Built by people who actually use software
We started Broken Leg Software because we kept running into the same problem: great organizations stuck with terrible tools.
Born out of frustration
We've spent years working in and around community organizations — theatres, clubs, and nonprofits doing incredible work on shoestring budgets. What we kept seeing was the same story: talented people wasting hours on spreadsheets, lost in email chains, or paying too much for software built for someone else.
So we decided to build something better. Broken Leg Software was founded in BC, Canada by three partners who brought different strengths to the table — software development, operations, and a healthy obsession with getting things right.
Our first product, Odeumate, came directly from that experience. And everything we build going forward will follow the same philosophy: focused, secure, affordable, and actually useful.
About the names
Yes, they're intentional. No, we're not sorry.
Broken Leg Software
In theatre, you never wish someone "good luck" — you tell them to break a leg. It's the performer's blessing, hollered from the wings before the curtain goes up. We liked the idea of a software company named after a theatre superstition. It felt right. It still does.
Odeumate
An odeum (from the Greek ᾨδεῖον — literally "singing place") was a small, roofed theatre in ancient Greece and Rome, built specifically for musical performances. Intimate. Purposeful. Built for the art. Add automate, and you have a name that means exactly what the product does — bringing modern tools to the world's oldest performance spaces.
The people behind BLS
A small team. Big on craft.
Gord Falk
Co-Founder
Gord grew up performing in church Christmas pageants — which, as these things go, led inevitably to running the soundboard. Live audio became a passion, and over the years that passion grew into a second life in the performing arts. On evenings and weekends, he served as volunteer Technical Director at a community cultural centre for nearly a decade, running sound, lights, and crew for musicals, concerts, dance productions, and corporate events. At a private high school where he worked as IT and business manager, he also took on the annual musical — starting as TD and eventually producing as well.
By day, Gord's career has always been in IT. He studied at UFV, collected certifications along the way, and has spent decades building systems that have to actually work — currently as IT Manager at a mid-sized food production company, overseeing enterprise-grade infrastructure and a team of five.
When co-founder Glenn Howard sat down at lunch and described a community theatre group managing their membership in Excel, their props in a legacy database, and their costumes nowhere at all, Gord didn't need much convincing. He understood both sides of that problem — the volunteer running tech on a shoestring, and the IT professional who knows it doesn't have to be that way. He and his wife are longtime Broadway Across Canada subscribers — their seats are right behind the soundboard. Apparently some habits are hard to break.
Glenn Howard
Co-Founder
Glenn's parents were ahead of their time — there was a computer in the house before most families had one, and they gave him the freedom to explore it. His handwriting was terrible enough that his dad arranged for him to type his homework in grade school, back when most people still owned actual typewriters. Computers were never a novelty; they were just part of life. So were school musicals — Glenn auditioned for every one, and loved getting on stage.
As he got older, nobody was talking about "a career in computers" — that wasn't a thing yet. So he went to university for Psychology — a serious degree. He also quietly took everything required for a Computer Science degree, but that was just for fun. Three years in, he left to take a job at a dial-up internet service provider, and never looked back. That job led to 26 years as IT manager for a family-run group of companies spanning lumber remanufacturing, metal rollforming, and gazebo manufacturing — where "IT" meant everything from changing keyboards to writing software to replacing laser sensors on industrial machines.
A few years after having kids, Glenn's wife encouraged him to answer a call for auditions at a local community theatre. He's been back on stage ever since, and now serves on the board as well. When he sat down at lunch with Gord Falk and Kevin Traas and described the chaos of a theatre group managing memberships in spreadsheets, props in a legacy database, and costumes nowhere at all — it didn't take much to convince two good friends that building something together would be worth it. Life is good.
Kevin Traas
Co-Founder
Kevin has been writing software since graduating with a Computer Science degree in the mid-1990s — and honestly, he was hooked well before that. Code has been the through-line of his entire career, from hands-on development to leading teams and eventually overseeing technology strategy as Director of IT for a large multi-site organization. His theatre connection came not from the stage but from behind the scenes — for more than 30 years, he's run sound, cameras, and live A/V mixing at his church, which gave him a deep appreciation for the coordination and discipline that live production demands.
Outside of work, Kevin is hard to keep indoors. He's an avid hiker — 20 or more trails a year — and camps up to 30 nights annually. He and his wife have been married for nearly 34 years, raised three kids, and are now grandparents. He's also visited 36 countries and territories so far, from Alaska to Guatemala, Taiwan to Croatia, and the list keeps growing.
When Glenn sat down at lunch in late 2023 and described a community theatre group managing their membership in spreadsheets, their props in a legacy database, and their costumes nowhere at all, Kevin didn't answer on the spot. He took a week to research the problem on his own — and came back with the same conclusion: the gap was real, and it was worth filling. He's been an equal partner in Broken Leg ever since, bringing a builder's mindset and a bias toward shipping things that actually work.
Our values
Security is not optional
We are hyper-aware of security in everything we build. Sensitive data is encrypted at rest. Credentials are never stored in plaintext. Separation of concerns is paramount. We flag security implications proactively and we never take shortcuts that put customer data at risk.
Community organizations deserve great software
Our customers are doing meaningful work in their communities. They deserve tools that are well-made, fairly priced, and built with their constraints in mind — not software designed to maximize upsell opportunities.
Simple and focused beats complex and bloated
We build focused solutions to real problems. We don't add features for the sake of it. We'd rather ship something that does three things perfectly than something that does fifteen things adequately.