Brighton · 2008–2013 · 19 events
SkillSwap Brighton: Events, Talks and Speakers at Lighthouse 2008–2013
For five years a small, free evening ran in Brighton on roughly the same shape every time: two speakers, one room, no ticket price, and an audience drawn from the local web industry. This page is the complete record of it. There were 19 SkillSwap Brighton events between 2008 and 2013, carrying 47 talks from42 different speakers, and Lighthouse hosted every one of them.
The record matters because the places that used to hold it are gone. The event listings that the community linked to have been folded into an unrelated site, and what survives of the evenings themselves is scattered: a recording here, a blog post there, a speaker’s slide deck on a personal site that may or may not still resolve. What follows is assembled from the original event pages, kept at the same addresses they always had, so that anything pointing at a SkillSwap Brighton event still arrives at that event.
What a SkillSwap Brighton Evening Was
The format barely changed in five years, which is part of why it worked.15 of the 19 evenings were a straight two-talk bill: one speaker, then a second, each given twenty to thirty minutes and a subject of their own choosing. Doors were at seven. Nobody paid to attend and nobody was paid to speak. A local company covered the room — Clearleft carried most of the run, and Madgex appears on the later bills.
Subjects were whatever the speaker actually knew. Across the run that meant typography, JavaScript APIs, information architecture, podcasting, wayfinding, dark patterns, energy design, physical computing and a night of eight lightning talks. There was no theme imposed from above; on one occasion the organisers gave up pretending otherwise and billed the evening as SkillSwap stops pretending it has an underlying theme.
That looseness is the reusable part. A programme of Brighton speaking events did not need a committee, a venue budget or a call for papers. It needed a room, two people willing to talk about their work, and somebody to put the date in public. The guides on this site take that apart in more practical detail, using what these evenings actually did rather than general advice.
Every Event at Lighthouse, 2008 to 2013
Listed newest first. Each entry keeps the address it had when it was announced, so links made at the time still resolve. Dates come from the event pages themselves, which are the reliable source: on 8 of the 19 pages the embedded calendar data was left over from the previous evening and disagrees with the page, and the date shown here is the corrected one.
That defect is worth explaining, because it means several dates here differ from what other sources will tell you. Each new event page was made by copying the previous one, and the machine-readable date and event name inside the page were not always updated even though the visible heading was. One evening in October carries a June date in its markup and the previous event’s name; another names the event before it while showing its own heading correctly. Anything that read those pages automatically inherited the wrong values. The visible heading was written for each event and is what has been used, and every page where the two disagree says so.
- 19
17 April 2013
Skillswap Does
- 18
7 November 2012
Skillswap gets Physical
- 17
5 September 2012
Skillswap sells the sausage and the sizzle
- 16
20 July 2011
Skillswap cuddles up to HTML5
- 15
22 June 2011
Skillswap stops pretending it has an underlying theme
- 14
6 April 2011
Skillswap seeking stories
- 13
2 February 2011
Skillswap Makes Patterns
- 12
27 October 2010
Skillswap goes wordy
- 11
30 June 2010
Skillswap Goes Turbocharging The Web
- 10
27 January 2010
Skillswap Goes Broadcasting
- 09
25 November 2009
Skillswap Goes Wayfinding
- 08
27 May 2009
Skillswap Goes Behavioural
- 07
23 February 2009
Skillswap Goes Playful
- 06
28 January 2009
Skillswap Goes Typographic
- 05
25 November 2008
Skillswap Goes Portable
- 04
29 October 2008
Skillswap on Speed
- 03
20 August 2008
Skillswap Goes Pretty
- 02
9 July 2008
Skillswap goes Cerebral
- 01
11 June 2008
Skillswap goes Javascript
The Talks, and the Speakers Who Gave Them
42 people spoke across the run, a few of them more than once. The list is a reasonable cross-section of who was doing web work in and around Brighton at the time, which is the other reason the record is worth keeping: it is a primary source about a working community, not a retrospective about one.
Where a speaker’s own site was linked from the original event page and still resolves, the link is kept. Where it no longer resolves the name is simply given as text. No substitute address has been put in its place: a person who has moved their work elsewhere has not asked to be redirected there from a 2009 event listing, and guessing would put words in their mouth.
