MS SQL 2008 instance not found in SQL Server Management Studio

A few months back I had to work on a project where we used SQL Express 2008. So I used the standard web installation package from Microsoft, found at http://www.microsoft.com/express/sql/download/ . I've installed the needed tools including SQL Server Management Studio. However, once I ran it, and clicked on the 'browse' button, the list of servers was empty! I did not have such problems with SQL Server EXPRESS 2005 instances - I was able to browse 2005 edition instances with SQL Server Management Studio from the installation package of 2008 edition.















As you can see, the SQLEXPRESS instance is running on the local PC:








The solution was simple, I had to write just .\{InstanceName} in the 'Server Name' drop-down list, as shown on the image below, where {InstanceName} is the name of the local instance of the server, while '.\' is a relative path.

I hope this helps a few headbangs in the wall. :)

Marketing and Management Posts wrap up

I wanted to wrap up my marketing posts:

Key To Successful Project Management

When a key member leaves the team

Using Social Media at your advantage

Using Video as Marketing Method

Building blogs for your business

I've found a very nice video tutorial explaining how to create and promote your blog for business purposes. :)


Blogs that Build Businesses

C#-driven database front-end

This is an old project, but still people keep asking me where they can find a similar software. :)

Well here it is!

The user can easily add new records, edit or delete already existing ones via a user interface. She can search into the database via the user interface.

That way the user does not risk to break the database and it is restricted just to a few basic but needed functions.

Due to the fact I've written most queries with LINQ, the user is able to use any type of database (NOT FULLY IMPLEMENTED).

Download Database Frontend Sample

In the sample I've included an Access 2007 database including 2 tables listing movies.

Features:

• Interactive GUI restricting the users to touch directly into the DB
• Adding, editing or deleting records
• Search for records by different criteria
• Compatibility with MS Access 2007

Using Video as marketing method

Using Video as marketing method

The post is available in a PDF here.

Video is one of the best ways to market your product. According a various research companies, including Forrester’s Research, the video is the best and most efficient way to deliver your product vision to your audience. Since the video provides text, visual effects, speech and music for background, it is savvier for the general user than reading a plain text, even if there was a picture thrown here or there.

Besides, the general user understands the service or product that you are selling much easier when you show him how it works. Why the user prefers to watch then read – remember when you were at the university, and reading all the heavy books? Sometimes you had to re-read some of the chapters – it takes time, you get tired… Well, if you watched a video on YouTube how a particular process is done, then it becomes easier for you to reproduce it since you remember most of the events easier with visual memory than trying to remember something on “theory”.

Videos might have other benefits – promote your brand on Social Media, or use them as video tutorials within the company. However, mind that the content of your Social Media Video MUST not show a direct sale, but rather engage potential customers with your brand – for example, you might show a typical situation in your office, and show a sneak peak on some of the upcoming products, just enough to tease your competitors and customers.

Let’s take for example a student who starts a traineeship in your company and asks how a particular task is done – for example, how to integrate Google Analytics with the new web site that your company is preparing. What you do? You can either send him to read the help, which will take time, or you can sit together, and show how it is done, then ask him to repeat it. OK, this is time consuming – in this case, you can prepare a video tutorial showing how this particular task is done, then this video can be reused for future employees.

What makes your video successful

According to the heavy books from the university… damn I hate ‘em, the success is an integral with a function of a few parameters:
Good video material = 50% C + 15% W + 15% P + 20% P

50% content

Nowadays everyone is making video, but what they don’t do is to provide value and quality. Most companies do not realize that their short movies are closed right after the first 30 seconds of watching. Why? Because they just throw some plain and dry facts and people fell asleep – people are busy, they do not have time to waste, and if you do not provide them with a value within the first 10-15 seconds, then these customers are lost. To provide value, this can be a practical task applicable for their business.

In addition, diverse a little and add some humorous element in your video. For example, show a party in your office something like: “OK, John shows us we should NOT drink the beer near the server raids. You have to…” People love to laugh – take for example Apple MAC vs. PC ads.
Here is the place to mention, adding a suitable music background. For example, if you are preparing a promo video for a rock concert, you will not set as background a classic music… right?

