Monthly Retrospective: March 2024

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I managed the weeknotes for 9 weeks. The last one was posted as I was sitting on a plane, about to take off for a long weekend away with my wife. And then I started to take stock. I don’t have time for them. What had been a weekly reflective activity had become a chore.

And then the unwritten thoughts started to build in my mind. There were still things that I wanted to share. And the feedback had been positive, though the weekly cadence was probably too much.

So here we are. A new concept: Monthly Retrospective; 12 posts a year instead of 52. Maybe a better chance of me getting it out of the door on time too? I don’t promise it will be published exactly on the end of each month (I’m a week into April as I finish this post), but it will be there or thereabouts…

So what’s up this month?

Here’s a quick summary of what’s in the rest of the post

  • We have the tech – both at work and at home. Plus a few of the many interesting things I’ve spotted on my Internet travels (I still post most of them on X, and a more professionally curated set of posts on LinkedIn).
  • We have the events – typically evenings, attended to expand my knowledge.
  • We have the entertainment – music, film, TV.
  • We have life – family and friends.
  • And we have the photos – snapshots of life viewed through my iPhone.

So let’s get started…

In tech: at work

I’m busy, busy as always at work, with more organisational changes to keep me on my toes. One thing I’ve tended to avoid in recent years is working on bids. This is partly because I find there’s invariably a slow start and a mad rush to complete before the deadline, and partly because I prefer to work on a consulting-led sell where I have helped to shape the solution. In a competitive tender scenario someone else has influenced the client, so you’re already on the back foot, second-guessing what the client needs cf. what the invitation to tender says they want. In this case, one of my colleagues asked me to help out, and we have a few weeks to create our solution. It’s also a really interesting project so I’m enjoying pulling this solution together.

Meanwhile, the ransomware service is also moving forwards, though not as fast as I would like (or, more to the point, as fast as my boss would like). All being well, I’ll have something to shout about in next month’s retrospective.

In tech: at home

I’m still playing around with Meshtastic, with one node travelling mobile with me and another soon to be set up at home. Here’s the thread with the progress:

In addition to the excellent Meshtastic website, Andy Kirby’s YouTube channel has tons of information.

Other home projects include researching which CCTV cameras to put up (almost certainly from Reolink) and how to get an Ethernet cable to them…

In tech: some of the things I stumbled across this month

Some bits and pieces:

  • Advice to help build genAI prompts:
  • One of the many issues with QR codes:
  • Remembering some security advice I used last year:
  • One of my favourite design projects:

In events

March saw me getting out to a few tech events in the evenings

  • Milton Keynes Geek Night (MKGN) is always a good night out. In truth, it’s not really geeky these days – more creative – but I enjoy most of the talks and after a dozen years of attendance, I know a lot of the people in the crowd. This was the thread I created with the highlights from MKGN number 47:
  • A few days later, I headed down to London for the Windows Azure User Group Meetup. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use Node4’s London office, so I worked from the British Library and other locations for most of the day, before heading over to Elastacloud for the event in the evening. After Richard Conway (in/richardelastacloud) introduced the evening, Steph Locke (@TheStephLocke) from Microsoft talked about AI Landing Zones before Andy Cross (in/crossandy) gave a hilarious demonstration of how the death of coding is a little way off yet, even with multiple AI agents collaborating…
  • Towards the end of the month, I went to the inaugural NN1 Dev Club event, mostly to see what it’s about. I’m not a developer (though I might like to be…) and it seemed a good opportunity to get to know some of the tech folks in another nearby town. I enjoyed the talks – both PJ Evans (@MrPJEvans)’ tales of home automation (“Boiling Nemo”) and Dr Junade Ali (/in/junade)’s tales from the world of security research (“The Science of Software Engineering”) – so I’m sure I’ll be back for more events in future.

In entertainment

Cover image for The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

When I was about 8 or 9, I read a book at school. I couldn’t remember much about it, except that it was about some children travelling across Europe, it was set in WW2, Warsaw was a part of it, and I really enjoyed it. I asked a group of friends if they remembered something like this and one asked ChatGPT. ChatGPT thought it might be The Silver Sword, by Ian Serraillier. I read the synopsis and that was it! Why I never thought to ask an AI, I have no idea, but it worked. I then had a very enjoyable few hours in the car listening to the audio book…

On the subject of books, some more reading has arrived:

This month’s TV has been about:

  • Explosive action (deliberate pun) Trigger Point, S2 (ITV).
  • Laid back and delightfully silly Detectorists, S2 (Netflix).
  • Stunning landscapes mixed with murder mystery Shetland, S8 (BBC).

None are new, but they had been on the list for a while. The jury is still out on Shetland without Douglas Henshall in the main character role though.

I’ve also decided that I need to get out to some gigs. My wife’s not into the electronic music that I enjoy so much and I was thinking about heading down to Greenwich with my youngest son for a Day with Chicane. Unfortunately the gig is 18+ and he will be 3 months short of adulthood, so maybe that will wait a while longer.

