{"id":5067,"date":"2013-12-02T23:01:31","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T23:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5067"},"modified":"2013-12-07T16:21:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-07T16:21:52","slug":"improving-performance-managing-expectations-being-responsive-work-in-progress-and-fear-uncertainty-and-doubt-mkgn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/12\/improving-performance-managing-expectations-being-responsive-work-in-progress-and-fear-uncertainty-and-doubt-mkgn.htm","title":{"rendered":"Improving performance; managing expectations; being responsive; work in progress; and fear, uncertainty and doubt (#MKGN)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"MK Geek Night\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/mkgn.png?resize=153%2C240&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"153\" height=\"240\" \/>I can&#8217;t believe that the quarterly Milton Keynes Geek Night is nearly upon us again. I usually try to blog about the evening but I&#8217;ve failed spectacularly on recent attempts. \u00a0I might fail again with this week&#8217;s MKGN &#8211; not because I&#8217;m slow to get a blog post up but because the tickets &#8220;sold&#8221; out in something crazy like 2 minutes&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>September&#8217;s Geek Night was up to the usual high standard (including the return of David Hughes &#8211; seems you can&#8217;t escape that easily!) but included one talk in particular that stood out above all of the others, when Ben Foxall (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/BenjaminBenBen\">@BenjaminBenBen<\/a>) showed us (literally) the other side of responsiveness&#8230; but we&#8217;ll come back to that in a moment.<\/p>\n<h3>Back to front performance<\/h3>\n<p>First up was Drew McLellan (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/drewm\">@DrewM<\/a>)&#8217;s take on &#8220;back to front&#8221; performance. You can <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/mkgn\/mkgn-6-drew-mclellan-back-to\">catch the whole talk on Soundcloud<\/a>\u00a0but for me, as someone who runs a fairly shoddy WordPress site, it got me thinking about how performance is not just about optimising the user experience but also about the back end &#8211; perhaps summed up in one of the first points that Drew made:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Website performance is about how your site feels.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That may be obvious but how many times have you heard people taking about optimisation of one part of a site in isolation, without considering the whole picture. \u00a0As Drew highlighted, performance is a feature to build in &#8211; not a problem to fix &#8211; and it&#8217;s also factored into search engine algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst many performance gains can be found by optimising the &#8220;front-end&#8221; (i.e. Browser-side), there are some &#8220;back-end&#8221; changes that should be considered &#8211; sites need to be super-fast under normal load in order to be responsive under heavy load (quite simply, simultaneous requests affect responsiveness &#8211; they use memory and the quicker you can process pages and release memory, the better!).<\/p>\n<p>First up, consider hosting. Drew&#8217;s advice was:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cheap hosting is expensive (shared hosting is cheap for a reason).<\/li>\n<li>Shared hosting is the worst (rarely fast) &#8211; think about a virtualised or dedicated server solution instead.\u00a0 Constrain by CPU, then RAM, not disk space (that should be a red flag &#8211; it&#8217;s cheap, if not much is allocated it shows lots of people crammed on a server).<\/li>\n<li>Consider what your project has cost to build when buying hosting!\u00a0Use the best you can afford &#8211; and if they advertise with scantily clad ladies, they&#8217;re probably not very good (or to be encouraged)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Next, the content management system (CMS), where Drew says:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Think about the cost of external resources (going to database or web API, for example). Often these are necessary costs but can be reduced with careful architecture.<\/li>\n<li>Employ DRY coding (don&#8217;t repeat yourself) &#8211; make sure everything only has a single representation in code. Do things once, cache and reuse (unless you expect different results).\u00a0For example, if something doesn&#8217;t change often (e.g. post count by category on a blog), don&#8217;t calculate this on every page serve &#8211; instead consider calculating when adding\/removing a post or category (called denormalisation in database terms)\u2026 be smart &#8211; consider how real-time is the data? And are people making decisions using this data?<\/li>\n<li>Do the work once &#8211; &#8220;premature optimization is the root of all evil&#8221; is actually a quote from 1974, when line-by-line optimisation was necessary.\u00a0 Focus on the bottlenecks: &#8220;premature&#8221; should not be confused with &#8220;early&#8221; &#8211; if you know something will be a bottleneck, optimisation is not premature, it&#8217;s sensible.<\/li>\n<li>Some frameworks focus on convention over configuration (code works things out, reduces developer decisions) &#8211; can lead to non-DRY code &#8211; so let&#8217;s make programming fun and allow the developer to work out the best way instead of burning CPU cycles.