Community Spirit alive and well in Manchester

Jonathan Bowers, May 14th 2008, 6:12PM

For those who don't know, Manchester is playing host to the UEFA Cup Final tonight and the city is full of Scottish and Russian fans. We're very fortunate at UKFast to have one of the best vantage points in Manchester. Today, 28 floors above the city centre it is especially advantageous. The events in Piccadilly Gardens and for that matter across the city are brilliant to watch and as I write this, a great example of community celebration at work.

Our video producer Tristan has got in amongst it to get a little footage that should give you an impression of the atmosphere out there at the moment. I've put it up on our website.

I spoke to a BBC journalist friend who has been talking to the fans today and he was struck by the good nature of the day, shaking hands with everyone he spoke to. He pointed out that the feeling you get when observing such a gathering is like no other and I agree. It might be football that has brought people together today but it is a community spirit that drives the celebration.

As businesses we should all take note of the power of community spirit. Joining people together in common purpose, working together to a shared goal are hallmarks of a successful team.

Not sure how I'm going to get home tonight - but right now, I don't really care.

Tags: communities, development
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Developing the Internet at its core

Jonathan Bowers, April 23rd 2007, 11:50AM

One of the exciting things about working with a technology company is that you can never be 100% sure that what you are doing in terms of development will allow you to deal with all the changes occurring across the industry.

It could become easy to be very reactive - to adjust as the changes happen - which would of course be a dangerous place for any company at the cutting edge of an industry to find itself - by its nature they would no longer be cutting edge.

I'm really pleased to announce the launch of Project32, a wide reaching UKFast initiative that aims to seek out and form alliances with those in the UK who are developing new systems for server monitoring and protection. The project also researches ways to get as much out of the power available to the industry rather than looking at suggestions such as building new power stations and covers topics like Internet security and connectivity.

Lawrence Jones has been very eager to find ways to offer customers more energy efficient options without losing any performance and the R&D capital has already developed eco servers that are making this a reality.

I hope that over the coming months there will be a lot more that I can report here that places the UK at the forefront of Internet development.

Tags: development, internet
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Things can only get better

Chris Norton, May 10th 2006, 9:45AM

Hello Earth! When people come to me seeking a deeper understanding of what a web developer does, I usually mumble something about back ends and databases and how it's much more interesting to do than talk about. Well today I feel like being more forthcoming, so here's a post about the joys of web dev.

Now (and forgive me for dipping into a bit of UKFast promotion here) I've been working on our new Client Area for a couple of weeks now, and it's struck me that the best bit of working on the web is the changeability of it all. Whilst there's always got to be a deadline, things are never set in stone. Nothing's ever perfect, but working in this fluid medium means that, if an improvement occurs to me, I can make it - now, or in the future.

Say you're a novelist, and you've just noticed you've used the word... I don't know... 'wow' far too many times, so many times that it looks ridiculous, hey, you used it five times on page 57 alone... well, you've just had that book published and now you look silly, you wow-obsessed fool. You can only beg the readers 'be kind to my mistakes'. If I on the other hand suddenly notice I've got far too many... I don't know... mysql_query commands going on in a script, hey, I used it five times on line 57 alone... well, I can fix it just like that - either now, or in the future when somebody goes 'Oi Chris, you mysql_query obsessed fool'.

Of course there are times when you could have done with some burning bridges, and you really really don't want to see X Y or Z script again. But on the whole, it's a satisfying plus-side to this beast we call development.

Tags: coding, development, websites, www
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