In life: a trip to Tallinn

The month started with a trip to Tallinn, Estonia. Nikki and I were celebrating 21 years of marriage and we had a fantastic weekend exploring a new city. As a country that’s been in and out of Soviet control several times in modern history we were not sure what to expect. What we found was a beautiful medieval city, food that seemed more Scandinavian than Eastern European, and public transport that was cheap and plentiful.

Our hotel was only just outside the old town, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so we didn’t actually need to use the transport much (the city is compact enough to walk). Even so, €2 each way for a bus to/from the airport seemed amazing value.

Similarly, we ate and drank well at remarkably good prices compared with the UK – whether that was hot chocolate in Pierre Chocolaterie, hot wine in Ill Draakon (a medieval-themed bar), or one of the modern Estonian restaurants that we dined in. (For future reference, they were: Kaerajaan, Rataskaevu 16 and Pegasus). I came home thinking that, for the most part, the UK is a very dull and overpriced culinary destination.

Other highlights were a visit to the top of the tower at the Niguliste Museum for views across the city. We also enjoyed a walk along the old town walls. Outside the old town, we took a short walk to Telliskivi and visited the photography exhibitions at Fotografiska.

If you’re inspired by this and you fancy a trip to Tallinn (highly recommended), we flew with Wizz Air from London Luton and the Visit Tallinn website has a mine of information.

Oh yes, and linking back to tech for a moment, I forgot that the delivery robots I see in Milton Keynes and Northampton have Estonian cousins…

…and was amused to see people out and about experiencing virtual reality headsets in the centre of Tallinn…

In life: a Welshman in Twickenham

I may have been born in Northampton, but I identify as Welsh. And certainly when it comes to international Rugby Union, my team plays in red. I wasn’t going to say “no” though when I got the opportunity to watch England host Ireland at Twickenham. What a game! The final drop kick was at the other end of the pitch to me, but it was a brilliant match to be at.

In life: sporty teens

As ever, my sons are a huge part of what I get up to outside work. With Matt away in Spain, I was able to get to watch Ben play Hockey a bit more, including the Eastern Counties U17 tournament. Now Matt’s returned and he’s racing as much as he can, trying to get his Category 1 (and maybe Elite, if he can get enough points) road race licence. That needs my support sometimes (passing bottles, driving on the longer trips). At the other end of the scale, it was exciting to be able to watch him pick up a win at our local race:

It’s fantastic to see the support he gets from his own teammates and some of the guys he’s racing against too (the video cuts off Richard Wiggins exclaiming “he’s got it!” just as I hit record). #ProudDad

After a couple more races that I didn’t get to see (and didn’t exactly go to plan), he wrapped up the month with a particularly eventful weekend. On the Saturday, a couple of punctures meant his race only lasted a few minutes, but that was probably lucky as we then found the steerer tube at the top of his fork had a huge crack in it…

That afternoon and evening, he rebuilt onto one of the spare cyclocross frames that were waiting to be set up, and then raced the Fakenham town centre crit’ on Sunday. It was a wet afternoon and my heart was in my mouth for the whole race but coming in third after an early break and leading for a good chunk of the race was a great result.

In photos

Wrap-up

That’s all for this month… please let me know what you think in the comments and I’ll be back in early May to recap on April… plus, hopefully, with extra time for some other posts in between.

Featured image by 139904 from Pixabay.

Weeknote 49/2023: Back to work

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 1 year old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

So I’m having another go at writing weeknotes. I think it might even be a mindful exercise and good for me…

I was going to make this “Weeknote 2696” – because that’s the number of weeks I’ve been on this earth (plus 3 days), so it’s not a bad number to use. Then I looked back and realised I did manage a reasonable number of weeknumber/year posts a while back, so that’s the format. I’ll write these on a Friday though, so weekend thoughts will spill over to the next week…

This week’s discoveries/events included:

  • Returning to work after 10 days off, during which I seemed to have forgotten everything!
  • Reinforcing the view that a “strategic discussion about business challenges” with the wrong audience will still end in a conversation about technology. That was even after I’d been clear in the pre-meeting communications, calendar invite, and agenda. Now, I’ll engage the technical team that should have been involved the first time around…
  • Catching up for an overdue virtual coffee with Matt Ballantine (he of the #100coffees experiment), a long time acquaintance whom I now count as a friend.
  • Chatting with Mark Reynolds from Hable about organisational change. That seemed particularly appropriate after British Cycling had emailed me about changes to their coaching framework. It was clearly important to their Learning and Development team but just noise to me, with no clear call to action.
  • Experience of failed digital transformation at Costco, where it appears you can renew your membership online, but it might take 24 hours for the processes in the warehouse to catch up. I made some progress by deliberately crashing and reloading the app. But even then it needed a human to enable my digital membership card. Repeat after me: it’s no good implementing new tech, unless you sort out the business process too!
  • Milton Keynes Geek Night number 46 – at a fabulous new venue (South Central Institute of Technology).
  • Starting to learn about amateur radio, after Christian Payne (Documentally) gifted me a Quansheng UV-K5(8) at Milton Keynes Geek Night. I promised that I would take my foundation exam to get a licence.
  • Taking up the floor in my loft, to expose the heating pipes, to prove to the heating engineers that the pipes are fine and there’s something else in the system that needs to be fixed…
  • Wrapping up the week with a visit to my new favourite local pub (The Bell and Bear in Emberton), with my friend James, for a pint of Marc Antony. This beer appears to have been renamed. It was previously the correct spelling for me – Mark Antony!

