Surely it must be summer by now?

29th June 2009 Life, Portfolio

It’s been almost four months since my last update and what a four months it has been. I’ve completed some new sites, worked on some awesome projects, attended the odd event here and their, watched Transformers 2 and two series’ of Peep Show, built a bike, eat my body weight in Wine Gums and even managed to find time to sleep. Which was nice!

Ealier in March I was lucky enough to grab a ticket to Thinking Digital: The Next Generation an event organised by Codeworks and Gateshead Council as a sort of mini version of the main Thinking Digital Conference aimed at young people involved in the North East tech scene. Even though this was a precursor to the actual event their was some awesome speakers, highlights included talks from Mike Southon (Beer Mat Enterprenuer and FT), Ian Forrester (BBC) and Tina El-Hage (The Guardian) as well as some good sessions from Nick Imrie (21st Century Media) and Tom ‘Geek Comedian‘ Scott and it was really good to hear experts in their field give their thoughts on the industry and inspire young people to get involved.

Keeping on the theme of Thinking Digital I also went along to Thinking Digital University at the start of May, the opening event for the main Thinking Digital Conference. Again I caught some cool talks and Q&A’s from Mike Southen, this time with sessions from Harry Dernec (Red Bull), Barry Vitou and Danvers Ballieu (Bootlaw) and Andy Redfern and Ben Mawhinney (Ethical Superstore), and again it was good to listen to the experts dealing out words of wisdom, especially Harry Dernec who spoke about the early days of Red Bull.

Last week I managed to get my hands on one of the few tickets to Petcha Kutcha at the Live Theatre in Newcastle. For people who aren’t familiar with this, Petcha Kucha gives speakers 20 slides for 20 seconds each to talk about their chosen subject, meaning that most presentations are fast passed and end in the speaker getting kicked of the stage by the compair. On this occasion among the presenters were Stuart Varrall (Fluid Pixel Studio), Mark Elliott (DigitalCity) and Julian Leighton (Orange Bus), who in my opinion killed it on the night and having never been to this type of event before it made a refreshing change from the normal get-up-and-speak format.

And if all that wasn’t enough, a highlight of the pass couple of months event-wise was the launch of Thursday Fizz at the Living Rooms, Newcastle. A networking event for anyone in the media, creative or interactive industries in North East, it made a huge change from the normal networking get-togethers due to the fact that it was in a bar and the music was jumpin’. Good food, good people and plenty to drink. What more could you ask for?

But contrary to popular belief being a freelancer isn’t all about conferences, networking, buffets and complimentary drinks, believe it or not I also managed to find time to launch some new sites.

A new online store for London based vintage clothing retailer Bitching and Junkfood went live at the beginning of the week. Working with the owner Marion Bergin I built on her ideas and concepts to develop a site that featured both a blog and e-commerce platform. The project had some up and downs but after finally getting it up and running last week I’m more than happy with the results and I’m now looking forward to working on the future developments for the site so stay tuned for those. Also I can’t mention the site without a massive thanks to Sallie-Ann at Hype Digital and Gavin at Tamewhale for all their help on this one.

And that’s about it. I’m sure I’ve missed out a bunch of stuff but I suppose thats what I get for leaving it soooooo long between updates.

I’m off for a glass of Pimms and some Wimbledon highlights because apparently, its summer!

(Thinking Digital: The Next Gen photo by cubicgarden on flickr and Thursday Fizz photo by thursdayfizz on flickr)