Silicon Seaside

Last week Tim Bradshaw, the Financial Times' intrepid Digital Media Correspondent, wrote an article called "Silicon Roundabout", about an area near Old Street tube station where a whole menagerie of internet start-ups are based.

It started when Matt Biddulph, CTO of Dopplr, plotted his fellow Roundabouters on Google Maps to lend credence to the idea (see http://bit.ly/siliconroundabout). It was soon picked up and spread around the blogosphere (see here, here, here and here.)

Well, I'd like to be so bold (if I may) as to offer up an alternative to Silicon Valley, Silicon Roundabout and all the other Silicon Somethings out there (is there such a place as Silicon Implant?)

It's called "Silicon Seaside", and is otherwise known as Brighton.

Brighton seems to have captured the right mix of creatives and techies to form a special place with its own distinct atmosphere (let alone being my place of birth, which is pretty special in itself...)

There's a whole host of stuff going on in Brighton. There's Wired Sussex, who works with digital media companies of all sizes helping them to develop and grow, and Sussex Digital, which focuses on the Sussex figital commnity. There's the Whuffie Club, a new social media network started by the guys at Social8, a company that advises, supports and trains organisations wishing to deploy blogs, wikis and collaborative solutions. Nixon McInnes, those social media superstars with Tom Nixon and Will McInnes at the helm, also call Brighton their home (and are a client at Hotwire). There's more SEO and Search Marketing companies than you can shake a stick of Brighton rock at, Leapfrogg and Propellernet being the two that I'm most aware of.

For those that don't have their own fancy office space, there's The Werks, a hub designed to provide workspace, education, support, events and workshops to creative businesses in Brighton. The Werks also runs a range of events which appeal to the the Brighton scene, with subjects ranging from "Grow your wiki" to "Using Wordpress as a CMS".

Brighton also plays host to its very own BarCamp, with the next one (BarCampBrighton3) being held in September. BarCampBrighton3 is proving as popular as its London counterpart, with the first round of 40 tickets selling out in just 10 minutes and MySpace heading a list of impressive sponsors.

In fact, Brighton is showing more signs of giving London a run for its money. Microsoft announced that they would be holding their ReMix UK event in Brighton this year, which is usually held in London. Microsoft even went so far to describe Brighton as "a really chilled out place that has a unique creative buzz about it."

If all that wasn't enough, up pops Josh Russell with yet another scheme to pull the digital media mavens away from London Town - the Brighton Social Media Cafe, "a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, and to plot, scheme, and share." The first meet up takes place at 11am on Saturday August 16th 2008 and there's a wiki you can sign up to at www.icanhaz.com/TuttleBrighton

Incidentally, Josh also blogged about the proliferation of geeks and techies in Brighton where "you’re never more than 5 minutes away from another geek or “web professional” like-minded folk."According to Josh, all it takes "is a twitter about coffee and a vague mention of a location, and the geeks will find themselves drawn towards you."Josh even produced a map of their regular haunts should you ever want to bump into one, which you can see on Google Maps.

I'm not sure if the term will catch on, but there's a lot going on down in Brighton so why not take a trip down to find ou for yourself? It's under an hour by train from London, there's a lovely beach and ther'es always the Josh's Google Map should you want to meet some like-minded folk.

I'm sure there's a whole host of companies, ideas and networks that I've missed out here, which I'm hoping those too-cool-for-school Brighton people will fill me in on.

"Silicon Seaside" - what do you think?