Some press coverage

Featured image: author’s own

10 years of Milton Keynes Geek Night

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 3 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

In June 2012, I joined a large group of people in a community arts centre at a converted bus station. It was the first “Milton Keynes Geek Night” and I really wish it had been me that had penned this tweet:

The History of Milton Keynes Geek Night

Inspired by Oxford Geek Night, which was upstairs in the Jericho Tavern (QI point: this was where Radiohead played their first gig), Richard Wiggins and David Hughes decided to create something similar for the Milton Keynes (MK) digital community. It took a while to get off the ground, not least because Richard and David were working in different spheres – one in London, the other in MK – but also because they were keen to find the right location. It shouldn’t be a pub, or a hotel conference suite, but something that better suited the event – and what better than a former nightclub above an abandoned bus station?

Aside from a location, Richard and David needed to find speakers. They wrote lists of people they knew, people they admired, people they thought would be good speakers, and the first two – Jon Hicks and Brendan Dawes – both said yes. Oxford Geek Night gave permission for their name to be taken (geek nights were a thing back then) and Milton Keynes Geek Night (MKGN) was born.

It has run on a quarterly basis for almost ten years now, plus an all-dayer (in 2014) and two Geek Mental Health Night specials.

“MKGN came out of a bit of frustration and self-desire to attend something locally with interesting creative and techy talks, with a bunch of like-minded people. I enjoyed heading to London, Oxford and sometimes much further afield to see and hear this kind of thing, but I had a feeling there would be enough interest locally in Milton Keynes. I obviously never expected or thought we would still be going 10 years later.”
[Richard Wiggins, co-founder, Milton Keynes Geek Night]

The Geek moniker

At this point, I should explain that to many of us associated with the term “geek” it is not an insult – but a badge of honour. One of dictionary.com’s many definitions for the word is “a digital-technology expert or enthusiast (a term of pride as self-reference, but often used disparagingly by others)”. Another is equally fitting: “a person who has excessive enthusiasm for and some expertise about a specialized subject or activity”.

Call me a nerd and you’ll get a very different response – but a geek is no bad thing.

With all that said, I’m still not sure how I, someone who can appear outwardly confident but is very uncomfortable in a room full of strangers, found himself at the first Milton Keynes Geek Night.

Beer and pizza

Maybe it was the beer and pizza that attracted me?

Playing to the geek trope, MKGN has traditionally had an association with these two forms of refreshment. Milton Keynes-based Domino’s Pizza were event sponsors for a long time, with a huge pile of pizza being delivered at the end of each event. And there is always a bar (with at least one free drink). In December 2015, MKGN 15 even had a specially commissioned beer from Verdant.

These things wouldn’t happen without sponsorship and MKGN has been fortunate to have been supported throughout its history. There have been too many individual sponsors to list here (large and small) but even the pizzas came out of a sponsorship idea (from Oxford’s JavaScript Conference, then Just Eat, and then Dominos). More recently, food has been sponsored by partners or ticket sales and provided by MK Gallery (the current venue).

The Talks

Throughout its existence, Milton Keynes Geek Night has kept a common agenda – two headline speakers, with a few lightning (5 minute) talks in between (although there have been some memorable occasions when speakers have pushed the definition of 5 minutes). And, until Covid-19 made passing a microphone between people problematic, there were also some “one-minute wonder” opportunities for people to pitch new employment opportunities, geek clubs, events and the like – but strictly nothing too commercial.

Over the years, MKGN has featured almost two hundred speakers. From the very first event, the calibre has been high – and many have made return visits, like Jon Hicks, Brendan Dawes, Christian Payne, PJ Evans and Ben Foxall. Many of the past events are listed on the MKGN website and I tried to pick some favourites, but there are just so many – from PJ Evans’ “Boiling Nemo” (MKGN 22) to Andy Taylor’s talk about the delivery robots that roam the streets of Milton Keynes (MKGN 40). But these just scrape the surface – the variety of the speakers and the topics they have spoken on is immense.

Throughout it all, there’s been a strong theme around web (now “digital”) design and development but there have been talks too that have covered other creative areas. It’s a format that has worked well for a decade now.

Richard and David have worked hard to deliver a diverse range of talks and speakers at MKGN – and are very conscious of how male-centric some events have become.