\u00a0 &#8220;Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.varnish-cache.org\/\">Varnish caching HTTP reverse proxy<\/a> may be something to consider to speed up web site (unfortunately Drew ran out of time to tell us more &#8211; and my hosting provided found it caused problems for some other customers, so had to remove it after giving it a try for me)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In summary, Drew told us to care about front end optimisation; be careful about setting cookies and serve assets from cookieless domains; be smart about server headers; use CDNs to outsource traffic; GZip content; JavaScript at bottom of page and minimise it; test with PageSpeed and YSlow; ignore bits that make no sense for responsive web design. \u00a0But, importantly, don&#8217;t forget the back end &#8211; hosting, CMS, stay dry (do it once), a few minutes configuring up front saves wasted time later, and optimise early. In short &#8211; front end performance can&#8217;t make up for slow servers!<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Great talk at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23MKGN&amp;src=hash\">#MKGN<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/drewm\">@drewm<\/a> on performance. Front-end page-speed is nothing without good hosting and an efficient back-end.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; James Bavington (@jamesbavington) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jamesbavington\/statuses\/380777046420783104\">September 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<em>Related reading: check out Kier Whitaker (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/kierwhitaker\">@KierWhitaker<\/a>)&#8217;s \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/03\/faster-websites-better-photography-a-better-browser-great-conferences-and-a-better-life-mkgn.htm\">adventures with Google Page Speed in my write-up from MK Geek Night 4<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Managing client expectations<\/h3>\n<p>The first of the five-minute talks was from Christian Senior (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/senoir\">@senoir<\/a> &#8211; note the spelling of the Twitter handle, it&#8217;s senoir not senior!). \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/mkgn\/mkgn-6-christian-senior\">Christian spoke about managing client expectations<\/a>. \u00a0Whilst my notes from Christian&#8217;s talk are pretty brief (it was only 5 minutes after all) it certainly struck a chord, even with an infrastructure guy like me.<\/p>\n<p>Often, the difficult part is getting a client to understand what they are getting for their money (&#8220;after all, how hard can it really be?&#8221;, they ask!) &#8211; but key to that is understanding the customer&#8217;s requirements and making sure that&#8217;s what your service delivers. \u00a0Right from the first encounter, find out about the customer (not just who they are, what want, how much money they will spend &#8211; but browsers, devices available, etc.) and try to include that detail in a brief &#8211; the small things count too and can be deliverables (incidentally, it can be just as important to distinguish the non-deliverables as the deliverables). Most of all, don&#8217;t take things for granted. \u00a0My favourite point of the talk though, was\u00a0&#8220;talk to customers in a language they understand!&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p><code><\/p>\n<style>\n.jargon {expression:blank;}\n<\/style>\n<p><\/code><\/p>\n<p>Or, to put it another way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Work in code, not talk in code!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Great 5 min talk from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/senoir\">@senoir<\/a> about managing clients expectations, something I feel is important to a successful project <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23MKGN&amp;src=hash\">#MKGN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Robert Bavington (@robertbavington) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/robertbavington\/statuses\/380781910831955968\">September 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>The other side of responsive<\/h3>\n<p>As I mentioned in my introduction, Ben Foxall (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/BenjaminBenBen\">@BenjaminBenBen<\/a>)&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/mkgn\/mkgn-6-ben-foxall-the-other\">five minute talk on &#8220;the other side&#8221; of responsive design<\/a>\u00a0was nothing short of stunning. If I ever manage to deliver a presentation that&#8217;s half as innovative as this, I&#8217;ll be a happy man. \u00a0Unfortunately, I&#8217;m not sure I can do it justice in words but, as we know from Sarah Parmenter (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/sazzy\">@Sazzy<\/a>)&#8217;s\u00a0talk at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/09\/mk-geek-night-again-and-i-still-havent-blogged-about-the-last-one.htm\">MK Geek Night 5<\/a>, responsive websites provide the\u00a0same content, constructed in different ways to serve to multiple devices appropriately.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ben got us all to go to , which reacted according to our devices.<\/li>\n<li>He then showed how the site responded differently on a phone or a PC &#8211; choose a file from a PC, or take a photo on a phone.<\/li>\n<li>He tweeted that photo.<\/li>\n<li>He showed us the device capabilities (i.e. the available APIs).<\/li>\n<li>He updated his &#8220;slides&#8221; (in HTML5, of course), interactively.<\/li>\n<li>And projected those slides in our browsers (via the link we all blindly clicked).