Any other special effects that will help you to emphasis your brand or service or product – different software packages provide these effects implemented.

15% words

Words and how you use them. It is nice to create a video that shows how cool and design-efficient is a friction clutch for example, but imagine that your audience consists of several managers that do not event get a word of what you are saying. In addition, a certain language might be more appropriate for your audience – they might prefer a stern language that draws respect, while others might prefer more common language.

Metadata for the video also applies here – this is title, description, author, etc. This data increase the chance your video is found. For example, in a company I used to work, we were presenting one of our products and named it “Building Web Event tracking application”. The result – the video had more hits in its first week of release than any other video that was produced before on the web site.

Add relevant content as well – if you are using a product you are promoting add a tag, explaining that where this product could be found.

15% Package

This is how your video is presented on the web – Flash, Silverlight, thumbnail, etc. One BIG hint, please, oh for all saint, please DO not exaggerate with the package. That method of “package sells” was during the last century. Yes, it is important but it MUST promote the actual content of the video – this is like PR, provide and promote just what you deliver at the given moment, if the user finds other value, then this is a bonus for your brand.

20% Promotion

OK, now you have a very cool video but you do not know where to promote it… Well get over on twitter, Facebook, etc. and spam for it, blog it in your blogs, relevant group or forum discussions, and most importantly – in your Newsletter and RSS feeder!

Please do not spam – I bet you will get the boot if you are posting a link to your video every day on the same discussion board, or the content of the video is totally irrelevant to what the group, discussion, etc. is about. I bet web marketers will not be interested in my engineering presentations but engineering groups would be… probably. :P

If your video is funny, or provide good enough value, it will be recommended by your viewers to their friends – let’s get viral!

Video for Social Media

So, you are social analytic, content manager, or whatever, and you are wondering why your videos are not working with the social media that you are participating in. Simple question, people cannot answer. Why people login on sites such as Facebook? They stay connected with their friends, watch photos of some crazy party they cannot remember last night, compare results of quizzes, collect some kind of tokens for a super-duper rank in an application. People on other sites have different interests – on LinkedIn people are interested in professional advices, job seeking, etc. Usually their contacts there, even with friends, are purely professional – they do not watch pictures there, or collect tokens.

And here comes the value again – yes, people should find a value. Make your video have a cause, be more social-aligned, i.e. cover a social topic according to your area. For example if your company is donating a partition of the incomes of a certain product for a disease, why not make a movie describing the disease – add statistics, suitable music, etc. and mention at the end that your company is aware of the issue, but do NOT vaunt yourself – no one likes braggers, make it more human and social, because if you are doing it you really DO care.

Conclusion

In summary, use your video with a value. Do not just spam and brag your service, or business. Show as why you or your service is done that way, and how the clients can benefit from it.

If you are stepping into social media, then you should be careful what topics you will cover and how you will align your business with your customers.
Add funny elements, behind the scenes topics, and most importantly – do not mislead your video viewers with title, thumbnail presentation: remember – it is bad for the brand. Choose them according to the REAL content of the video.

Silverlight Multimedia Player

I want to share my development of Silverlight Multimedia Player - it contains a .NET control used for the Visual Studio integration and configuration with the Windows Forms, and a Silverlight Control used for the actual control.

You can watch a demo movie here.

The main features of the control are:

• Play/Pause and Stop animated buttons
• Seek bar/remaining time of the media*
• Full-screen mode
• Volume control
• Implemented form for control of the Silverlight-enabled control directly into Visual Studio
  
• Possibility to be called on ANY web page as a user control
• Server side Playlists (SSPL) and WMP lists (.asx, .wax, .wvx, .wmx, or .wpl) based on XML, and even XML itself.

Key to successful project management

Key to successful project management

The post is available in a PDF here.

With this article I will write about project planning and how it effects the further development of the processes.

First, why do we need to plan in advance our project? I will give you some examples:
If not planned a project will be run in tension, and thus the manager will not be able to provide the support for its teams. In that case rival teams could popup, and instead of focusing on the work, they might hide information from each other.