The speakers are still selected from a “black book” and the organisers considers themselves to be fortunate that their requests are rarely turned down (although sometimes people are, genuinely, just too busy). Commercial pitches are rejected (“that’s not what we do”, says David) but MKGN has also taken on speakers they haven’t previously heard of who have turned out to be interesting.

“We started off in the kind of digital space, I suppose, but we’ve always wanted to not be a tech or that kind of conference because “codey” stuff bores the **** out of me and we’ve always tried to find as wide a range speakers as we can – and we’ve been really lucky to do that.”
[David Hughes, co-founder, Milton Keynes Geek Night]

Evolution

For many years, MKGN’s home was “The Buszy”, run by Make a Difference CIC (MaD) in the former Milton Keynes Bus Station. In 2016, MaD had to move out and MKGN had to find a new location for its events too.

Around that time MK Gallery was developing a new venue – the Sky Room – with fantastic views across Campbell Park and the east of the town. The only problem was that it wouldn’t be ready in time for the next MKGN event. But MK Gallery did have a Project Space that could be used in the interim period. This became the home for MKGN until the Sky Room opened with its theatre-style seating in 2019.

MKGN has never been about profit – just covering costs – but, with the smaller audiences in the MK Gallery Project Space, it became necessary to charge for attendance (not least to put off those who may just have been attending for free beer and pizzas).

Then, came the pandemic and, in common with many other in-person events, Milton Keynes Geek Night was forced online for a while. But that had its advantages too – allowing MKGN to bring in international speakers that they could never have flown in for an in-person event.

Nowadays MKGN has returned to MK Gallery – although the theatre-style layout has given way to tables and chairs. This is to help social distancing but has a side effect that it’s brought the format full circle back to the days of the Buszy. Tables of small groups of people, brought together through a common interest in design, technology and creativity.

Social geeks

In the early days, I’d rush home and blog about the event. But an increasingly busy family life and decline in blogging meant I switched to live tweeting events. And now even Twitter seems to have fallen out of favour – with the #MKGN hashtag becoming much quieter than it once was.

Even if I was known as the event’s in-house blogger for a while, Milton Keynes Geek Night’s “official” channels are on its website, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud (where recordings can be found for almost all of the talks), and a community on Orbit.

Recording the events

The first event had around 100 people but as audiences grew there was just too much interference and microphones started to struggle. After the technical challenges that the second MK Geek Night suffered, Richard was researching options for new audio equipment when Andy Hagon and Roo Machell said “we can help”. Since then, every MKGN has had professional sound mixing and recording, first using Andy and Roo’s own mixing equipment and later using MK Gallery’s desk and MKGN’s own microphones.

Community

Both Richard and David speak of seeing the friendships that have developed through Geek Night as a massive positive outcome.

“It’s about bringing people together and letting them hear talks that they probably never would otherwise. I love that so many friendships have occurred over the years at MKGN and I’m lucky to have personally made many good friends too.”
[Richard Wiggins, co-founder, Milton Keynes Geek Night]

Speaking personally, I met both Richard and David through the event (later discovering that we had other shared interests) but there have been many, many more people who have met through MKGN. David explained to me that he started to notice the same groups of people at the same tables each event. And he could see those friendships, networks, bonds, etc. starting to grow. MKGN had become a community.

Over time, the MK Geek Night audience has changed. Some of “the Oxford posse” still come along whilst others have moved away. But Milton Keynes has changed in the last ten years too. It’s become a bit of a tech hub – and that brings new businesses and new people. MKGN still has its “regulars”, but the audience has expanded, and new attendees have brought their own groups. All this change has been positive – and is part of the evolution of the event and the community that surrounds it.

I asked some of the attendees for their thoughts and it was fantastic to hear the warmth and enthusiasm that they have for Geek Night:

“The biggest thing is the people. It’s a social event. It’s meeting up with these guys. We became friends from Geek Night. And the talks are amazing […] what I come away with every time is always challenged, always enlightened in some way.”

Others spoke of how they are educated and informed by the speakers. One even told me how she is not a geek in the traditional sense – she is a musician – but can take things from the geek talks and adapt them to her profession.

“So, it’s adaptability as well. It’s not just about coding.”

Another told me about his need to research the things he’s heard about at Geek Night and discover more:

“I would say my typical geek night experience is that I come back from the events with a list of things I want to Google in my head. And I will be up late tonight, researching all these new fantastic things that I’ve been exposed to.”

What’s next for MKGN?

MK Geek Night’s tenth birthday is coming up on 16 June 2022 and tickets are already sold out. I asked Richard about future plans and it’s clear that there are some big ideas around exploring new formats and keeping the event evolving.

September 2022’s MKGN will be a 2-day creative industries and digital technology conference called All Flows. But, from talking to Richard about the project, a conference is just not the right word. The All Flows team (which also includes Pooleyville’s Simon Wright) are looking to create more of a festival vibe which extends into the evening, including inspirational talks, music, and more. The exact format is still work in progress, but Richard shared with me some of the speakers that are lined up and it sounds impressive. All Flows will take place on 29 and 30 September 2022 although Richard is hoping it will go on to become a regular occurrence – a sort of “Geek Night on steroids”.