10 of the 47 talks have a recording that is still online, and those are linked from the individual event pages. The proportion is worth noticing if you are running something: the two-thirds without a recording are not lost because the talks were bad but because nobody had a phone on a stand that night, and the difference between a talk that can still be heard and one that survives as a title is that small a decision.
Reading down the table, the range is wider than a single-industry series would suggest. Typography and font rendering, JavaScript APIs and offline storage, information architecture, podcasting and screencasting, wayfinding systems, dark patterns in interface design, energy metering, physical computing and printed models. The common thread is not subject matter. It is that in every case the speaker was describing their own current work.
| Speaker | Talk | Event | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alan Colville | Engaging meaningfully with clients; the key to great digital experiences | Skillswap sells the sausage and the sizzle | 5 September 2012 |
| Andy Budd | — | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Andy White | Your first podcast | Skillswap Goes Broadcasting | 27 January 2010 |
| Ben Bashford | Square Eyes and Blue Faces | Skillswap stops pretending it has an underlying theme | 22 June 2011 |
| Ben Maxwell | Making energy easy | Skillswap Goes Behavioural | 27 May 2009 |
| Ben Terrett | The Emerging Field of Design and Algorithms | Skillswap stops pretending it has an underlying theme | 22 June 2011 |
| Bruce Boughton | Building and using secure web services using OAuth | Skillswap Goes Portable | 25 November 2008 |
| Cathy Jones | Tempo | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Cennydd Bowles | The future of wayfinding | Skillswap Goes Wayfinding | 25 November 2009 |
| Cennydd Bowles | A rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Chris Thorpe | Printing trains | Skillswap gets Physical | 7 November 2012 |
| Curtis James | Looking after the furniture in our brain attics | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Dan Lockton | Design with Intent: How designers can influence behaviour | Skillswap Goes Behavioural | 27 May 2009 |
| Dan Williams | Atoms are hard | Skillswap gets Physical | 7 November 2012 |
| David Hunt, Hugh Boys, Luke Overin, and Tom Mallinson | Mint Foundry: Toys With Purpose | Skillswap gets Physical | 7 November 2012 |
| Donna Spencer | Information architecture patterns | Skillswap Makes Patterns | 2 February 2011 |
| Doug Schepers | SVG: Today and Tomorrow | Skillswap Goes Turbocharging The Web | 30 June 2010 |
| Elliot Jay Stocks | I care because you do | Skillswap Goes Pretty | 20 August 2008 |
| Gav Strange | Positive for Conkers | Skillswap Does | 17 April 2013 |
| Gavin O’Carroll | Spacelog & story patterns: how to design experiences like you would a good book | Skillswap seeking stories | 6 April 2011 |
| Glenn Jones | The page and the desktop | Skillswap cuddles up to HTML5 | 20 July 2011 |
| Glenn Jones | Experiments in Data Portability | Skillswap Goes Portable | 25 November 2008 |
| Harry Brignull | Dark Patterns: an overview for brand owners | Skillswap Makes Patterns | 2 February 2011 |
| Iain Tait | Small & simple | Skillswap Goes Playful | 23 February 2009 |
| Ian Ozsvald | Learning to screencast | Skillswap Goes Broadcasting | 27 January 2010 |
| James Bridle | A New Theory of Awesomeness and Miracles | Skillswap Goes Playful | 23 February 2009 |
| Jenni Lloyd | Why do children go to school? | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Jessica Spengler | That’s not what he said! | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Jim Purbick | Creativity: stuff made with Second Life that you wouldn't expect | Skillswap Goes Playful | 23 February 2009 |
| Jim Smith | Pretending to be Italian since 1995 | Skillswap goes wordy | 27 October 2010 |
| John V Willshire | Make People Want Things, or Make Things People Want? | Skillswap sells the sausage and the sizzle | 5 September 2012 |
| John V. Willshire | Uber Generated Content | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Jon Tan | 80% Science, 20% Art | Skillswap Goes Typographic | 28 January 2009 |
| Kyle Bean | Crafting the message | Skillswap Does | 17 April 2013 |
| Matthew Sheret | The data will improve rockets | Skillswap seeking stories | 6 April 2011 |
