Most project managers understand differently.  One of the core PMI principles is the cost-scope-time triangle.  Experienced project managers deal with the infamous project management triangle everyday.  The core principle of the pm triangle is that every project has three major constraints: time, cost, and scope.  This principle tells us that each of these constraints can be mapped out on a triangle, with the inside of the triangle representing the output quality (or defined success).  The general understanding is that each constraint is related to the other two.  For example, shorting the time constraint would result in decreasing the scope and/or increasing the cost.  Increasing the scope constraint would result in increasing the cost and time constraints.

The Graphs below depict how the change in one variable can affect the triangle.  The blue graph shows a project that rates as a “60″ on each scale.  The green graph shows that moving the time variable down to 50 greatly impacts the cost and scope.  The brown graphs shows how moving the time variable out can impact the cost.

Knowing the right tools and processes to put in place to manage these constraints is a key indicator of a good project manager.  Outside of process and tools, we also need to know how to manage the communication to the core team.  This PMI tool is a great conversation piece when you find yourself trying to manage multiple stake-holders with varying success measurements.

Webinar Platform Buying Guide
If you need to offer webcasts that will allow you to capture registrant (aka “lead”) information, in addition to recording your webcast for future use, then this guide is for you. Hopefully, you all may learn from my stumbles; it hasn’t been an easy journey. The following guide includes questions to ask of webinar platform vendors followed by additional information regarding what to look for, pros and cons of various options, benefits of various features, and more.

Lead Capture and Reporting

• How does webinar registration function?
• Can I tailor the registration form?

Generally the longer the form, the greater the risk registrants will drop-off. However, longer forms provide the opportunity to gather vital information. Your webinar platform should provide the capability for you to easily decide what best fits your organization and to customize the form accordingly.

• Does the platform enable me to capture lead info on my own site?

This is helpful if you’d like registrants to be entered automatically into your CRM system for follow up. Additionally, it is nice to drive the traffic to your own site to strengthen the association with your brand, encourage visits to other pages, and assist your search engine optimization efforts.
Alternatively, you may benefit from a service that manages this for you. In either case, it’s an important decision criterion.

• Even if the registration form can appear on my site, do registrants need to register with, and accept the terms and conditions of another organization?

Some services provide embed code you can include on your site to enable registration with the webinar platform to occur transparently.

• Does the platform offer attendance reports?

While it’s important to gather the information of all those who registered for your webinar, it’s equally vital to know who subsequently showed up. Additionally, the length of attendance at a given webinar is important & should be recorded and readily available

• Does the service consolidate registrants and attendants?

You do not want to have to manually de-dupe this info yourself, trust me! Receiving one .csv file with registrants and another with attendees is not fun.

Webcasting Functionality

• Does the platform offer audio through phone, computer (VoIP) or both?

I was using a platform that offered only phone audio and received a few complaints. One would-be attendant emailed me that it was “very ‘90s technology.” I must admit, I see his point.
According to On24, they’ve held more than 32,000 webinars in 2009 and although they often offer both options, approximately 93 percent of attendees selected VoIP audio. As a webinar attendee, it happens to be my personal preference as well, so as a webinar platform purchaser, I consider availability of VoIP more important than phone.

• What is the chat functionality like?

Flexible chat features enable you to offer better customer service to your webinar attendees. I consider it crucial to have the ability for numerous people to reply to chats, as well as the ability to reply via chat to one individual attendee. Attendees typing, “I can’t hear the audio/ see the slides,” is inevitable. You will encounter this complaint – and you don’t want your presenter disturbed with this sort of house-keeping. Nor do you want to interrupt the flow of the presentation, for example, to explain again that the slides will be e-mailed out tomorrow.

• What’s the actual presentation platform like?
• Can I offer polls to attendees and record responses?
• Are there limits to the number of polls I can present and the number of options per poll?
• Can I share a file that I must upload first or show my entire desktop?

The latter is helpful for certain types of presentations, such as walking attendees through navigation of a software product or website.
Consider the look and feel of the actual webcast windows. This is where I’ve seen the least variation amongst vendors. Personally, R2i doesn’t consider the ability to dynamically highlight items on the screen very important. But, hey, it’s nice, so it warrants a bullet.

• Does the platform have multiple presenter capability?
• Can numerous people in numerous locations present?
• If so, what is the maximum number of presenters?
• How does this work and is it clear who is ‘driving’ things by pushing slides?