Meanwhile, Richard and David are exploring options for the December 2022 MKGN – and whilst I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, some themed events may be on the cards.

It seems that the Milton Keynes Geek Night team have hit on something special. Back in 2012, Richard and David never expected MKGN to run for ten years but the constant evolution brought by changes in venue, a global pandemic, and a desire to stay fresh have become part of the recipe. Add to that a thriving community and MK Geek Night must be seen as one of Milton Keynes’ great successes.

Featured image from the MK Geek Night Instagram feed.

This post was originally published (with some great photography) at Pooleyville.city.

Weeknote 7: Traffic, snow and an awesome party (Week 49, 2017)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Another week means another weeknote and this one finished on a high because last night was the risual Christmas Party!

risual does Christmas parties rather well and I won’t go into the details here but suffice to say, a good time was had. I knew the weather forecast though and needed to be sober today (Mrs W wasn’t too happy about the idea of driving home in the snow) so I can bask in the delight of not-having-a-hangover.

Anyway, it was a joy to wake up in a Country House hotel this morning and see how the landscape was transformed. I took quite a lot of photos on my iPhone but Dropbox is currently refusing to upload them for me, complaining that one is corrupt (but not telling me which one!). I’ll edit them next week and post them then…

Then I drove home in the snow and ice. England can’t cope when it snows (or indeed with any other extremes of weather: too wet; too sunny; too windy). We do mild-grey really well though.

The week

My week was the usual mix of consulting (paid work), training and pre-sales. I was fortunate to spend a day at Microsoft in Reading on Tuesday, topping up my Microsoft 365 (Office 365, plus Windows 10, plus Enterprise Mobility + Security) knowledge. I’m hoping that, time permitting, some blog posts will come out of that.

I’ve been driving around the UK almost 30 years, and driving for work for most of them. This week drove home to me (excuse the pun) just how overloaded the UK’s road infrastructure is, when it took me more than 5 hours to drive to Reading and back (about 75 miles each way), then around 4.5 hours the next day to drive 190 miles on nothing but motorways and trunk A roads (180 miles of which were dual carriageway). It seems likely that the first place autonomous vehicles can take a hold is on major routes like this and I for one can’t wait. Maybe one day we’ll have segregated autonomous driving lanes on the motorways, where the cars can drive closer together (in constant communication and not constrained by human reaction speeds) and maybe even faster (if the law is changed).

This week also saw the quarterly Milton Keynes Geek Night, which I’m proud to have attended every one of! I’ve made a lot of contacts over the 5½ years it’s been running – some of whom I can now count as friends and this event had one of the best set of talks in a long while including:

  • Simon Collison (@colly) on “The Internet of Natural Things”
  • Laura Sutton (@L_Coull)’s “Non-geek’s guide to the Galaxy”
  • Dr Neil Smith (@neilnjae) showing us “Beatles vs. Rolling Stones: using data science to prove which band is best”!
  • Joe Leech (@MrJoe) wrapping up with “UX, Psychology and the Power of 100”

The next one clashes with my wedding anniversary, and Mrs W has even agreed to come along with me as an honourary geek!

At home

We’re hoping to convert our loft next year and the initial notice has been submitted for planning purposes. It seems that, now that councils are better at sharing information, marketers are scraping it to bombard us with offers of storage, home improvements, etc. Apparently, our neighbours will be getting mailshots from lawyers too… all very irksome…

Around town

I missed this event which was part of Milton Keynes’ 50th birthday celebrations – a floating carnival of decorated boats looks like quite a spectacle on the canal!

It’s really noticeable how many people are now sleeping rough on the streets of Milton Keynes. The Bus Shelter are trying to do something about that – but they need to raise funds to convert a double-decker coach to provide emergency shelter. To quote from their website:

“Homelessness can hit anyone – most of us are just three pay packets away from losing our home. With your help we can provide over 5800 safe, warm nights for people forced to sleep on the streets and help them find a positive future.”

Look out for the bus in the Intu part of the Shopping Centre (Midsummer Place) and please donate, if you can:

At the other end of the scale… I passed a man on the mean streets of MK proudly proclaiming that the best place to get a car parking space is the electric charging bays… it may not be illegal to park a petrol/diesel car in an electric space but it is selfish (especially as there are normal spaces free)…

Other stuff

Barclaycard sent me a new credit card “for security reasons”. It was nice to find that my Apple Wallet updated automatically on my phone and my watch. Sadly the many websites where I had the details stored for recurring payments (Apple iTunes, Microsoft, Amazon, M6 Toll, Transport for London, etc.) didn’t.

That reminds me… I wonder when my Curve card will show up… It seems I’ve been stuck with about 1500 people ahead of me in the queue for weeks now… in fact, the number seems to be going up (but if you use my referral link above, I can move back up the queue…)!

