Josh Russell

Since I attended the my first London Social Media Cafe (also referred to as the Tuttle club after Harry Tuttle) I wanted to recreate the atmosphere and environment at an event here in Brighton.

photo by Sizemore

The room, while small, was crowded with people. Some old friends, and many that hadn’t attended before. All caught up in the excitement of being around people with genuinely interesting backgrounds and experiences. The conversation was loud and enthusiastic, if you know me then you’ll know that I thrive in that :)

So now I’m ready to announce that the Brighton branch will be starting on Saturday the 16th of August, at 11am, upstairs at the Quadrant.

What is it?
The Social Media Cafe, or Tuttle Club, is a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, and to plot, scheme, and share.. emphasis on open and interesting conversating!

Who should come?
If you’re interested in the future of media, how we organise, share, produce and enjoy it, then come along. If you’re an artist, film maker, geek, musician, designer, writer, photographer, or anything close or related, then come along. If you want to meet like minds, come along.

With the help of sponsors (which we welcome more of!) the coffee is free, and there should be some breakfast snacks to get us going. There’s free wifi, so bring your laptops if you need to get some work done or want to show off what you’ve been to..

I’m really looking forward to seeing you there!

Update: We have our first sponsor, local social media agency Nixon McInnes. Cheers guys!

Update: I made a map recently that covers many more wifi hotspots in Brighton. You can contribute back to it too..

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Brighton. What can I say.. You’re never more than 5 minutes away from another geek or “web professional” like-minded folk. All it takes is a twitter about coffee and a vague mention of a location, and the geeks will find themselves drawn towards you. So where do we go?

These are a few of the places I’ve been frequenting recently, and some classics that will always be the default starting point if I’m lacking inspiration..

View Larger Map

See the map on Google Maps

Where do you go to get out of the office or meet your geeks?

We’re thinking of organising a small Sussex Digital meetup. It’ll be really informal, just another opportunity to meet each other and chat. But also an opportunity for those outside of Sussex and Brighton to come and meet the local faces and scope out the talent, interesting companies and projects.

So, when’s best for you? I’ve made a (very) short list of dates that currently fit into the gaps between other events going on. You choose, just select the days that you’d prefer below:

And then let us know what you’d like us to try and do or what we should focus on. Like I said, it’ll be an informal thing, but it would be good to know if you want anything specific:

If it’s just too close to the busy holiday period, maybe we’ll do it in January, a looking forward to 2008 session!

Once we have a date I’ll create an Upcoming event and let you all know.

A month ago we started talking about doing a site for the local geek/tech/web/business community here in Brighton. A week ago we quietly launched Sussex Digital on Twitter.

This weeks new section is Networks! There are a lot of groups that get together in Brighton and Sussex, many of them have sprung up in the last year. Many of which I hadn’t even heard of! Now I (and you) can keep track of it all.

We’re aiming to add a new section or feature every week for the first 6 or 7 weeks, subscribe to the minifeed to get a first peek.

All feedback would be awesome, we want the site to serve the community, so if you have any suggestions or there are things we missed, let us know..

And *big* thanks to all the people from the community who have helped us with content and ideas :)

update: we were just outed by Andy on the BNM, this might change the feature schedule!