| Mike Stenhouse | From Ego to Ergo: Using Influence in Design | Skillswap goes Cerebral | 9 July 2008 |
| Patricia Brown & Kasper de Graaf | Legible London: When is a wayfinding system the answer to a city's economic future? | Skillswap Goes Wayfinding | 25 November 2009 |
| Paul Annett | Oooh, that's clever! (unnatural experiments in web design) | Skillswap Goes Pretty | 20 August 2008 |
| Phil Gyford | The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Telling a complex story online | Skillswap seeking stories | 6 April 2011 |
| Relly Annett-Baker | All The Small Things: razor sharp copy for sites and applications | Skillswap goes wordy | 27 October 2010 |
| Remy Sharp | Forget the Web | Skillswap cuddles up to HTML5 | 20 July 2011 |
| Remy Sharp | Browsers with Wings: HTML5 APIs for webapp developers | Skillswap Goes Turbocharging The Web | 30 June 2010 |
| Remy Sharp | The DOM scripting toolkit: jQuery | Skillswap goes Javascript | 11 June 2008 |
| Richard Rutter | Facing up to Fonts | Skillswap Goes Typographic | 28 January 2009 |
| Simon Willison | The Real-time Web | Skillswap on Speed | 29 October 2008 |
| Simon Willison | Real-time JavaScript with Comet | Skillswap goes Javascript | 11 June 2008 |
| Tom Armitage | Settling New Caprica: Getting Your Pet Project Off The Ground | Skillswap goes Cerebral | 9 July 2008 |
How the Two-Talk Bill Worked
Two talks is a deliberate number and it is the single most copyable decision in the whole run. One speaker makes an evening feel like a lecture and puts the entire risk on one person. Three or more turns it into a conference in miniature, with timing pressure, and it stops people talking to each other afterwards. Two gives an audience a reason to stay for the second half and gives the speakers someone to compare notes with.
It also solves the recruiting problem. Asking somebody to carry a whole evening is a large request; asking them to do half of one, alongside somebody else, is not. Several of the speakers below had never given a talk before. The billing on the original pages reflects that even-handedness: Talk 1 and Talk 2, with equal space given to each, and no headliner.
One night broke the pattern on purpose. SkillSwap on Speed, in October 2008, put eight speakers on the bill with a few minutes each, titles only and no abstracts — and the fact that it is the sole exception across every SkillSwap Brighton evening in the archive is the clearest evidence that the pair was the format, not an accident of scheduling.
That night is also the best template for a first event, for the same reason it was useful here: a few minutes is a far smaller thing to ask of somebody who has never spoken, and one evening of short slots can surface half a dozen people willing to come back and do a full one. Several of the speakers on that bill appear nowhere else in the record, and several of the names that recur afterwards do not appear on it.
The counts by year below are worth reading alongside the list rather than under it. The densest year is the restart year, not the last year before the series ended, and the thinning at the end happens without any change in format — the final evening in the archive is an ordinary two-talk night.
| Year | Events | Talks |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 5 | 16 |
| 2009 | 4 | 9 |
| 2010 | 3 | 6 |
| 2011 | 4 | 9 |
| 2012 | 2 | 5 |
| 2013 | 1 | 2 |
What This Archive Does Not Have
Worth stating plainly, because an archive that only lists what it holds invites you to assume the rest existed and was lost.
There are no photographs. None were published with the event pages, and none have been made for this site — an illustration of one of these evenings would be a picture of a room that nobody documented, with real named people in it, and that is not a record. There are no attendance figures either. The pages announced events rather than reporting on them, so how many people came to any given night is simply not known.
There are no slides for the Brighton run. The 2003 series published its handouts and those have been recovered, but the later evenings did not, so what survives of each talk is its title, the speaker’s own description of it written before the event, and a recording in 10 cases out of 47.
And there is no record of why it ended. The last evening in the archive looks like all the others. No closing note was published, which is the ordinary way a volunteer-run series stops: not with a decision but with a month where nobody fixed the next date.