We’re pleased to be taking part of Wired Sussex’s Digital by design event today, where we’ll be providing practical industry advice to the future creative talent of Brighton and Sussex.

We’ll be there for one-to-one advice at the Portfolio Clinic from 5 to 7pm. It’s a great opportunity for those looking to carve a career in digital design to get expert advice and feedback on their portfolio. presentations. Along with some of Brightons other leading creative agencies.

If you are coming we look forward to seeing you there, there maybe some freebies too, shh!

UPDATE:
Here’s Wired Sussex’s review of the event on their blog.

Believe it or not QR or Quick Repsonse codes have been around for a while now. QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes.

A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL.

You can use your phone to read QR codes by installing Kaywa Reader.

And make your own QR code like we have below on the same kaywa site.

QR code containing website link for callendercreates.com

An introduction to barcode scanning on youtube

Small businesses lost 79,000 jobs in November, the largest decline in more than seven years (Source: ADP)

OK, so we cannot ignore statistics like that, and it just takes a visit to the City in London to find out something is wrong with the economy in this country.

Spending on Public Relations (PR), and advertising is the first to go from a companies budget before staff cuts, wage reductions – Are you noticing this yet if you are a digital company? Let’s look towards filling this gap by being creative and innovate:

Some of the best innovations are done during times of economic downturn

Innovation can be done cheaply, picture this – two geeks in a garage, wearing sweaters, trying to get an online experiment to work on an old macbook.

Innovation inspires, educates and entertains societies

That’s the amazing thing about being based in Brighton. It’s all about small groups of people working collaboratively at coworking locations across the city or at events like barcamp Brighton.

However, I want to think in terms of a revolution, rather than a downturn.

Revolutions are seen as ‘fundamental shifts’ in our lifestyle, and social interactions. They only happen usually once within our lifetime. Which lead to redefining what it needs to get the job done, and how people use these methods from a revolution.

As good things usually come out the end of revolutions like this, the Industrial revolution, the Internet revolution, now this financial revolution - we don’t actually know what will come out of this – I feel this is why a lot of people are worried.

I hope the ‘big R’ doesn’t mean that peoples creative taps are turned off. We are currently in a time of radical change, now is a chance to connect with people who you may not have done with before.

Stand out, put a sweater on and get down to a geek event near you!

Here’s a list of conferences and exhibitions you will find us at over the next few months, and into 2009.

Why? Not just because they are great fun, but also very valuable tools in training, learning emerging internet technologies and trends.

Getting to the cutting edge of Internet leaders minds is what it is all about, and chatting up close and personal with other exciting innovators on the web.
(more…)

We’re happy to let you know about two very exciting (local) web events that are happening this autumn.

Barcamp Brighton 3. We are helping to pay for the staffing for this event which is being held at Brighton University.

‘BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats”, Wikipedia.
(more…)

This post is regarding online brands, and accompany notes from Internet world which was a while back now, however it’s always a good free event to visit and see the big brands and startups represent themselves in a competitive marketplace on and off-line.

There were lots of seminars on search to content management, from hosting to email, some terrible powerpoint slides.

One particular highlight was Andy Hobsbawm’s (Agency.com) Keynote on “How people value brands and brands value people in an interactive world”.

Below are some quote and points from his Keynote:

• Be a verb not a noun
• Go with the flow
• Be a guide not a gateekeeper

“Today ‘the virtualisation of everything’ is possible”

“A brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is”

“No place for brands to hide, as information flow to the consumer is so great on the internet”

“The internet is one big social network, email being the biggest tool for networking”

“Don’t assume customers don’t know anything nowadays, they now have the information by searching for the answer = information driven”

“Exploding connections on the web means that brands can’t be linear anymore”