Looking back... and ahead to 2024 (including a DigiFest announcement!)

By Sarah Cronk, December 2023

Let's face it - we're all counting down the days to a break at Christmas, if we're lucky! Here's some of the latest updates from Chalk Eastbourne to tide you over until you can pour yourself a mulled wine...

It was great to celebrate and kick off the festive season with many faces from the Chalk Eastbourne community at DigiFestive on 1st December. Thanks to Mel Hayes for the music and to FOUNDRY for putting on the event for us.

Putting Eastbourne firmly on the map

Huge congratulations are in order for two big local organisations for putting Eastbourne on the map nationally and globally this month. As part of our wider Chalk community, we wanted to publicly share our recognition and thanks for making Eastbourne that little bit better and stronger.

Towner Eastbourne and the Eastbourne ALIVE team

What a year it's been for art and creativity in Eastbourne, with Towner Eastbourne hosting the Turner Prize, the world's leading prize for contemporary art. Eastbourne has been mentioned in worldwide media and live on the BBC thanks to the announcement of Turner Prize 2023 winner, Jesse Darling. The exhibition here in Eastbourne, which includes Jesse's work along with nominees Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker, is free to attend and continues until 14th April. Well done to all the team involved in the excellent delivery of this project.

Identity

Without knowing it, you've probably seen some of Eastbourne-based Identity's work on TV - yes, we're talking the Coronation of King Charles III, London's New Year's Eve 2022, and most recently, the COP28 summit in UAE which unites our planet as it strives towards the future. No small tasks. The COP28 summit has broken records for Identity and for events in general, from largest temporary ICT networks, largest media broadcast infrastructure, to number of heads of state and personnel on site. An incredible feat, spearheaded from the HQ in Eastbourne.

No one can deny it - Eastbourne's talent is playing hard on the world stage. Good job all - you inspire us.

Eastbourne DigiFest 2024 is coming!

As we announced at DigiFestive, Eastbourne DigiFest WILL be back next year with a provisional date of Thursday 10th October. We'll have more information to be distributed throughout next year, so keep your eyes peeled.

In the meantime, we have a shout out to potential speakers: we are now accepting applications to speak at the 2024 event. If you're keen to get involved and share your expertise in the digital, creative, and tech world, we would very much welcome your application.

Find out more and apply

A Chat with: James Byford, Founder of the Adventures and Wisdom Institute

Innovation has been on our minds here at Chalk Eastbourne over the last few months. From Zunoma winning the Innovation category of the Eastbourne Business Awards, sponsored by Switchplane, to the launch of our Chalk Connect group aimed at inspiring those in our industry to develop their passion projects, it’s got us thinking about how the CDT sector can create more space for innovation in the day-to-day.

We've been asking ourselves: What conditions breed innovation and how can we make it part of our culture?

Who better to speak to about this than someone who has not only been actively engaged in research exploring how innovators are made, but has also pivoted many times in his own career and driven innovation forward throughout each organisation he has been involved in?

James Byford, an experienced leader, educator, and innovator, shared his wisdom with us, highlighting that the best innovations come when we step out of our digital bubble and disrupt the way we think and interact.

Read the article

Chalk Connect's next session: Tuesday 9th January 2024

At December's Chalk Connect session, we introduced "lightning" talks as part of the format for the evening with Switchplane's Lewis Hobden stepping up to the screen to talk about Docker.

The floor is open to anyone at these sessions, so please consider if you'd like to speak to the group about a topic you love or show and tell your recent work. Equally, if there's something you'd be interested in learning more about, let us know and we'll try to fill that gap.

The next session takes place on Tuesday 9th January 2024, 5-7pm at FOUNDRY; we hope to see you there.

Calling Chalk Businesses: The BIG Futures Show 2024

With The Big Futures Show taking place again on Tuesday 23rd April 2024, we are on the lookout for other local digital, creative and tech businesses to join us on a Chalk Eastbourne stand.

If you have not seen or heard of this event before, it’s the largest employability, skills and jobs event in East Sussex. Located at Eastbourne Sports Park, 1500 students (aged 14+) from across East Sussex are already provisionally booked to attend with more expected. Edwards Vacuum, Bexhill 6th Form College, Construction Industry Training Board, East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust and East Sussex College are all early partner sponsors.

If you can spare some time that day to be part of the Chalk Eastbourne stand during the day, please let us know. We will aim to split the cost of exhibiting (£200 +VAT) amongst all the companies that join the stand that day, and you can display your own company branding during your slot.

Having trialled this last year, we know this works well as a way to raise the visibility of our sector to the next generation of talent without being too much of a drain on time or money for any one individual.

If you’re interested, please email donna@chalkeastbourne.com.

Our year in numbers

Inspired by the familiar format of Spotify Wrapped, we took a look back at all we've achieved this year at Chalk Eastbourne and put together a reflection of our year, in numbers…

Reminisce with us and check it out on Insta!

Drone technology helping to restore power quicker in Eastbourne

UK Power Networks is exploring innovative ways they can use drones to improve responses to faults on rural lines - and are training up Eastbourne-based engineers as drone pilots with Heliguy. Rather than the traditional method to find an issue where engineers would walk the length of a power line, navigating fences and obstacles, the newly trained drone pilots will use high quality video to pinpoint damage and help restore power supplies up to 30 minutes faster. It's great to hear ways new technologies are finding practical applications to help homes and businesses keep running.