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Actually &#8211; Ben did so much more than that. And <a href=\"http:\/\/benjaminbenben.com\/2013\/09\/20\/other-side-of-responsive\/\">thankfully he blogged about what he did and how he did it &#8211; I recommend you go take a look<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In summary, Ben wrapped up by saying that &#8220;responsiveness and the web needs to use the capabilities of all the devices and push the boundaries to do interesting things&#8221;. \u00a0If only more &#8220;responsive&#8221; designers pushed those boundaries&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/benjaminbenben\">@benjaminbenben<\/a> blowing minds with real time analysis of the audience&#8217;s devices <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MKGeekNight\">@mkgeeknight<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23mkgn&amp;src=hash\">#mkgn<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/e8bohM3iaL\">pic.twitter.com\/e8bohM3iaL<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Al Power (@alpower) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/alpower\/statuses\/380800187490254849\">September 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One last thought on this topic (from Brad Frost, via Ben Foxall&#8217;s MK Geek Night talk), is contained in <a href=\"http:\/\/bradfrostweb.com\/blog\/post\/this-is-the-web\/\">these three images (provided under a Creative Commons attribution license)<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/this-is-not-the-web.png?w=150&#038;ssl=1\"  \/>\u00a0<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/this-is-the-web.png?w=150&#038;ssl=1\"  \/>\u00a0<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/this-will-be-the-web.png?w=150&#038;ssl=1\"  \/><\/p>\n<h3>Work in progress<\/h3>\n<p>Following Ben&#8217;s talk was always going to be a tough gig. \u00a0I&#8217;m not sure that I really grokked Tom Underhill (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/imeatingworms\">@imeatingworms<\/a>)&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/mkgn\/mkgn-6-tom-underhill-work-in\">Work in Progress<\/a>&#8221; although the gist seemed to be that technology gallops on and that we&#8217;re in a state of constant evolution with new tools, programs, apps, books, articles, courses, posts, people to follow (or not follow), etc., etc.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst the fundamentals of human behaviour haven&#8217;t changed, what&#8217;s going on around us have &#8211; now we need more than just food and warmth &#8211; we &#8220;need&#8221; desktops, laptops, smartphones, pink smartphones, smart watches.\u00a0 Who knows what&#8217;s in the future in a world of continued change\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Constant change is guaranteed &#8211; in technology, social context and more. Tech is a great enabler, it could be seen as essential &#8211; but should never replace the message. Brands, experiences and products change lives based on the fundamentals of need.<\/p>\n<p>Hmm&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Not sure I understood much of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/imeatingworms\">@imeatingworms<\/a>&#39;s &quot;hierarchy of needs&quot; but I&#39;m sure others who are more intelligent than I did! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23MKGN&amp;src=hash\">#MKGN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/markwilsonit\/statuses\/380788122826457088\">September 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Interlude<\/h3>\n<p>The one minute talks were the usual mixed bag of shout-outs for jobs at various local agencies (anyone want to employ an ex-infrastructure architect who manages a team and really would like to do something exciting again&#8230; maybe something &#8220;webby&#8221;?), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.codeclub.org.uk\/\">Code Club<\/a>, the first meeting of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leamingtongeeks.co.uk\/\">Leamington Geeks<\/a>, and upcoming conferences.<\/p>\n<h3>Fear, uncertainty and doubt<\/h3>\n<p>The final keynote was from Paul Robert Lloyd (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/paulrobertlloyd\">@paulrobertlloyd<\/a>), <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/mkgn\/mkgn-6-paul-robert-lloyd-fear\">speaking on FUD &#8211; fear, uncertainty and doubt<\/a>.\u00a0Paul makes the point that these are all real human emotions &#8211; and asks\u00a0what the consequences of abusing them are. He suggests that the web has been hijacked by commercial interests &#8211; not only monitoring behaviour but manipulating it too.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the highlights from Paul&#8217;s talk make quite a reading list (one that I have in <a href=\"http:\/\/getpocket.com\/\">Pocket<\/a> and will hopefully get around to one day):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/farmerandfarmer.org\/medicine\/\">Jonathan Harris&#8217; modern medicine<\/a> considers the ethical implications of software. Even a default setting can affect the daily behaviours of thousands of people.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartplanet.com\/blog\/decoding-design\/facebooks-secret-design-sauce-its-serotonin\/\">Facebook asks its designers about the &#8220;Serotonin&#8221; of new features<\/a> &#8211; i.e. how will it affect how we behave.<\/li>\n<li>As the web is largely unregulated, it&#8217;s attractive to those who want to increase their personal wealth; so we have to be optimistic that there are enough people working in the tech sector with a moral compass. Arguably, the Snowden leaks show that some people have integrity and courage. But Paul is uncertain that Silicon Valley is healthy &#8211; &#8220;normal&#8221; people don&#8217;t see customers as data points against which to test designs &#8211; for example <a href=\"http:\/\/stopdesign.com\/archive\/2009\/03\/20\/goodbye-google.html\">a team at Google couldn&#8217;t decide on shade of blue so they tested 41 shades (and border widths)<\/a>. Paul also made the point that the team was working under Marissa Mayer &#8211; for a more recent example witness the Yahoo! logo changes\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Then there