October 2020 Newsletter
It's October - time for sugar, spice, and all things nice! 🎃
We've changed up the sections in the newsletter this month for a bit of variation.
If you know someone in digital who'd like to receive a copy of our newsletter, please share this with them and ask them to sign themselves up at chalkeastbourne.com.
As always, simply reply to this email if you'd like your company profile or a project case study featured in this newsletter (it's free...) and we'll arrange a chat.
IN THE NEWS
Lightning Fibre
Eastbourne start-up, Lightning Fibre, has secured substantial investment to bring hyperfast full-fibre broadband to the town, making it the first south coast town to become a gigabit area. This new network will deliver capacity of 10,000 Mbps compared to the average speed in Eastbourne/Hastings of 22.3 Mbps. The network is already available in some parts of Eastbourne and will be rolled out quickly to the rest of the town.
Eat local, shop local
Eastbourne and Lewes District has launched two new online directories for the town showcasing local and independent businesses. Eat Local lists businesses that provide food or takeaway services, Shop Local highlights a range of fantastic shops in our community.
Beat the Street
Beat the Street is a new initiative that uses technology to turn moving round Eastbourne into a giant game. For both adults and children alike, participants can swipe their card or fob at a "Beat Box" to have their mileage logged. This is tracked on the online leaderboards and there are prizes up for grabs once the game closes on 4th November.
Virtual retreat
Congratulations to our art gallery, Towner Eastbourne, for being announced as a winner of Art Fund Museum of the Year 2020, the most prestigious museum prize in the world. In recognition of the unprecedented challenges that all museums are facing this year, five museums have been named as recipients of a share in the £200,000 award, placing Eastbourne's museum alongside the likes of the Science Museum in London.
Alongside other events the museum is running to support this achievement, you can tap into the beauty of the museum's location and Collection through the daily 'virtual retreat' on Towner Eastbourne's Instagram account.
Plus, if you haven't already heard it, you can listen to our Chalk Talks episode from earlier this summer featuring the museum's director, Joe Hill.
Smart tech in the town
Tech store Baseus opened in the Beacon last year. Although they've had a tough time establishing themselves during this coronavirus period, they're revamping their store and bringing in an exciting range of new smart tech products, including e-skates and scooters, robots, drones, and smart watches.
It's too early to mention the "C" word yet, but perhaps this is something to bear in mind for a fellow digital-lover as the festive season approaches? 🎄
Featured Profile
Last week Garry James, the voice behind Chalk Talks, met up online with James Armstrong, Director at Digital Firefly, to find out more about his company and why he loves living in Eastbourne.
Digital Firefly - What’s it all about?
Digital Firefly markets itself as “your guiding light in the world of social media marketing” - they love social media. Digital Firefly helps their clients with everything from strategy and training to content creation, consultancy and community management.
Digital Firefly are a remote team, but officially based in Eastbourne. James lives in Eastbourne and occasionally works at The Works Group coworking space, but other members of the team can be found across the south east in Brighton, London, and Reading.
Where did it start?
Digital Firefly has been going for 2.5 years, but James and his business partner Mel kicked off this work part time whilst they were still working for Sussex Police. Mel left the police to work for Brighton Council and James realised he couldn’t run a business part time, so decided to leave the police on his 10th anniversary and transform a fledgling business into Digital Firefly - and find some clients!
James and Mel didn’t come from an agency background; James started out as a PCSO with Sussex Police, became a Special Constable later and, at the end of his 10-year public service career, left as the Digital Communications Manager. In this role, he was able to shape what the Sussex Police do on social media and look at the customer service element of dealing with people who try to report crimes through social media too. He would, for example, consider an overall police objective of arresting more people for “X” crime, then build a social media awareness strategy around supporting that objective so that more members of the public reported the crime.
James finds that this experience has translated well into the world of business - the objectives are just a little different. They still involve the same “social” elements of social media: connecting people and building relationships with people.
James Armstrong, Digital Firefly
Who’s the audience?
Digital Firefly still works with some local government and public sector clients: for example, they’re about to train all of the digital marketing team at Brighton and Hove Council in Facebook Ads. However, they don’t work in a particular niche and have clients from a range of sectors. Some of their biggest clients include The TEFL Academy, who teach English as a Foreign Language, Toupret wall and ceiling preparation filler, and a domestic abuse charity called FLOWS.
The most important thing for Digital Firefly when meeting a new business or charity is that they get a good vibe from them, as well as being an organisation that they believe in and believe they can help. The Digital Firefly team looks for those with similar values to themselves: transparency, trust, and being good people. Doing good in the world is important to them.
Share a case study?
Digital Firefly recently worked with the International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations, who were running an online event. IAPO was expecting about 1500 people to sign up and come to the event; doctors, nurses, anyone in healthcare across the world, but they’d only had a couple of hundred people sign up and only had a week until their event. They approached Digital Firefly to ask for help in signing up more attendees.
Digital Firefly sat down with IAPO and discussed the audience, who they’d like to attract, and their key messages, then put together Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn ads to reach that audience and get those important sign ups.
The result was incredibly successful and with a short deadline, Digital Firefly helped IAPO to get close to their target number of attendees for this high profile event which featured some big names from the World Health Organisation as keynote speakers.
Why Eastbourne?
James was born in Eastbourne and then, as he put it, “bounced around a little bit” but ended up coming back: he missed the sea and likes the town. Whilst he would like to travel and work nomadically for a period after coronavirus, he feels he’ll always be drawn back to Eastbourne.
Whilst James did originally work with local clients, he’s found that as Digital Firefly has grown, they’re doing that less and less. Eastbourne is a good operational base, thanks to the good connections with Hastings and Brighton.
James finds Eastbourne has great coworking spaces and cafes to stop and work at, great business support and travel connections, as well as easy access to the sea and the Downs.
“There’s so much more to Eastbourne than those hotels along the seafront and the Carpet Gardens”
If you'd like your company featured in this section, please drop us a line and we'll arrange a chat!
Events
"THE WEB THAT NEVER WAS"
Tuesday 20 October 2020, 7pm - 8.30pm, free.
Brighton Web Development Meetup are hosting this free online talk from Dylan Beattie for anyone interested in the Web. It explores the alternative history of the World Wide Web, looking at many "what if"s in a world with no Microsoft, no Windows, no Google, and no Javascript.
One Last Thing…
Climate Positive
Just a little note to finish on - we wanted to let you know that the team behind Chalk is "climate positive".
Yes, it's a bit of a buzzword, but in reality means that over the past year, we've funded the planting of 2631 trees in the mangroves to the north-west of Madagascar, and have contributed to wind energy projects in India, Indonesia and Turkey, the protection of the Pacific coast of Columbia and forest plantation on Uruguay grassland.
Thanks to Ecologi for helping us to help the planet.
Until next time!
Sarah