On the topic of referrals, my energy switch to Bulb completed this week. It was painless (though I will have to wait to get my credit from First Utility, my previous provider – who seem more interested in selling broadband to me now than reducing my energy bills…). Unfortunately, neither I nor my friend have received our promised referral credits from Bulb. Enquiries are ongoing…

My son and I needed to force-quit an app on my Amazon Fire TV Stick but weren’t sure how. This blog post helped by pointing us to Menu, Settings, Manage All Installed Applications where Force Stop is one of the options.

Sadly, Amazon and Google’s inability to play together nicely means my Fire TV Stick won’t play YouTube videos from 1 Jan 2018. One is not amused:

I’ve been watching Channel 4’s series about Donald Trump’s rise (An American Dream). I’ll leave the politics aside but it’s fascinating to see how the wealthy can grow to take such a position of power…

I noticed that my Nextbase Dashcam was showing the wrong time (1 hour ahead) and every time I changed it, it reverted after the next power cycle… then I realised there was a timezone setting and it was still on GMT+1 (BST). After changing to GMT, all was good. It seems that it picks up the time from the GPS, so the timezone is the important setting…

I’m torn about the use of the new HEIC image format on my iPhone. On the one hand, I want to store the best quality images I can, on the other, I need them to be readable on all my devices…

Whilst I was at MK Geek Night this week, I spotted that War Horse is coming to Milton Keynes Theatre next autumn. I enjoyed the film and I’ve heard good things about the National Theatre production too, so tickets are booked for a family cultural treat:

My phone has decided that, when I get in the car, I’m headed for the local Tesco Express… that’s a little worrying (I wonder how does Siri determine my travel patterns?):

Podcasts

I’ve mentioned before that I listen to a lot of podcasts. One of these is the Microsoft Cloud Show. Sometimes, it can be a bit too developer-focused for my tastes but I enjoyed Episode 223, which pretty much encapsulates the conversations I have with customers as an Architect working with the Microsoft cloud!

I also got the chance to catch up with Matt Ballantine this week (one half of the WB-40 Podcast). It’s been a while since Matt and I had a chat but I really enjoyed bouncing around our thoughts on modern collaboration and team working. and team-working. Like Matt, I’m finding myself drawing/writing on screen more (at least when working, using a Surface Pro – my MacBook lacks any sort of touch capability) though it’s also showing how unpracticed I’ve become at writing!

Wrap-up

Anyway, before I get too far into Sunday evening I need to sign-off and check my children haven’t continued building their snow-wall across the neighbours’ drives…

Next week looks like it should feature a lot less travel (at least by road) and a return to cyclocross with my son. I might even be home a few evenings and maybe, just maybe, I’ll write a blog post that’s not one of these weeknotes! I live in hope…

Typography and information (Matthew Standage at #MKGN)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 8 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve often written about Milton Keynes Geek Night on this blog – there was even a time when I used to write up the whole night’s talks when I got home. Now I need my zeds too much and I never seem to get around to the writing part! Even so, I saw Matthew Standage (@mstandage) give a great talk at last week’s MKGN and I thought I really should share some of what he talked about here.

Matthew spoke about on the importance of typography on user experience and his key point was that, far from being just the choice of typeface (font), typography is the primary medium by which we communicate information to our users on the web.

95% of the web is typography (or more accurately written language) and it’s the way we interpret, divide and organise information.

When designing a website, hierarchy is not everything. Instead, consider what’s the most important information to the reader. Its not always the page title.

“Really?”, you might ask – so consider the UK Bank Holidays page at gov.uk. Here the Level 1 heading of “UK bank holidays” is less important than the big green box that tells me when I next get a statutory day off work:

Gov.UK website UK Bank Holidays page

Next, Matthew explained, we need to think about proximity – which objects are placed together, how groups work, the use of white space. For this, read Mark Boulton’s Whitespace article on the A List Apart site (the article has been around for a while but is still valid today). Whitespace can help to identify different types of information: headings; links; authors; image captions; etc.

In general, users won’t read text in a word by word manner – but the typography helps readers to scan the page. Jakob Nielsen describes this in his article about the F-shaped pattern for reading web content.  Though, if that’s true, you won’t have read this far anyway as you’ll have pretty much stopped after the second paragraph…

Matthew’s slides from his talk are on speakerdeck and I’m sure the audio will appear on the MKGN SoundCloud feed in due course:

Thoughts on the use of Sway as a presentation tool

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a short talk on adopting cloud services at Milton Keynes Geek Night (MKGN). I’ll admit being a little nervous – the talk was supposed to be 5 minutes (and I had more to say than would ever have fitted – I later learned it’s pretty rare for anyone to stick to their allotted time) and I’m not used to speaking to an audience larger than a meeting room-full (a typical MKGN audience in the current venue is around about 100).  Just to make things a little harder for myself, I decided to use Microsoft Sway for my visual aids.