are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/blog-static\/2011\/11\/evil-social-networks.html\">the &#8220;evil&#8221; social networks<\/a> where, as Charles Stross highlights, &#8220;Klout operates under American privacy law, or rather, the lack of it&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Paul says that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eastbayexpress.com\/oakland\/the-bacon-wrapped-economy\/Content?oid=3494301\">The Valley operates in a bubble<\/a> &#8211; and that Americans (or at least startups) skew to the workaholic side of things, viewing weekends off as a privilege not a right. He also suggests that <a href=\"http:\/\/cbracy.tumblr.com\/post\/39314979304\/silicon-valleys-problem\">the problem is partly a\u00a0lack of diversity<\/a> &#8211; The Valley is basically a bunch of Stanford guys making things to fix their own problems. Very few start from a social problem and work backwards &#8211; so very few are enhancing society; they&#8217;re making widgets or enhancing what already exists.\u00a0Funding can be an issue but governments are seeing the tech sector as an area of rapid growth and it&#8217;s probably good not to be aligned to a sector where you can launch start-ups without a business case!<\/li>\n<li>Lanyrd shows that it is possible to start up outside The Valley (although they have been bought by Eventbrite so have to move) [TweetDeck is another example, although bought by Twitter] but Silicon Valley arrived by a series of happy accidents and good luck\/fortune &#8211; it&#8217;s important that the new tech hubs shouldn&#8217;t be a facsimile of this.<\/li>\n<li>We trust Yahoo! by putting photos on Flickr but they also have form for removing content (e.g. Geocities) &#8211; but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gyford.com\/phil\/writing\/2013\/02\/27\/our-incredible-journey.php\">what happens when your service is closed down<\/a>? Is there something morally wrong with closing sites containing thousands of hours of individuals&#8217; comments, posts, etc.? Shouldn&#8217;t we <a href=\"http:\/\/contentsmagazine.com\/data\/\">treat data like it matters, allow export capabilities and support data rescue<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>Then there&#8217;s protecting out data from Governments. Although conducted before the Snowden leaks the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/who-has-your-back-2013\">Electronic Frontier Foundation&#8217;s annual survey<\/a>\u00a0asks &#8220;who has your back?&#8221;\u00a0&#8211; and, although it&#8217;s still young, it seems companies are starting to take notice.<\/li>\n<li>Choose your services wisely &#8211; we (the geeks) are early adopters &#8211; and we can stop using social networks too. \u00a0It&#8217;s easier to change services if data can be exported &#8211; but all too often that&#8217;s not the case so you need to own your own content.<\/li>\n<li>We all have the power to change the web to the way we want to see it, says Paul &#8211; all we need is need a text editor, an FTP client and some webspace. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2013\/sep\/05\/government-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying\">In the wake of the NSA revelations, Bruce Schneier writes in the Guardian how those who love liberty have to fix the &#8216;net<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Own your own data. Don&#39;t trust web giants. Words to live by from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/paulrobertlloyd\">@paulrobertlloyd<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23mkgn&amp;src=hash\">#mkgn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Neil Smith (@neilnjae) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/neilnjae\/statuses\/380800988632055808\">September 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/speakerdeck.com\/paulrobertlloyd\/fear-uncertainty-and-doubt\">Paul&#8217;s slides are available on Speaker Deck<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>So, what&#8217;s next?<\/h3>\n<p>MK Geek night #7 is on Thursday 5 December featuring:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Christian Payne (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/documentally\">@documentally<\/a>) on Storymaking<\/li>\n<li>Laura Kalbag (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/laurakalbag\">@laurakalbag<\/a>) on\u00a0The Art of Self Discipline<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>together with five minute features from:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Luke Murphy (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lurkmoophy\">@lurkmoophy<\/a>)\u00a0on The Process of Set Design<\/li>\n<li>Mariana Mota (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/marianamota\">@marianamota<\/a>)\u00a0on Get Your Ideas Done!<\/li>\n<li>Christian Hambly (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChristianHambly\">@christianhambly<\/a>)\u00a0on How Do You Take Your Coffee?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Only Apple WWDC and Google IO sell out more quickly than <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23MKGN&amp;src=hash\">#MKGN<\/a> (says <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidhughes\">@davidhughes<\/a>) &#8211; and you have to pay for them :-)<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/markwilsonit\/statuses\/380769014508560385\">September 19, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nEven if I don&#8217;t manage to get there (or if I do and am a bit slow blogging) you can find out more on the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mkgeeknight.co.uk\/\">MK Geek Night<\/a>\u00a0website on Twitter (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/MKGeekNight\">@MKGeekNight<\/a>), or Soundcloud (on <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/mkgn\">the MKGN stream<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><em>Related