Networking Events More Relaxed in Brighton
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The document discusses networking events and communities in Brighton compared to London. It notes that Brighton's scene feels more laidback and less competitive than London. While the digital community in Brighton is described as open to sharing resources, the document observes there is little intersection between the technology and arts communities in Brighton. It raises questions about how open communities capture value, what smaller sub-communities exist, and why the arts and technology spheres remain disconnected in Brighton despite both having a strong presence.
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Networking Events More Relaxed in Brighton
- 2. When you go to networking events in here I think that it’s genuinely a lot more laidback and a lot less – yes, it’s more pleasant than London. It’s not quite as frenetic. I don’t think that…I can’t think actually of really having met many people when I’ve been out networking where I’ve just thought “You strike me as a deeply unpleasant person”. Whereas you were shaking sticks at them in London – they were everywhere. And so I find that – and maybe it’s because of the level of competitiveness that London drives.
- 3. WHY COMMUNITIES AND NETWORKS? • Communities and networks let us look beyond the formal structures of organisations to the social worlds in which they are embedded. • This ecosystem affects the way that a cluster can operates. • Information to be shared across organisational boundaries, affecting both firms and individuals • Networks can overlap with each other, allowing different types of knowledge and expertise to be shared (eg. arts and technology?) • Communities shape and are shaped by their social and cultural norms • Is it acceptable to help out people in other companies with their work? • Is it normal to keep long working hours? • Communities and networks do not always act in beneficial ways…
- 7. OPENNESS AND SHARING? • Members of Brighton digital community describe it as being relaxed (compared to London) and more conducive to openness and sharing. • Co-working spaces facilitate these practices, including The Skiff and The Werks • Overall: 19% of companies feel that they receive help from other businesses, and 42% feel that they give help in return. • Most help perceived to be given by consultancies • Most help perceived to be received by digital content companies
- 8. Someone came up to X at a networking event, he’d moved to Brighton and he was like “We’re your competition, we’re going to destroy you.” I don’t know, X probably just ignored him. But that is not generally speaking – obviously I can’t speak for the whole of Brighton – that is not the Brighton way. I never met another company that is like that because usually it’s like “We’re your competition, anything we can do to help each other out, we’ll share resources, give you some freelance”. It is just like that seemed very different and it was almost like “Go back to London if you’re going to be like that.”
- 9. UNFUSED? ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY • Despite strong presence of both technology and artistic communities in Brighton, there appears to be little intersection between the two. • Differences in practices, resources, constitution and location; artistic community perceived to be less catered for than technologists. • Brighton Digital Festival and White Nights are spaces where these overlaps do happen. • Some individuals bridge the gap, but see themselves as unusual and (sometimes) outsiders rather than the the norm.
- 10. It’s very easy for geeks to find other geeks. It’s harder for artists to do the same. Artists don’t need to sit down and exchange skills in the same way that technologists do. I was at dotBrighton this week to listen to a world expert who gave up hours of his time to give you a crash course in his technology. You wouldn’t get that for basket weaving in Brighton and you wouldn’t get that for other art making skills. I guess because there’s probably an expense with equipment and stuff for getting arts going, and also I think artists tend to be a little solitary. They feel that they do their training when they go to art school and then they just get on with pursuing it and it’s not as if you suddenly need to get a new skill.
- 11. QUESTIONS QUESTIONS QUESTIONS • Open communities are often characterised as being excellent at generating value but terrible at capturing it: does this describe Brighton? • If there is no single “Brighton digital community”, what smaller sub-communities exist? • Brighton is an attractive place to live, especially for people wanting to put down roots – does this affect community dynamics? • “If I want to find someone who can build me a robot arm, I’m only 2 degrees of separation from someone who can do that” – Why the disconnect between the arts and technologists?
Editor's Notes
- I’m a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Arts in Brighton University, amongst several other things. This is a very short presentation of some very preliminary findings from the Brighton Fuse project about communities and networks in the cluster and the wider city. Some caveats: in addition to being very early stage analysis, what I’ll be talking about in the next 10-15 minutes is only a wafer-thin slice from the massive amount of data that we’ve collected to date. In addition to the survey, we also have material here from over 40 interviews, observational work, document analysis and more – so there’s a lot. This is only one tiny part of it.
- I’ll start with this quote, which characterises several themes which have emerged over the course of the research.Firstly, we have networks of people – and potentially communities – in Brighton. There are networking events which can potentially lead to community building.Secondly, there is a distinct ‘flavour’ to this community. Interestingly, most people have made the comparison between Brighton and London, not Brighton and anywhere else. This makes sense when you think about how important London is to the firms down here, as the other researchers have talked about. It would be interesting though to know how it differs from other places like Manchester, Bristol or Edinburgh.So the question is, how does these characteristics affect practices in the cluster and beyond?
- When we talk of a Brighton ‘digital community’ in the local industrial cluster, we’re not just talking about the companies who are co-located (and sometimes doing business with each other), but of the people who make up those organisations, the swathes of freelancers, and many other people beside.Networks are links between different nodes such as people. A community is a network of people with shared interest/characteristic. In themselves, networks and communities are neither inherently beneficial or harmful – they just are. We need to understand how they behave to understand who benefits from being in them (or now), and how; also how they form, who has access and where they’re located. Also, how many communities are there and how do they intersect?
- This is a slide representing results of just one question from the survey about how company founders network with each other.
- Digital interactions are the most popular, in aggregate – this shouldn’t be surprising as these are low-cost and quick ways to keep in contact with other people. The structures to support this have been around for a while. The Brighton New Media mailing list has been running for over a decade now, whilst interviewees have intimated that Twitter has had a disproportionately high numbers of early adopters in Brighton (I am chasing this claim up).
- But face-to-face networking is important too, although different sectors network interact in different ways. Technology-related meet-ups, for example, are more frequently engaged with by founders in the ICT, digital content and consultancy sectors. This mirrors what has emerged from other parts of the data about these types of events for socialising, work-based networking but also self-training – note the difference between this and ‘attend training, lessons and evening classes’ for members of the ICT sector.Remember that this data comes from company founders, whose behaviour might not represent other members of their companies.
- Sowhat do these networks do? Events and online platforms have shown capacity for network and community building – what comes next?They are described as relaxed, allowing a slow burn of community building, rather than more aggressive and quicker networkingPhysical space is important. Co-working spaces particularly important for freelancers and small companies, but also the spatiality of Brighton itself, especially North Laine area and its coffeeshops. Again, the survey results are not straightforward. Founders may overestimate how much help they give, or not recognise help when it is given.
- Another quote which represents themes which have emerged from the data. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t competition, but there may be more considered politeness when doing business or going into battle; this may also represent aspects of competitive behaviour itself.
- This is part of the larger question about the role of the arts and the cultural community in the city which drives the Fuse work. As the survey data presented earlier shows, these factors are an attractant for the people who move down here - but when they arrive do they participate, produce, or consume? And do these communities need to intersect at all?
- Again, thinking about the intersections of the arts and technology. However, other parts of the research have highlighted that technologists themselves can also potentially work in isolation – particularly freelancers - and that events such as meet-ups are designed to counter this.
- On community dynamics – are they shaped by people putting down roots for the long term in the city?