1. Brighton Tuttle Club – coworking for Brighton startups

    The Brighton Tuttle Club is changing.

    As of tomorrow I’ll be focusing the weekly coworking meet on local startups, making a time for them to get together and work in the same space, meet each other, maybe collaborate, or help each other out.

    Brighton Tuttle

    So if you’re a startup, or you’ve got something you want to try and build, come along and say hi.

    We meet upstairs at Cafe Delice (map) at 10am every Friday and tend to go on most of the day (but starting early is best!). We’re a small but very welcoming group, with varying levels of experience, and are all at different stages in the lives of our projects.

    Signup on Upcoming.org.

    There’s also a mailing list for chat between meets, once you’ve been along you’ll get an invite to join that too :)

    Posted August 13, 2009 in the Business, Entrepreneurship, Projects category, with the tags: , , , , , , and 1 comment

  2. Brighton conference season – idea

    This is an idea that’s been knocking about in my head for the last few years, a festival of festivals, and I’ve mentioned it during that time to several organisers..


    Used with permission, Thanks lomokev!

    In Brighton there is a lot of event activity at the end of each year, here’s a list:

    And other regular, smaller events, all year round, such as:

    So how about joining them together, informally at first, under one umbrella group of events, a festival of festivals if you will! A month (or 2?) of events and activities, strung together, collaborating on parts, and going beyond the normal boundaries. It’s when fringes blur into each other that things get really interesting.

    Ok so the dates are a little far apart for some of those events, but others are so close together that maybe other events will appear in between. We’re way off having a single ticket for everything, but a single banner could be achievable.

    I can imagine creating an atmosphere of creativity and learning, mixed with music and relaxation, not to mention the meeting people and spending real time exploring ideas in between events, not being rushed, or leaving town the next day..

    So would this be a good idea? Would we risk dilution? or would it raise the profile of the events and the city?

    What do you think?

    (Oh, and any events I missed that would fit in well?)

    UPDATE:
    Here’s some more groups that meet regularly.. I’m sure they could organise something during the festival too :)

    Brighton Bloggers, Freelancers Farm, Girl Geek Dinners, UX Brighton, Geek Wine Thing, Brighton Flickr, Open Coffee Sussex, Likemind, Skillswap, Sussex Geek Dinners, Brighton Illustrators, Brighton Vine, Freelance Journalists…

    What else is going on in art, music, film or literature that the geeks don’t know about? I’ll add to the list. This is also relevant to Amplified09 too, which will be a one day meeting during this period, of all these groups and networks.

    UPDATE 2:
    Two other music festivals to add to Beachdown are Loop and The Great Escape, I don’t think they’ll move from the summer, but maybe they could all collaborate on a weekend in September? :)

    Posted July 2, 2009 in the events category, with the tags: , , , , , , , , , , , and 8 comments

  3. Gary Vaynerchuk says you have to love what you do, or quit

    And I completely agree.

    When I was a chef several years ago, I learned so much (ask me next time we bump into each other). How to cook was only part of it. Long story short, I eventually realised that I’d stopped caring about the food, and that it had become just a job. As soon as you realise that, you can no-longer do the job the same way. You need to give a shit. You need to be part of what you’re doing, and it will be part of you too. So I gave it up. Luckily I soon started to work at Comic Relief.. and during my time in the kitchen I started Loose Connection too.

    The reason I started working in the kitchen in the first place was because I wasn’t enjoying the web any more, and I got out of that for the same reason!

    Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot from the experiences of all those paths, and am happy to be back in the web/digital industry. I have focus, purpose, experience and (almost most importantly) community.

    Now watch this, he says it better than me.

    So, the points to remember: (and this is not exclusive to building things online)

    • love it, or stop
    • live it, you’ll be working *all the time*
    • don’t just listen, take part
    • be prepared to fail for your love, don’t compromise your ideals (that’s the hippy bit apparently)
    • do something you’re actually into, it’ll show if you’re not, and you’ll lose interest
    • and more… you can work it out

    And go find him on Twitter, he’s worth listening in on.

    For some more technical stuff about building things online, here’s my list of what it takes to build the perfect webapp.

    Update: Oh I forgot, remember to be happy. That’s the foundation for being successful. In both life and business.

    Posted October 22, 2008 in the Business category, with the tags: , , , , , , , , and 1 comment

  4. My current work and geek hangouts

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

    —

    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?

    Posted June 20, 2008 in the Geek category, with the tags: , , , , , , , , , , and no comments yet