For those who are unfamiliar with Sway, I got excited about it when it first previewed in 2014. Since then it’s shipped and is available as part of Office 365 or as a standalone product. It’s a tool for presenting content from a variety of sources in a visually-appealing style that works cross-platform and cross-form factor.

Even though Sway has an app for Windows 10, some of the content (e.g. embedded tweets) relies on having an Internet connection at the time of presenting.  Wi-Fi at conferences is notoriously bad and 3G/4G at the MKGN venue is not much better (although it did hold up for me on the night). So, with that and the 7Ps in mind I had PowerPoint and PDF fallback plans but I persisted with Sway.

I’m still not sure Sway is a presentation tool though…

You see, as I swiped and clicked my way through, the audience saw everything I saw. I prefer the simplicity of a picture, with my notes on my screen – I talk, the audience listens, the image re-enforces the view. Sway didn’t work for me like that. Indeed, Sway falls into what Matt Ballantine recently described as the latest whizz-bang tool in a post about a request he was given to knock up a few slides of PowerPoint:

“PowerPoint [… is …] rarely used to perform the task it was designed to do […] The latest whizz-bang tool is the answer! Prezi, Sway or whatever it is that the cool kids are using. Actually, though, the answer probably lies as much in new skills that people need to develop to communicate in a Digital era. Questions like:

  • Who is your audience?
  • What is the message that you are trying to deliver?
  • Where will they be?
  • How will they consume your content?
  • How can you extend the conversation?”

We use Sway at work for weekly updates on what’s been happening in the company – internal communications that used to make use of lengthy HTML emails (I almost never used to read to the end) became more immersive and easier to engage with. And that’s where I think Sway fits – as a tool for communications that are read asynchronously. Not as a tool for presenting a message to an audience in real time.

You can see what you think about the use of Sway as a presentation tool when you take a look at the Sway I used for my MKGN talk.

Speaking at Milton Keynes Geek Night (#MKGN)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

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 a future event. Furthermore, Richard took me up on the offer. Gulp.

So, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I’ll be doing a little 5 minute talk on 9 June 2016 to represent some of the geeks of Milton Keynes who are neither designers nor developers. I haven’t written the presentation yet, but the synopsis is below:

Would you move all of your IT services to the cloud? Many organisations are moving all, or part of, their IT infrastructure and applications to the cloud. In this talk, I’ll share some of my experiences from helping to first migrate and then transform, enterprise IT services, using a mixture of infrastructure-, platform- and software-as-a-service technologies.

Tickets for MK Geek Night 17 have sold out but you can get on the waiting list (and talks are recorded and posted on Soundcloud). Please be nice to me.

Marketing for small businesses

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve blogged about Milton Keynes Geek Night many times over the last 3 and a half years – and it’s still just as good as ever. Last Thursday’s geek night (number 14)  had possibly the most eclectic mix of talks I’ve seen in a while though – with a talk about Life on Mars as well as the usual collection of web design/developer topics. And then there was Chloe Briggs’ 5-minute talk about marketing for freelancers.

Although Chloe (@clever_cloggs) called it marketing for freelancers, I recognise a lot of this being applied in small-medium businesses too. Indeed, it’s only the large enterprises I’ve worked for that don’t seem to “get it”. Even so, Chloe gave what I consider to be some very good advice, so I’m blogging it here!

  • Stand out from the crowd:
    • Use blogging as a tool
    • Know your audience
      • Think about who your existing clients are and what type of clients would you like to work with?
      • Target your content to this audience
  • Look after existing clients:
    • It’s good to keep in touch
      • Send a well-crafted newsletter every month/quarter
        • Click-throughs from email outperform social media
    • Clients often appreciate a call every few months to check in
      • They will increase their loyalty to you and make them feel supported
      • You will pick up extra work
  • Productise your services:
    • Tiered packages make it easy to compare services
    • Packages provide a jumping off point to start a discussion
  • Be a specialist
    • Create your own niche
    • You can easily become knowledgeable about a particular product or service
    • Creates trust and authority
    • Increases your value
  • Create residual income
    • Sell after-sales support for maintenance etc.
    • This can be a package including other services, e.g. hosting, analytics reports, etc.
    • Retaining your services on a monthly basis creates loyalty

Hopefully these tips can help others to build their businesses and attract/retain the right clients.

Milton Keynes Geek Night – three years on and going from strength to strength (#MKGN)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

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 I haven’t missed a single night*, being described as a “groupie” by one of the founders. I even brought my wife along once…

In the early days, I used to blog about the topics of discussion. More recently I’ve struggled to find the time but the audio from the talks is on SoundCloud (well, all of the talks from Geek Night 3 onwards, that is).

Last night’s MK Geek Night lived up to expectations. Not being a designer or a developer, I tend to find that some of the talks are a little beyond my knowledge but still good for an IT architect to understand at a conceptual level.

