Today: Signals, changes, and serious confusion

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1. Signals from Velocity Europe From design processes to postmortem complexity, here are a few insights from Velocity Europe 2014. Jenn Webb identifies several talks you won't want to miss. Herding cats, anyone? 2. Promise Theory for improved digital services delivery Promise Theory has become a familiar term to most of us, and yet understanding its practical implementation is still hard. It forms the conceptual basis for CFEngine; it can also, however, be used to describe socio-technical systems such as DevOps or even entire digital service organizations. Jeff Sussna, author of Continuous Quality, offers a general introduction to Promise Theory in his upcoming webcast, then presents specific DevOps and digital service scenarios with an explanation of how these scenarios benefit from Promise Theory. He'll also include several concrete examples that illustrate the power of Promise Theory in action. Join Sussna on Wednesday, December 17 at 9am PST, for this free webcast and understand the practical side of Promise Theory. 3. How has Velocity changed you? We've seen a lot of changes since the first Velocity conference 7 years ago. If you've been to Velocity, you’ve been a part of the evolution. Many people have told us that Velocity has changed the way they work or given them a different way of thinking. Perhaps you have a story of your own to tell. If so, please take a few minutes to tell us about an experience or learning you’ve taken away from Velocity. We’ll share some of the most interesting, inspiring, and educational stories with the Velocity community next May. We hope yours is one of them! 4. The speed geek's favorite time of year You've waited all year, and now it's here: the 2014 Performance Calendar. We're already into day 12 of great performance articles like The Pain of Duplicate Scriptsby Steve Souders and Bursting Our Bubble: Mobile Performance Outside the First World by Doug Sillars. Treat yourself to one at a time or read them all at once—it's all good. 5. Equal time for ops—the SysAdvent Calendar Speed geeks aren't the only ones who get an article a day. The good people at Chef have provided their own countdown, with in-depth knowledge provided daily. On theSysAdvent Calendar, you'll find pieces like Ops and Development Teams: Finding a Harmony by Nell Shamrell and The DevOps View of Cryptocurrency by Bob Feldbauer. Again, it's all good—enjoy! 6. An O'Reilly Radar Summit: Bitcoin & the Blockchain Get beyond the buzz. Discover the new business models, complex challenges, and immense unrecognized opportunities created by bitcoin and the blockchain behind it—happening January 27, 2015, at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Best price ends December 18. 7. SERIOUS CONFUSION with resource timing Resource timing is a great way to measure how quickly resources download. Unfortunately, almost everyone that Steve Souders has spoken with does this using the "duration" attribute and aren't aware that "duration" includes blocking time.Read why it's a problem and what you can do about it. 8. Web performance by day, covert ops at night Smartbear's Special Agent 404 does web performance by day, but moonlights occasionally at a customer call center of a large public specialty retailer. 404 shares observations on ecommerce, web performance, and user experience from her (or his) unique covert vantage point.