Points

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Paul Davis was the first one to step up to do a talk on Wordpress Hacking with a short tutorial on LESS.

Follow along with his slides.

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Sponsors - Brighton Mastering

Brighton Mastering has very kindly offered up a prize for our Points Bazaar (aka raffle). You won't find out until the night what it is though!

Brighton Mastering is an online mastering studio based in Brighton Marina. The studio is equipped with high end gear of both analogue and digital flavours, providing warmth and/or transparency where needed.

Recognising how much of a difference mastering can make to the final sound of a record, Brighton Mastering aim to provide a more interactive, collaborative approach to online mastering where the client gets as much say in the final product as they would at an attended session.

Twitter (@BTNmastering) or like them on Facebook

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Power Points - Paul Davis

Paul Davis (@pauladamdavis) has changed his mind on what he will be talking about. His new topic? Wordpress

Pretty much every single one of us has used WordPress before, whether on personal projects or in commercial work. Most of the time, everything we need is in the core and easily added to the theme, flying pretty. But sometimes, we need something more special.

I'm going to show you several invaluable, sneaky and cheeky tips & code exampled, explain how to use them and the underlying magic that's happening behind the scenes.

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Sussex Big Fish

Sussex Big Fish has had a huge hand in helping Points get off the ground. Without them we would not have secured the amazing venue that Points will be in on the 13th October.

Sussex Big Fish is a free networking group that historically met on the second Thursday of each month upstairs at Browns Bar & Brasserie in Brighton's South Lanes. A group where you can meet other professionals to collaborate, share ideas and do business with like - minded individuals in a relaxed and informal setting.

Following a change of ownership in 2011 it was decided to take the group in a different direction with a focus on working with growth companies and providing a programme of regular events each month designed to to help develop and foster a culture of collaboration and informal networking aimed specifically at Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders .

Our aim is to provide an exclusive yet friendly programme of events which put the social back into networking, allowing people to make valuable connections and stimulate innovation.

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Power Points - Alex Sexton

Alex Sexton (@therulebook) completes the line-up for October's Points evening.

Alex is a London based one man web design and ecommerce agency. Over the years he's designed and built web sites for high street brands and niche fashion labels. He likes tea and flapjacks.

And the elevator pitch for his talk is:

With all of todays distractions on web and its myriad of design trends it's sometimes difficult to focus on the what our job really is - problem solving.

This talk is about how we can gather problem solving inspiration from areas outside the digital realm.

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Power Points - Paul Davis

Our second speaker is nominated .net young developer of the year - Paul Adam Davis (@pauladamdavis).

Paul Adam Davis is a 20 year old front-end developer and WordPress specialist for small London agency, Devstars. He's been in the industry for two years and builds sites for clients big and small.

Paul is doing a talk on the web industry as a whole - here is his elevator pitch:

At points, I will be talking about the web industry as a whole, describing what I think are problem areas; the effects are and how we can fix them.

An example of one such problem would be the lack of considering context when designing and how it affects the user's experience.

I hope to highlight this growing problem so we can all help educate our new-to-the-industry colleagues and clients on designing and building with context.

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Power Points - Tom Hasson

Our first speaker to be announced is Tom Hasson. (@tomhasson)

Tom Hasson is a freelance journalist and social media marketeer based in Brighton. He worked for Bozboz Digital Agency as a Social Media Specialist before going freelance this year.

Tom will be doing a talk on Social Media - here is his elevator pitch for his presentation:

At the upcoming Points evening, I will be giving a talk on Social Media. Specifically, how social media can help your business.

Building an on-line community and interacting with your audience is more important than ever - the way you represent your business online will determine how potential customers will think of you. If your competitors are running a successful campaign on Facebook, why aren't you? If they're bringing thousands of followers to their Twitter page, so should you!

During my talk I'll explain, amongst other things, why 'THIS IS THE LOUDEST STATUS UPDATE EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' is one of the most successful Facebook Status updates ever.

