La Presse reports that a Montreal company has been given a contract by the Pakistani government to run a voter registration database which will be used in an upcoming election.

The company in question is Cronomagic, a tiny ISP that I used to work for (my first, and so far only, job in the IT industry). I was their 4th employee at the time, so I got to makeup my own job title (Executive Vice-President in Charge of Doing What My Bosses Told Me To Do). It was there that I learned how to manage a room full of computers, how to setup Windows 2000 Server (ugh) and how to make Bash and Perl do funny things together.

Most importantly, I learned the power of connections. Back then a lot of business came from Pakistan because the president had business contacts there. Now it seems those contacts have gotten the company some sweet business.

UPDATE: A story from CanWest and another from Agence France-Presse, with basically the same information.