Great Western Coffee Shop

Submitted questions were forwarded to Ben and his team at 09:00 this morning so they can research anything that takes them from "left field" ... and questions will be posted at intervals of about 10 minutes, each in a separate thread, from 19:00 this evening in this board.   We recommend that users make use of our notify facility to get an alert as fresh posts are made.

I'm looking forward to this evening - should be an interesting session.

"bump" ... 7 minutes to go.  Spies tell me there's a director in the broadcast building!

And we're live!

Reports from control are talking about a red hot keyboard, and telling me that your question, staving, that was posted at 19:00 will arrive on time (and in good shape) at the answer station at about 19:10.

... and I understand there will be intermediate stops at partial answers for operational purposes  ;D

27 users and 51 guests on line ... and many of them reading these threads  ;D  ;D

We may find slight delays due to unexpected passenger questioner flows, but we have built in recovery time before the final station full stop.

We're learning much ... running another few minutes along a branch line regional service and terminating at around 20:22 (WTT), 20:25 (Public)

Up to around 80 users (about 30 logged in and 50 guests) at peak time during that session; around 30 of the guests were real visitor, and around 20 indexing spiders.

The forum and subject remain open but Ben Rule has now left the room.

My thanks also to our members, for joining us in such a lively, informative and polite discussion.  ;)

Technical wrapup.  Coffee shop sessions up from 1075 to 1098 between Monday 6th July and Monday 13th July. (Google Analytics result), and no appreciable change in pattern during the 24 hour day. Pageviews up from 5245 to 8725; busiest hour from 503 up to 1776 (19:00 to 20:00 - busiest time both Mondays). Tentative conclusion - our regulars who check in each day were here, perhaps a handful of extras.  But they stayed around far more - a quick visit turned into a prolonged stay. Here are some of the graphs which I usually look at, compared from one week to the next. As far as I can see, 6th July was a typical Monday.  Please note the difference of scale units.  Top, 6th July; lower, 13th July in each case.

How many pages did visitors look at on average while they were here?
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ben_pagespersession.jpg)

How long did people stop around on average?
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ben_sessionlength.jpg)

How many pages were viewed?
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ben_pageviews.jpg)

How many sessions were active?
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ben_sessions.jpg)

In terms of server loading, effect was minimal - the orange curve on this graph is for yesterday and you'll note huge spikes which are routine for backups and other regular procedures stand out - and the curve for when Ben was around is only fractionally above other days at that time of day

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ben_serverload.jpg)


Finally, my server log file size graph - up a bit yesterday, but no "great shakes" - rather as I would have expected - these last two graphs are server-wide and the Coffee Shop is only a small part of the load on there.


(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ben_logfilesize.jpg)

In conclusion, useful and easy to do again - me thinks just occasionally to make it a real event.  Invites to answer questions at such sessions perhaps to the RMT and other unions, to the DfT, to Network Rail and to Transport Focus, as well as managers / directors at First?