I look forward to seeing you there.

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Points - An Overview

Heres the quote for the press:

Points is an informal evening of digital discussions open to all. Taking place in the heart of Brighton, the events take in topics from web-development and SEO to social media and photography with 'speakers' including experts, beginners and everything else in between - because at Points, everyone takes part.

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Flash Points

Got a spare 2 minutes?

In between the various Points being made, we often need to set up equipment or possibly make a trip to the bar (it's thirsty work putting on an event like this!). And when we do, Flash Points are made. Flash Points is the quick-fire hints and tips part of the evening where you can share your snippets of code and secret shortcuts with everyone (in no more than two minutes).

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Got a Point?

Got a question? got a query? got a point?

This is the point in the evening where we open up Points to the floor. If you've got a question to ask that you think the audience can help with, let us know. You can submit your queries via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook or (if you're old fashioned) simply by putting your hand up on the night!

So if you finally want to find out who's still using IE6 and more importantly, why, this is where you'll find out.

We try and answer #gotapoint on twitter and facebook - so why not ask us?

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Points of View

The next section of Points is all about what you've found or made on the web...

Found something great you think we don't know about? Brilliant! The Points of View are short demonstrations of websites and apps that people have either made themselves or simply stumbled upon by chance.

The best Points of View are the ones that take us completely by surprise – so go on, surprise us!

We're always looking for Points of view - so email us, tweet us or drop us a note on facebook.

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Power Points

The first, and some might say the main feature, or points is 'Power Points'.

Power Points are what Points is all about; talks about any web-related project that springs to mind. Be it CSS, Photoshop, HTML5, or Flash, any digital subject can be covered.

Lasting between 20 and 30 minutes, the come in all shapes and sizes; from interactive demonstrations to fascinating discussions and straight forward presentations.

If you've got a Power Point to make, contact us.

Unfortunately we have already got the first 3 power pointers for our evening (more on those later). However, if you would like to power point at the next event - let us know

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What is Points?

What is Points I hear you ask?

Points is an evening for web-minded folk. It's a chance for people to gain speaking experience, it's an opportunity for people to learn and most of all it's a excuse for people like us to get together and talk.

The evening will be broken down into 4 main loosely structured sections, ranging from proper presentations to 2 minute mini moments of information and tips. At the moment these are being finalised but details will be available soon. Best of all - the evening will be either free or very cheap!

Edit: The 4 main sections are: 

Flash Points

Got a Point

Points of View

Power Points

Points will be based in the sunny seaside town of Brighton on a weekday evening, again, details are still being confirmed

To find out more about points and to keep up to date, head over to our facebook, follow us on twitter or head over to our website and sign up to the mailing list.

If you do have any questions or want to find out anything -do not hesitate to email us, even if its just to say hi! 

While you're doing that - let me bore you with where the idea behind Points came from.

Back in July, I attended insites, my first web conference event which was in Brighton. This was run by Elliot and Kier and was aimed at getting to know influential web folk a little bit better.

The evening had a relaxed atmosphere with questions being fired off whenever they popped into people's heads. It was a great event and certainly inspired all those that attended one way or the other.

It was this event that got me thinking - why are there not more evening conferences?

There are numerous day conferences and events every month which some people are unable to attend. An evening event opens the door for people in full time jobs, or freelancers who can't afford to take a day off work. This gives people a chance to work and then head off and network.

So rather than sit around and search the internet for an event of my liking, I decided to create one of my own and from that - Points was born.

Already I have received amazing support from the Web community and Points has not even had its first evening. To everyone who has uttered words of encouragement - especially those at Croydon Creatives, I thank you. 

I must say a big thanks to Tom Hasson - for being my soundboard and content writer, Roger from Fred Design - for the simple but stunning Points logo. Paul Davis (pauladamdavis.com) - for the (at time of writing) yet to be revealed beautiful website, Anthony aka MrQwest - for the Social Media site styling (still in progress!). And to all of you - thanks!

from

Mike Street