I thought that, as MK Geek Night celebrates its third birthday, now would be a good time to look back on some of my favourite talks:

…and then there are Ben Foxall (@BenjaminBenBen)’s talks which are in a category of their own – they need to be on YouTube not SoundCloud! I just cant do them justice in words but how he gets 200 people to join in on their devices and illustrate some amazing functionality inside a browser I do not know. Similarly, Sii Cockerill (@siicockerill)’s dynamic art based on maths/environmental considerations was incredibly visual but you can at least see the results on the web.

I’ll sign off with massive congratulations and a huge thank you to Richard Wiggins (@RichardWiggins) and David Hughes (@DavidHughes) who organise and MC these events – and to all of the sponsors (without whom they wouldn’t be able to take place) – and of course to the speakers too! Here’s to many more years of #MKGN.

 

*There was also an MKGN All-Dayer which I was unable to join but hey, that’s not a “geek night” is it?!

Effectively targetting social media interaction: are you speaking Scottish in Toyko? (Mark McCulloch at #MKGN)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Every three months, I have a mild panic because:

  1. I’ve successfully registered for Milton Keynes Geek Night (MKGN) but neglected to put it in my diary.
  2. Three months have gone by and I’ve not blogged about the last MKGN, even though David and Richard know me as the resident blogger…

This time is no exception…

I could say I was distracted because Mrs W. accompanied me to the last Geek Night; I could blame Google Keep for not allowing large enough notes to store a whole evening’s worth of note-taking and for losing the first part of my notes (although it sounds a bit like “the dog ate my homework” and I’m sure I’ve used a similar excuse before) so let’s just stick with “because I’m busy – but MKGN #9 it was a really worthwhile evening and I’m sure #10 will be too”. You can catch the audio on Soundcloud, but I want to write about one talk that I found particularly interesting – Mark McCulloch (@WeAreSpectaculr)’s “Are you speaking Scottish in Tokyo” (which seems to have an additional relevance today)…

Are you speaking Scottish in Toyko?

If you’re wondering what Mark means by “Speaking Scottish in Tokyo” (or, as he put it, “Okinawa the noo!”), Mark’s whole point is that social media interaction needs to be effectively targetted.  He’s quite happy to highlight that his message is based on a book by Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee) – Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World – but it highlights some important points:

  • First up – you need to be native to the social channel in use. Lazy brands put the same post on multiple channels. Sometimes it just doesn’t work…
  • Added to that, many social agencies have no real plan or return on investment.
  • Next – don’t expect instant results: you need to give, give, give, then take. Too many brands broadcast on social media. The good ones have a conversation. The excellent ones hook people in with something that they find useful – and then ask for something in return.

Mark talked about a rule of thirds developed at Yo Sushi (brand, product, fun/health/life); drawn as a Venn diagram you need to hit the point where all three meet and Mark suggests building a mind map of things to talk about based on these 3.

Next, the perfect post needs a call to action that’s easy to understand, perfectly crafted for mobile and for other digital devices – and respects the nuances of the target network… so, for example, on Facebook:

  1. Is the text too long?
  2. Is it provocative, entertaining and/or surprising?
  3. Is the photo striking?
  4. Is the logo visible?
  5. Have you chosen the right format for the post?
  6. Is the call to action in the right place?
  7. Is this interesting?

So, here are some first class “jabs”:

Now, Mark actually showed examples from Facebook – I’ve used the Twitter equivalents here because they are easy for me to embed, but this one doesn’t work on Twitter (more than 140 characters):

Those are all good jabs. This isn’t (it’s too complex):

But this one is a right hook (a new product that’s not too “salesy”):

Knock-out!

And what about when you don’t respect the medium? This is native:

This isn’t:

So, in summary, if you’re a brand using social media to interact with customers:

  1. Plan your social media content using the “rule of thirds”.
  2. Plan your social media content into “jab, jab, jab, right hook” micro stories.
  3. Think about the channel you’re posting on, the native language and the audience behaviours.
  4. Think about the time of day when you’re posting (auto-schedule updates, for example).

What about the other talks?

No promises, but I hope to blog about some of the other talks soon…

And what’s happening tonight?

As usual, tonight’s MKGN looks to have some fascinating talks (I confess I don’t have a clue about Jumbotrons, Twilio or MEAN coding!):

  • Ben Foxhall (@benjaminbenben) is back, this time to talk about “Jumbotrons”!
  • Rachel Andrew (@rachelandrew) is giving her postponed talk on “Your own definition of success – choosing a profitable side project idea”.
  • Elliot Lewis (@elliotlewis) will be talking about “The Apprentice”.
  • “Code Smarter, be MEAN” is the topic for Tamas Piros (@tpiros).
  • And Michael Wawra (@xmjw) is scheduled to speak about “Twilio”)

Join in!

Milton Keynes Geek Night happens every three months at The Buszy in Milton Keynes (old bus station, opposite Milton Keynes Railway Station) and is free (thanks to generous sponsorship). Because it’s free, and the speakers are generally so good, it “sells out” quickly, but keep an eye on the @MKGeekNight Twitter feed – and bag yourself a place for the next one in December!