My latest gadget arrived today - a Wi-Fi Seeker. It's a key chain sized device for detecting wireless 802.11b and g networks. Just point and push the button, the lights tell you if there is a signal and how strong it is.

It managed to point out the access points in the office and also my internet provider at home (I have wireless broadband as I'm too far from the exchange for ADSL). I reckon it works pretty well.

As for it's usefulness, we'll have to see. But that isn't the point - you have geek toys "just because you can".

Wallace McClure writes "What is the problem with Marketing People?" Where he makes the point that marketing people care more about selling product than learning about their customer's business.

I'm not sure this is especially a marketing affliction. In my experience they care more about "the message" that we, the vendor, wants to communicate. There is an old adage that "when you talk you are teaching whereas when you listen you are selling". If so then their focus is probably correct. Leave the selling to the sales team.

I do agree though that if you don't take the time to understand your client's business model you can end up damaging your relationship with them (and looking a bit stupid too).

The thing to consider is the difference between commercial and business focus. The first is about sales, turnover and profit whereas the later is concerned with relationships, strategy and growth. Both are required but they need balance.

Having had recent experience with customers wanting bespoke solutions for pocket change I'm not sure it's always the best policy to try and get your product in by any means possible. One thought has just occurred to me - if you are a small company, is it better to lead with a product and provide professional services support or start with consultancy backed up by off the shelf product? Also, does it matter if you get the consultancy fee and don't recommend your product because it's not right for the situation?

We used to have a very successful business model with the consultancy first option but have moved to a more product oriented focus. I'm not sure how it's doing just yet. I'll let you know.

We hold these every morning at 10:30am as it's a time when everyone can get into the office. Three questions are asked of each developer:

1. What did you complete since the last meeting?
2. What blocked you since the last meeting?
3. What do you intend to complete before the next meeting?

The answers to these three questions provide a snappy status update for the entire team. In particular, the second question is a direct request me me to do something.

To keep the meetings short there is supposed to be no additional discussion beyond the three questions. If needed then it should be scheduled directly after the meeting. However our meetings have recently begun to drag on as I found the "after meeting" gatherings weren't happening and I let the discussion happen in-line for fear of it never happening (a self fulfilling prophesy?).

The side affect of this is to subject everyone to a level of detail that may not be relevant to them, wasting time and boring them. So today I've asked everyone to answer their questions in 2 minutes. The benefit of a short meeting is obvious but in addition it gives people practise at concise communication.

Hopefully this should work, but if not then I'll resort to a trick I used at Sony - a two minute egg timer. Once the time runs out you have to shut up. If you have more to say then you have to e-mail everyone.

A note for self though - I must ensure the post meetings happen.

I love the mechanics of interviews, especially the "Microsoft Interview". The two best references I know of are How Would You Move Mount Fuji? and Programming Interviews Exposed. If you come for interview at Exony - be prepared for questions like these.

For a personal view of the Microsoft process, you can't beat Aaron Boodman’s account. His description of the screening process includes a telephone step with a developer where he asks you a programming question and you have three minutes to e-mail him back the solution. I think this is a great way to get some code out of a candidate before they have to come to the office.

I was just checking my stats for the week and I see that I've had 600 visits and 10,000 hits. I'd love to know who is reading this blog and why so leave a comment and let me know who you are. If you let me know why you're visiting then maybe I can taylor my posts accordingly...

When you install dasBlog in the root of a web server as I have, it's web.config is inherited by all lower level applications. This is a problem for nGalley as the dasBlog config has <httpModules> loaded. You can unload them by adding the following to the nGallery web.config:

<httpModules>
  <remove name="ControlImageModule" />
  <remove name="UrlMapperModule" />
  <remove name="CompressionModule" />
</httpModules>

This doesn't quite solve the problem though as the nGallery application still needs to be able to load the dasBlog assemblies in order to remove the <httpModules> so add the dasBlog assemblies to the nGallery bin folder.

I'm not too sure why you still need the assemblies in the nGallery bin directory - maybe someone can enlighten me.

I've installed an image gallery to store all the pictures I've taken over the years. You can find it at http://www.jamessnape.me.uk/gallery or use the link in the Navigation menu.

In an earlier post I promised to explain why I didn't remove a block for one of the devs. Well here goes...

The block in question was a customer who needed support for a new version of our product they were evaluating. This type of job should really be handled by either the support guys or our professional services people. However, the version of the product being evaluated has only just rolled off the build machine and they haven't yet had the chance to get up to speed with it.

Obviously, customers are the life-blood of any company and therefore their needs must be met by any method available. We are a small company (approximately 30 employees) so roles are not so well defined as "developer" or "support" - we have to muck in and help out with whatever may be required. If that means investing time in a customer with the potential to produce revenue then so be it.

Given these circumstances, I think its justified to divert development resource in pursuit of customer needs. One thing to strive for next time though is better training and preparation for the people supporting the product.

I have a number of days holiday I must take before the end of September or I'll lose them, so when the Yukon Beta arrives I plan to use some of them investigating the various parts of the new version along with its companion - Visual Studio 2005`. I had planned to try porting our reporting product but there would be issues with blogging and the company IPR, so I'm looking to find a smallish project I can complete in a month and write about. Ideas on a postcard please - just use the comments at the end of this article to add your suggestions.

Today was the company family day. This year it was held at Highclere Castle. Rather than talk about it, I took some snaps...

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[Edit: I've moved the photos to the album at
http://www.jamessnape.me.uk/gallery/albums/1.aspx]

Remember to backup your Analysis Server repository. Especially if you are on site and the customer is looking over your shoulder...

Fortunately, we run our systems in parallel so I was able to to resurrect it from the other side but not without forgetting to change the data source otherwise I would have processed the cubes against the wrong database.

"Show and Tell" was a success. There was plenty of cool things to see - especially as one of the developers managed to sneak in some functionality I was unaware of. There was a particularly good demo and talk about an MDX report designer using the Office Pivot table component.

One thing to change for next time will be a stricter time-box on each presentation. The whole thing was three hours, a little to long to concentrate for. So I plan to limit each one to 5 minutes and ensure everyone focuses on the key stuff.

I'm on site with a customer tomorrow so Monday will be sprint planning day.