reading: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.creare.co.uk\/mkgn6\">James Bavington has another write-up of MKGN #6<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[Update 7 December 2013: Added links to Paul Robert Lloyd&#8217;s slides and to James Bavington&#8217;s post]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;t believe that the quarterly Milton Keynes Geek Night is nearly upon us again. I usually try to blog about the evening but I&#8217;ve failed spectacularly on recent attempts. \u00a0I might fail again with this week&#8217;s MKGN &#8211; not because I&#8217;m slow to get a blog post up but because the tickets &#8220;sold&#8221; out &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/12\/improving-performance-managing-expectations-being-responsive-work-in-progress-and-fear-uncertainty-and-doubt-mkgn.htm\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Improving performance; managing expectations; being responsive; work in progress; and fear, uncertainty and doubt (#MKGN)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[461,16,29],"class_list":["post-5067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-mk-geek-night","tag-useful-websites","tag-website-development"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Improving performance; managing expectations; being responsive; work in progress; and fear, uncertainty and doubt (#MKGN) - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/12\/improving-performance-managing-expectations-being-responsive-work-in-progress-and-fear-uncertainty-and-doubt-mkgn.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Improving performance; managing expectations; being responsive; work in progress; and fear, uncertainty and doubt (#MKGN) - markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I can&#8217;t believe that the quarterly Milton Keynes Geek Night is nearly upon us again. 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It was the first \u201cMilton Keynes Geek Night\u201d and I really wish it had been me that had penned\u00a0this tweet: Proof that Milton Keynes has geeks and about 200 more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Published elsewhere&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Published elsewhere","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/published-elsewhere"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/279326480_409221124011959_5464393416983907553_n.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/279326480_409221124011959_5464393416983907553_n.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/279326480_409221124011959_5464393416983907553_n.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/279326480_409221124011959_5464393416983907553_n.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/uploads\/279326480_409221124011959_5464393416983907553_n.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5664,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/06\/milton-keynes-geek-night-three-years-on-and-as-good-as-ever-mkgn.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5067,"position":1},"title":"Milton Keynes Geek Night &#8211; three years on and going from strength to strength (#MKGN)","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 12 June 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't remember how I first became aware of Milton Keynes Geek Night but, three years ago, I turned up in a room above a converted bus station to see what this new event would be like. 13 Geek Nights later (plus a special Geek Mental Health event too) and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/mkgn.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6365,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2016\/04\/speaking-milton-keynes-geek-night-mkgn.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5067,"position":2},"title":"Speaking at Milton Keynes Geek Night (#MKGN)","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 29 April 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"For the last few years, I've been heading into Milton Keynes once a quarter (and on a couple of other occasions too) to attend the Milton Keynes Geek Night, organised by Richard Wiggins (@richardwiggins) and David Hughes (@davidhughes). Last time I had the crazy idea that I might speak at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/mkgn.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5178,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/03\/time-for-another-mkgn.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5067,"position":3},"title":"Time for another #MKGN","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 12 March 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Woah... where did the last three months go? \u00a0It's Milton Keynes Geek Night\u00a0(@MKGeekNight)\u00a0again tomorrow and I haven't blogged about the last one yet (for that matter I can't find my notes - in Evernote, OneNote, Keep, or anywhere else). \u00a0It's a good job I don't rely on this blogging lark\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/mike-the-geeknight-robot.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4641,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/12\/short-takes-amazon-web-services-101-adobe-marketing-cloud-and-milton-keynes-geek-night-mkgn.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5067,"position":4},"title":"Short takes: Amazon Web Services 101, Adobe Marketing Cloud and Milton Keynes Geek Night (#MKGN)","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 7 December 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"What a crazy week. On top of a busy work schedule, I've also found myself at some tech events that really deserve a full write-up but, for now, will have to make do with a summary... 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