Again if most of the work around the project is not planned, it is most likely that the project would go over budget, or even be canceled.

Project Management Tools

You would need a project management tool to ease your project planning. This could be an ordinary Excel table, MS Project file, or even just a paper notebook. In big corporations, they use Project Management modules as part of their ERP systems. I personally prefer M$ Project, and Mindjet Mind Manager 8 (the last one is especially cool since it allows you to do fast brainstorming, and afterwards implement everything into M$ Project, PDF, or Excel).
Do not forget that there are a lot of free tools out there.

Starting...

After identifying where you need to go and set any basic activities along the way that needs to be done. That way you can setup your milestones. This is the stage that would take most of the time in your project. If you have missed something in the plan, or something has occurred and need to be managed this would cause project leakage (I am talking about it, a little bit at the end).

Then it is very common practice each of these small tasks to be subdivided into smaller segments of mini-projects. For example:

• Task 1: Find venue for party people (50)
• Task 2: Get beer
• Task 3: Arrange sound system
• Milestone 1: Transport the alcohol and the other logistics stuff
• Milestone 2: Opening of the party
• Milestone 3: Closing of the party
• Task 4: Clean up

The easiest way to start planning is to set milestones, and to divide the project into smaller parts (like mini-projects). That way you will be able to focus on specific task that needs to be done at the moment and even if necessary to micro-manage it, while still be able to see the global picture.

While this method is useful, it has its drawbacks. The time between the project has to be very well fixed, and schedule to be tight. This might wear off your team members - for example, if there are a couple of tasks that needs to be finished simultaneously, in order a third task to start and one of first two tasks is finished, then the person responsible for this task might get off the track. In that case, I personally recommend you to find him some work to do, even if it is a brute of a job so she could stay focused.

Communication!

Constantly communicate with your team about the project planning. You must know at every given moment what each department is going to do, and what it has been done. Track progress of your project - the way I do it is through IM (skype) or cell phone calls. In addition, I expect my team to keep the processes in the ERP system modules up-to-date and all files to be systematized there - including contract copies, e-mails, orders, client information, marketing materials.

The communication is of vital importance even when some tactical adjustments need to take place. For example, the printer has run out of ink and needs to be recharged, while there have been like 500 more pages needs printing, and the delivery company is not able to supply you just with one ink tank. OK, in this case no one has thought buying an additional ink tanks so somebody has to go to the local store and buy one (reallocating employee for this dirty job). But this is just a simple example, in large projects such tactical adjustments may occur more often if not planned well.

Project Leakage

Let's talk about the project leakage. There are vertical and horizontal ones. This might be considered as Horizontal leakage occurs when parallel tasks, similar to or related to their current activities, derail individuals. For example, someone working on delivery gets pulled into a series of meetings that are outside the project scope because he is an expert in the area.

Vertical leakage occurs when past or future projects divert resources from their funded project. An example of a forward vertical leak is project personnel taking time to prepare for the next round of funding and budgets, neglecting their currently funded activities.
Backward vertical leaks occur when current project resources are diverted to address leftover issues from previous projects. For example, a finance person diverts his attention to help track down and solve an issue with a package that will affect the reliability of his calculated budget.

Conclusion

At the end of each project, make a project wrap up - have a team meeting and have everyone describe what s/he thinks needs improvement, or needs to be done differently.
If you have external viewer on the project (it could be client, or partner), ask for their serious feedback - most of the people in the business are too busy and will usually rush through the feedback. Approach them in their spare time about this.

I hope you had a nice read.

Crisis Management – when a key team member jumps off the boat

Crisis Management – when a key team member jumps off the boat

The post is available in a PDF format here.

During the summer of 2008 I have been running a very ambitious project. The work was going right on the schedule and I was preparing to increase my team with a couple of two new members.

Just before the presentation of my project my core team member who was heading the sales team had a conversation with me - he had been planning to leave in order to pursue other goals. I will present the steps I took to prevent further project down time and breaking of the deadlines.

However, I'd like to mention what are the possible future issues that could occur of such crisis.

