Events

These are events I've organised or spoken at.

Organiser

WorthingDigital - Autumn 2013 - Organiser, Spring/Summer 2014 - Publicist

Worthing is a large town, 12 miles from Brighton. It has a small but increasing tech community, partly driven by the high property prices in Brighton. Mark Ford started WorthingDigital as a networking group, and it grew in to regular talks and a coworking group. He asked for some help organising the talks, and I and several others volunteered.

In the Autumn of 2013 I organised a series of six talks and a couple of socials, booked by myself and Mark, taking place at Worthing Coworking, an office and organisation started by members of the coworking group Mark started.

I found running the WorthingDigital group on my own too much and in 2014 David Andrew (friend, ex-colleague, and co-founder of Worthing Coworking) volunteered to help. He booked the talks and sorted out the venue and equipment, I publicised the events. At the time of writing (July 2014) we're at the end of our first run together and it seems to be going well.

Farm Hack Day - 17th November 2007 - Organiser

I organised a Hack Day as part of the Brighton Digital Festival.

The event brought together about 40 developers, mainly local to the Brighton area but a few down from Oxford. They worked on a variety of small projects, including an adventure game integrated with a swipe card reader, a Twitter app, social networking friends finder, Facebook picture defacer, and many other things.

For the event I organised the venue, sponsorship from three local companies, advertising for the event including a blog, and gave an introductionary and closing talk. I also helped staff at the venue with some tech support when we broke their wifi connection.

BarCamp Brighton - 8-9th September 2007 - Co-Organiser

I helped organise the first BarCamp Brighton, the full team being Glenn Jones, Matt Weston, Andy Budd and myself.

The 'unconference' where all attendees give a talk about technology or one of their interests, happened over a weekend, with some attendees staying overnight. It was held in the offices of Madgex, where Glenn is a director. About 80 people attended, and over 100 more people wanted to sign up for the event.

My main organisational tasks was sourcing networking and IT equipment for the event from various sponsors, and advertising the event via a blog and various mailing lists. I also gave one of the first talks.

Everyone who goes to BarCamp gives a talk, mine was 'A Crashcourse in SEO'

BarCamp Brighton 2 - 15-16th March 2008 - Co-Organiser

I helped put on BarCamp Brighton 2, helping source equipment and offering advice to the main organisers, Jay Gooby and Jonathan Markwell who did a huge amount of work towards the event by gathering the sponsorship and organising a fantastic venue at the University of Sussex. This event had approximately 110 attendees.

My talk was 'Successful Freelancing - Tips from the Trenches'

BarCamp Brighton 3 - 6-7th September 2008 - Advisor & Helper

For the third BarCamp Brighton I was mainly an advisor, with the hard work being done by Mark Kirby, Premasagar Rose, Vicky Walburg and Jonathan Markwell. I advised and offered support on getting sponsorship, helped stuff sponsor bags, and did some running around and reception cover over the weekend of the event.

My talk is written up in my blog, it was about Death and Social Media

Speaker

Start Up Day - 10th November 2007

David Rosam and I held an SEO Clinic at the Start Up Day run by Ian and John of the Five Pound App events.

Panel

Enterprise Thursday: 'Be your own boss' - 12th November 2009

I was part of the panel of freelancers answering questions for the University of Sussex's Enterprise Thursday meeting. The audience questioned us on various facets of freelancing life, including finding work, starting up, collaboration and tax issues.