This year the city celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Brighton Fringe and the 50th anniversary of the Brighton Festival.

In the spirit of the celebrations this year Heather Buckley and David Smith are exhibiting ‘Fringes of Brighton’ 5th May – 6th June 2016 – a showcase of photographs from events in Brighton taken over the last decade at MADE in North Road Brighton.

The exhibition is well worth a visit, it'll make you smile and so will the the coffee, lunch, and cakes.

The work that goes into putting on an exhibition requires a lot of the skills that we teach here. Photoshop and Lightroom of course, but also social media and content marketing. Many artist need to be thier own publicists these days. I managed to speak with Heather and David about their work and also with Leigh-Anne who opened the Gallery and Cafe MADE earlier this year.

I grabbed Heather today to talk about how she produces some of her amazing shots. I enjoy photography so it was a good opportunity to gain a little insight, particularly into the action shots.

Melissa Marie, Le Scandal Brighton Fringe 2008 - Heather Buckely

Summer sun floods the warm room and dust motes dance in my blurring vision. The lunchtime ‘pie and a pint’ sit comfortably in my stomach and the final straw is the hypnotic buzzing noise encouraging my heavy eyelids to close and calling me to the comfort of the Land of Nod. Suddenly, sanity returns, my eyelids jerk open and my head snaps upright.

As I look around me, I see an almost universal appraisal of the lecturer in the form of drooping heads and, in at least two cases, total oblivion. And we all have an examination in this topic in just a few weeks!

The great shame of this all is that the guy at the front of the room is a world expert in his subject … but he’s the source of the buzzing. He’s written several renowned textbooks on the subject … we’re all well aware of this because it is almost a prerequisite of passing the course that every student buys them all. Surprisingly, this is not resented by my fellows because sitting for hours poring over the dry text is preferable to listening the esteemed professor reciting, almost word for word, what is on the page.

You could come and be entertained at Silicon Beach Training in Brighton on our Train the Trainer course, we practise what we preach.

As a project management consultant I have bumped up against a number of PM methods … or ‘methodologies’ as we are being more and more encouraged to call them. I’ve used PRISM, PROMPT, PMI PMP and PRINCE but, of them all, my favourite is PRINCE2 … ‘the project method is formerly known as PRINCE’.

Image by Yves Lorson from Kapellen, Belgium - Prince

But I have a problem. When I hear a new project manager say, “I’ve just been appointed to run my first project so I’ve got to go on a PRINCE2 course,” I shudder. There are a couple of reasons for this perverse behaviour and it’s nothing to do with the temperature.

When did remote-controlled helicopters and pedometers become drones and wearable tech?

Since now. Today. The future, and you're living it.

But how far will it take us? Where will we end up?

The best way to predict the future is to look at what has already been achieved, and quite a lot has been going on! I'll go through just a few before looking at the predictions being made by experts.

A piece of well-known wearable tech that made a splash was Google Glass. Simply put, it is worn on the head like ordinary eyeglasses but displays information like a smartphone. It's mostly handsfree and controlled by voice commands, though there is a tiny touchpad built into the side allowing you to swipe through a timeline-like interface right before your eyes. If the wearer simply says ‘ok glass’ they have access to Google Search, Gmail, video chats, voice only chats, virtual reminders, voice translations and a whole load of other features. My personal favourite is its ability to take photos and record 720p HD video of whatever you are seeing.

It’s Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year time once again, and most businesses in town have filled their window displays with festive cheer. You don’t have to miss out just because your business is online. With these 10 Christmas and New Year WordPress plugins, you can make sure your blog looks the part this Holiday season.

Learn how to use WordPress to set up and maintain your website or blog on our 2-day WordPress training course in Brighton. WordPress training is taught in small groups and is very hands on, so over the two days you'll learn to use WordPress by actually building a site. You can make a start by downloading our free Setting up a WordPress Site eBook.

#1 Christmas Countdown Plugin

The kids will love this Santa Claus Christmas Coundown widget! Simply add the countdown widget to your site and Santa’s beard will countdown the days until Christmas. You can use a widget or a shortcode to display the countdown anywhere on your site including your sidebar.

Now we’ve got you in the holiday mood we thought we’d mention Google’s Santa Tracker. Use Google Santa Tracker to follow Santa Claus on Google Maps as he makes his journey around the world.

You’ve pretty much all heard of Google Analytics, right? But do you understand it? If you are a GA newbie, possibly not. We do run some great one day Google Analytics courses here at Silicon Beach (beginners and advanced), but if you just want to dip your toe in and learn some of the lingo read on.

Before you get down to the nitty gritty data, graphs and conversion rates, you must first know your Bounce Rate from your Benchmarking. So we've gathered up all the gobbledygook and it’s meanings to help you get to grips with it. We don’t want you to end up like this cat. So let’s get started…

Digits ready for the most busy shopping days of the year?

Is your local business prepared for Black Friday sales?

Local SEO could be your salvation.

Whatever your opinions, news forecasts suggest Black Friday could be the UK's first £1 billion online shopping day as retailers open their doors to bargain hunters. The Centre for Retail Research experts expects tills over the weekend, including Cyber Monday, to take £3.49 billion. So what does this mean for a local small business?

If you really want to be found on Black Friday here are a couple of suggestions for your online marketing strategy...

Photo credit: Reuters

Planning a content marketing strategy for 2016?

Looking for useful content marketing guides that hit the marketing spot?

There have been countless blog posts and guides written on the subject, and the list grows daily. But the problem isn’t a lack of knowledge or how-to information. The problem is finding a content marketing guide that meets your needs at your level of expertise. And dare I say who’s got the time to trawl through numerous guides. Isn’t it better to just get on with it?

While it’s tempting to get stuck in, one of the key things about content marketing is having a solid plan and editorial calendar. By investing the time to align your content marketing efforts to your business objectives you will reap the rewards - Google absolutely loves quality fresh content. There are loads of comprehensive guides but some are overwhelming for content marketing newbies. With this in mind we’ve produced a round up of the top 5 content marketing guides on the interwebs to save you time in planning your 2016 content marketing plan.