1. Project downtime
2. Breaking of Deadlines
3. Loss of moral of other team members, leading to reduced performance
4. Re-allocating resources (staff, and money) to other project areas, and making dynamic changes
5. Teaching a new team member into the area which has been abandoned causing loss of time
6. Much more...

Now what were the steps I took to prevent the issues listed above...

First, I tried to understand the guy's reasons for leaving and upon the information try to persuade him to stay and finish the project together. Unfortunately, he had decided this long ago
and I had no chance of getting him back.

Second, I acted on the presentation like nothing happened (hey you back there I hear you calling me a cold-hearth...) - fortunately I had a success and managed to attract the stakeholders.

Third, I had a few options in front of me - wait to recruit a new guy and provide him with the training and making him aware of the product sold, thus losing months; delegate the tasks among the other team members (not a good option since they were very stretched anyway); and finally look in my team/organization for a suitable person for this position and replace his position with a new recruit.

Well, I reviewed my team member's database (if you call an XLS file a database lol), and silently decided to give a few minor tasks dedicated on sales. That would have helped me to decide which would be best for the sales position. I finally ended with a very suitable person for the position - she was not very experienced in the sales area, but at least she knew the product and with a few trainings and support from me she was right on the track.

Finally, we recruited a couple of more people who managed to get into the project very fast, and our team quickly fetched up with the one week delay in the schedule. We even implemented a new centralized system for handling the documentation which has increased performance, and decreased delivery time.

What I learnt from this? Talk to your team members!!! Communication is the way - be aware of your business and their own needs. Make sure their needs meet the needs of the business (I know, I had this on my Economics exam, but it is different on practice). Good suggestion is a team building event - it is not necessary to be something fancy, just a beer in the local pub would be enough.

Make sure you have a backup plan - create different project cases and optimize as much as possible without losing valuable time.

Using Social media at your advantage.

The article is available in PDF variant here.

When marketers, PRs, and salespersons are approaching a customer they are doing it in some formal way. However, they will have more impact if they do it more “socially”, like they are on a cup of coffee with the customer.

There are a few different channels that you want to consider when approaching customers with your brand or business, or even yourself – Facebook, Twitter, Digg and LinkedIn. The last two are a little bit different.

What is Social Media Marketing?

According to Wikipedia, this is “also known as social influence marketing is the act of using social influencers, social media platforms, and online communities for marketing, publication relations and customer service.”

Actually is something more – if done right, it helps you build good relations with your customers.

Why should I use social media to promote my brand?

Nowadays customers require transparency, and how you give them transparent view? Sharing your thoughts and for example, plan to introduce a new service. Of course you have to manage your knowledge and share just the needed. Heck, even I do not share everything I know here – this is part of the knowledge management, it is like girls – as little you show them about yourself, as more they are curious about you (SIDE NOTE: girls, please do not mark me as playboy or something).

That way people feel they are engaged with your brand – if the message is communicated properly, they can even become advocates of your brand.

For example via blogging you are building an image of professional expertise in your area.

Here are a few basic things you can do with social media:

·Support — use websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn to build up your authority via their different features such as Pages, Events, Groups, and many more

·Publicize — social media allows people to share things of interest with everyone, increasing the visibility of your business and yourself;

·Control — detect and then prevent “leaks” (disclosures) as well as inadvertent privacy violations;

·Enhance — manage your company brand and reputation, either proactively as a function of marketing, or reactively as a preventative measure against bad publicity. *

*Reference from “The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media”. A FREE book provided in PDF format.

However here is one example of social media done WRONG. A company CIO decided that he wants to invest in social media as a PR tool. However, he and his PR agents were surprised to see that their brand is already taken on the social tools. It came out that one developer decided years ago to register an account with the company name and brand.

No one has been caring for the social media presentations during that time since at that time no one has been using it for that purpose, and customers, partners and even competitors were visiting the pages on Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you are not acting on social media sites, it does not mean that your brand is sleeping there. If there is such thing somewhere, you need to verify it is done right – in this example, the CIO has lost CONTROL over the marketing and could not prevent the “leaks”. I am not saying that you have to disallow your users to comment on your products – you have to give them what you have promised (this is a basic PR method).

