developed by IZM Communications under the leadership of Jesh H. and Laurence C. who designed and put forward a number highly creative product mock-ups which further developed the concept of this celebrated mythical product that pleased everyone.

The IBM Geek Squad

During the late 90's and early 2000's I worked with the IBM Support Center in Montreal and when doing the late night shifts spent hours combing the internet for the perfect Content Management System (a term that did not exist at the time) that had to be built from the ground up to be accessible (as in section 508 accessible) and multi lingual. I tested a number website creation software (most where flat file databases at the time) and the only one that allowed "realtime editing" was the blogger product.

Finding Plone

After about two years of testing website software I eventually ran into a beta or alpha of Plone and instantly fell madly in love with the product even though at the time it crashed badly on my system. Somehow I knew that Plone was going to make it big because of the commitment of the developers to a good base, and excellent GUI and the fact that they saw the immense value in creating a product that was to be multi lingual and accessible.

Domain Available!

In the end none of the Universal Cake products ever went to market but the concept of Universal Cake stuck in my brain and one day while registering domain names with a friend on a whim I looked it up Univeral Cake and VoilÀ, Universal Cake, the website was born!