Recording and Subsequent Promotion

• Am I able to easily, seamlessly record the complete webcast (slides along with audio)?
• Am I able to obtain a file with the recorded webinar for use in other locations, such as YouTube?
• Does the webinar platform provide a promotional venue? Can new leads find my content by exploring webcasts within an existing community?

While this may not be a primary goal of purchasing webcasting services, it is a nice advantage when available.

• Do you offer automated sending of e-mails to remind registrants of upcoming webcast sessions, and e-mail the recording after the session?
• If so, do those e-mails contain an Outlook calendar file?

Pricing, etc.

• Is there predictability in pricing?

I’ve seen extra fees charged for items such as per-minute, per-user phone access, extra webcast attendees, extra webcasting minutes, video files of webcast recordings – or extra fees for particular formats and more.

• Customer Service

I submitted an online info request form twice now for a Platform-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named: once in October, once in April. I have not yet received one return phone call or e-mail! This company is no longer in the running here at R2i.
Technical questions seem to be inevitable. Responsive and helpful contact people are an important buying criterion. I’ve also granted bonus points for those who offer me best practices tips. Likewise, I’ve deducted points for charging “training fees” upon set up for what should be a user-friendly technology.

These diagrams and meta dictionary will help other organizations understand the DNN architecture and save development time. Given that DNN Community Edition (CE) has several versions we reverse engineered the latest 5.42 (and for reference 4.95) versions to create the ERD and meta data dictionary. In addition there is additional reference defining the database differences between the versions.

DNN Community Edition 5.12 to 5.42

• CE 5.42 ERD Data Model (pdf)
• CE 5.42 Meta Data Dictionary (xls)
• CE 5.12 – 5.14 ERD Data Model (pdf)
• CE 5.12 – 5.14 Meta Data Dictionary (xls)

DNN Community Edition 4.95

• DNN495_ERD (pdf)
• CE 4.95 Meta Data Dictionary (xls)

When I started with R2i over three years ago, I quickly discovered that marketing and technology intertwine and that you really can’t have it any other way. This was a new idea for me, but it made perfect sense and still does.

Marketers need to work closely and effectively with their counterparts who are ultimately responsible for managing online business technology. Why? Because technology is an integral part of all your online initiatives.  The more you understand the technology, the more you are able to work in unison with your IT department… help each other spark ideas and assure that all of your projects will run smoothly. The key here is building cohesion.  Developers tend to be introverted and don’t focus as much on the target verticals and brand strategies. Marketers understand the pulse of the business world and can help craft a more robust technical strategy by keeping closer relationships with the teams which ultimately build the products and services they will provide.

Marketers can devise killer ideas, but if it’s not possible to build out, what does it matter?  Programmers can build out an amazing application, but if marketing isn’t involved to push it out and get people using it, what’s the point?

I like to think of technology as “the marketing enabler.” The technology is what makes it possible to do 95% of marketing initiatives. Whether it’s content distribution, launching a marketing campaign or measuring the success of those campaigns, technology is in the driver’s seat a good portion of the time (or at least giving me directions from the back seat). Technology allows us to create online initiatives that take R2i into new markets and serve our audience in new and innovative ways. Thinking of the technology as the enabler provides a better sense of the constraints and possibilities of implementing marketing ideas.

The technology team has to now expand their job description to “think tech”, but keeping marketing in mind. And marketing must continue to be innovative, not only with strategies but with the technologies used to implement them. With technology and marketing co-mingling, the dance will always be in full swing.

• No memory –  For instance, remember the email with the validation spec for that integration piece you did on that project with Widget Integration, Inc.  Yeah, the second spec?  Now find it.  Enough said.
• Email splinters – You sent me an email.  I sent it to two developers.  Both responded.  I send one back to you.   How much information is lost in the process?
• Transparency – Do we really need to talk about Blind Carbon Copy (bcc)?

So, is there a solution?  First, I try to hold to the rule the right amount at the right time.  Second, do not underestimate face to face meetings and telephone conversations.  And lastly, and most importantly, take it to the web; use some of the new and innovative solutions that exist.

• Forums and blogs – When kept to topic, forums and blogs easily store the history of communication from multiple people.
• Work flow and Issue tracking -   Collaborate between client, Project Manager and Developers on issues and enhancements while tracking histories and versioning; try Gemini.
• Documentation – Build a WIKI to display and easily update quick reference guides (QRGs), manuals and How Tos.

Want to be even more cutting edge?  Try Base Camp, Google docs and Yammer.