Embrace The Network and Measuring What’s Important

Beer & Pizzas will be provided due to the generosity of our Group Sponsors : Akamai, AppDynamics, Cedexis, Dynatrace, Dyn, The Financial Times, Google Chrome, NCC Group, Neustar, PEER1, and SciVisum.

This month we have two AMAZING talks.

First up we have Patrick Hamann who will be giving his talk entitled 'Embrace The Network' on modern techniques for building resilient front ends. This was first given at Front End London and received great feedback so if you missed it here's another chance to see it.

Secondly, we have a real treat in store in that we have a talk from the pioneer of much of the work in the world of web performance, Steve Souders along with Mark Zeman who now work together on the performance monitoring solution Speedcurve.

Speakers

Embrace The Network

Patrick Hamann

The network is intrinsically unreliable. More so, the network is out of your control as a developer. Therefore, we must design systems which embrace the unpredictability of the network and defend against it all costs. How can you prioritise the delivery of your core content? What best-practices can you use to optimise your assets? How can we design interfaces which adapt and respond to changing network conditions? And finally, how are new APIs such as ServiceWorker changing the way we think about the network?

Bio

Patrick is a senior engineer at the Financial Times in London where – amongst other things – he is helping to build the next generation of their web platform. Prior to the FT he spent had the last 3 years developing theguardian.com. When not speaking or ranting about performance he enjoys spending his spare time discovering new food and craft beer.

Measuring What’s Important

Steve Souders and Mark Zeman

Until browsers add mind-reading event handlers, we have to search for an alternative way to measure how fast users think our sites are. For decades, the go-to number has been window.onload, but modern and responsive techniques have weakened the relevance of that metric. What are the metrics that do have meaning for what your users are experiencing?

Bio's

Steve is a pioneer in the world of web performance. Before SpeedCurve, he held positions as Chief Performance Yahoo!, Google's Head Performance Engineer, and Chief Performance Officer at Fastly. Steve "wrote the book" on web performance with High Performance Web Sites, and its follow-up Even Faster Web Sites. He is the creator of many performance tools and services including YSlow, the HTTP Archive, Episodes, ControlJS, and Browserscope. He taught CS193H: High Performance Web Sites at Stanford University and serves as co-chair of Velocity, the web performance and operations conference from O'Reilly.

Mark comes from a design background but has always been just as passionate about the code. He has spent 20 years crafting websites and mobile apps in a variety of roles, including running his own design studio, lecturing at New Zealand's best design school and leading teams to deliver some on New Zealand's largest websites as a creative director in a digital agency.

He is a prominent thought leader in the performance community and popular on the conference circuit where he evangelises the role of design in improving engagement with performance issues. 

FAQs

What time should I arrive?

• Entry to the meetup is from 18:15 to 18:45. Please be on time as with two talks we will be starting at the advertised time.
• Beer and pizzas will be served up at approx. 20:30 and the meetup will end at 21:30 and all attendees must exit the building by 22:00.

Why have you started charging for your meetup events?

• We are charging a nominal £5 entry for our meetup events primarily to reduce the very high level 'no shows' that we have had in the past. This is very frustrating for those that really want to go but end up not being able to attend as all the spots have been taken.The 'waitlist' concept relies on 'no shows' actually releasing their space, and we find that this just doesn't happen. 'No shows' also cause difficulties for us in terms of food and drink provision and event checkin/security.  
• All food and drink is provided due the generosity of our sponsors and the entry fees are used towards the general operation of the group. As we are a non-profit making community association, any annual surplus from both sponsorship and attendance fees will be donated to IT related charities.

Do I have to bring my printed ticket to the event?

• Yes - It really helps us if you can bring your Eventbrite paper or online ticket (containing the QR code) to the checkin desk at the event.

What is the refund policy?

• In the event of the event being cancelled by the organisers, then a full refund will be made. No other refunds will be made under any circumstances. You can transfer you ticket to someone else via Eventbrite.

The name on the registration/ticket doesn't match the attendee. Is that okay?

• As we are using corporate facilities to host the meetup, security will perform a name check at check-in so its much easier if for everyone if you purchase your ticket in the correct name.

Are there ID requirements or an age limit to enter the event?

• ID will be required if you are not the named ticket holder. Our group sponsors provide alcholic drinks during the meetup session so you have to be over 18 to benefit from those.