Another bad example: allowing your customers to review and rate your services/products. If something happens and the service or product is not working properly, then your “advocates” can turn against you publishing bad ratings and bad reviews. And do not forget that your future or current customers are always aware of other customers’ experience.

Different social channels

Now let’s talk about the different social channels:

1.Blogging:

First of all – a blog is a long term investment, but it has high ROI (return of investment). This is a simple way of publishing articles, and it is relatively cheap. However it has to be done on regular basis – never abandon the ship, stick with your blog – I know, it requires great commitment and amount of time, but in long term it is worth it.

Via blogging you gain:

•Gaining trust — by writing informative and authoritative articles, over time you’ll build confidence, trust, respect and a sense of “expert status” around your business.

•A sense of community — you’re engaging with your customers in a conversational style that’s difficult to replicate by other means. And by allowing people to comment on your articles, you’re encouraging those people to participate, giving them a reason to return.

•Better communications — a blog is essentially a publishing platform, where you control the content of your articles, and also when those articles get published.

What should I talk about in my blog? Well, there are a lot of topics – you can share about a service that you are planning to introduce in the future, you can write about relevant topics to your industry *cough* Financial Crisis and Engineers *cough*. There are a lot of options… and one more tip – when talking about a service or a product, use SEO’ed words. For example, when mentioning “LINQ”, introduce it as “Microsoft LINQ”.

2.Social Sites

In this category I include Facebook and Twitter. I will speak here only about Facebook. It allows you to

•Create a page where you can fully customize its content and invite people to join and share your interests. By joining, their so called “wall” feed will notify their contacts that they have become fans of your brand/service/product. How to attract them? Various ways – the best that works is a movie, for example “behind the scenes” type.

•Groups – similar to pages, but the content is in a predefined layout, i.e. you cannot change its HTML. You can mail all fans in a group and announce them an upcoming event for example.

•Announce events – again you can share upcoming events about your business. If communicated properly, people joined in the event will even become advocates to your business, and promote it passionately among their contacts.

•Social Ads – allows targeting your audience on different basis such as age, sex, location, keywords, education level, workplaces, political views, and relationship status.

3.“Professional” Social Sites

I will talk about LinkedIn and Digg.

LinkedIn is considered as a large contact book. There you post your profile in a way that describes your professional experience much like a CV. Some basic features:

•Profile Page

This is the place where you represent yourself, your professional background and associate with current and previous employers. This is the place where partners, colleagues and managers could post an endorsement letter for you.

•Company Profile

A profile that represents the company, each person worked for the company would have a link in his/her profile to the company profile that would appear just on mouse-over in a nice tooltip.

•Ads and applications

Ads a similar to Facebook ads with the difference that you can target professionals in an area of interest.

Applications are still not of great interest, but there is one particular called “Company Buzz” gathering from groups, news items, etc. information about your company. That way you can see what others speak about you and your business.

•Groups – groups are a great place to gather professionals from one or different areas of interest. There they share knowledge, interesting posts, news articles, services. However, the groups there are not targeted to promote directly your services unless you want to get the boot right off the bat, so they need to be approached with respect and carefulness.

If you create yourself a group, then you need a lot of time to manage it and clear the needless spam. However, that is the best way to attract professionals from different areas in your business.

Digg on the other hand is more like a news feeder where people submit videos, news articles, or images. The best part it has Facebook connect feature that automatically (oh, well it requires a couple of clicks) allows you to share your posted items on Facebook.

The news are indexed in a similar way to the new Microsoft Bing search engine – the more people “digg” your submitted item, the more relevant result becomes when is searched.

By “digg” it means someone liked the news item. In addition, you can see user comments, and even see how someone has voted for other user answers.

Conclusion

So… should you use Social media to position your brand? Yes, definitely, but make sure you do it RIGHT, otherwise it can have negative impact. Consult with professionals who already have done this on the channels mentioned above – that is why they are there for, sharing their knowledge and experience. You can be sure that they will not make a whole business strategy how to act, but it will give your marketing department some basic ideas and directions how they can proceed.

Thanks for your time, I hope you enjoyed reading the article!