Sussex Internship Programme

We’ve just spent the last few weeks out and about around Sussex, meeting with media companies with regards to the Sussex Internship Programme. It has been a fantastic opportunity to find out about what is happening in the industry, the future plans of the companies involved as well as discussing their involvement in the SIP scheme.

The Sussex Internship Programme, in partnership with the University of Sussex, will provide 100 internships across the full spectrum of the media industry in Sussex over the next 18 months, with an initial 40 internships being advertised on the SIP website on the 1st July 2009.

The response has been exceptional and we now have internships covering TV, Film, Social Media, Web Design, SEO, Graphic Design, Animation, PR and Marketing.

Blast Theory; Bright AI; Burst*; Cogapp; Content Consultants; Crunch; Design Distillery; Electric Sky Productions; Eurogamer; FATdrop; iCrossing; Jollywise Media; Kanoti; Lambent Productions; Le Singe Media; Leapfrogg; Linden Lab; Littleloud; LocoMatrix; Makemedia; Midnight Communications; Miggle; New Writing South; Nigel’s Eco Store; Nixon McInnes; Plug-In Media; Propellernet;Relentless; Qube Media; Site Visibility; Smart Monkey Marketing; Spook Studio; Surface Impression; TalkWebSolutions; The Basement; The Friday Group; Truffle Pig Films; Wave; White Hat Media; Worth Digital.

To those who are interested in taking part or missed out on this round, there are another 60 internships needed for 2010 so please drop us an email to register your interest or visit the SIP site.

Digital City Conference in Paris - Feedback

Well, that was a pretty cool conference and not really what i expected. 60 invited participants including a hollywood producer, philospohy professor from sorbonne, head of public art for Canada, head of transport policy for Amsterdam, head of school of architecture at sao paulo in Brazil, deputy mayor of Paris, a bunch of students...and me.

It was chaired by the philosophy dude and seemed to switch fairly effortlessly between socratic debates, practical workshops and presentations. I got my presentation on Brighton out the way pretty early so thought I could relax. but no, this was no sit back and twitter kinda thing, we were involved in such excercises as developing new ideas for city wide digital media and then explaining them using only metaphors. Believe me, it makes you think..

anyhow, some of the presentations were on Apps for Democracy (the Obama supported attempt to engage hackers on e-democracy), the MIT initiated FABLAB prototyping project, the deputy mayor of Paris talking about how they opened the technology behind the VELIB free bikes scheme and what apps and ideas people came up with, and the scheme in Amsterdam to improve traffic flow using some cool iphone apps.

Key themes were to start with the strengths of your city and build on them cos digital cities will be as different as analogue cities and to engage the grassroots - build it bottom up not top down, you have far more expertise / enthusiasm / resources available than you think...

will be looking at ways to show people some of the cool things that i heard about / saw and find ways we can initiate some stuff here.

Digital City: The Future is Unwritten...

Hi, Further to Jo's post below, if you didn't catch the piece in the Argus yesterday, you can see it here.

Thanks for the emails, but better maybe to post them as comments so that we can have collective conversation.

So, some very broad issues i was thinking it would be interested to consider in the context of Brighton:

• How to deal with challenge of greater access to information leading to more individual data control


• How to create social digital networks that deliver socially-responsible communities


• How to develop e-government tools that really facilitate democratic participation


• How to make sure that the increase of visual culture doesn't impact on literacy


• Can we make sure our digital city human centred/personally driven/social media not system driven?


• Can we use digital to encourage risk taking/more individual choice/more freedom rather than more precautions/security/control?


• Is it intelligent components or intelligent environments?


• Fuel efficient cars or fuel efficient cities?


• does the digital city mean new dimensions of transport or improved existing transport?


• Can we stop the increasing use of online driven services (banks, government, health services etc.) from becoming digital divide ?


• Is it culturally fragmented city (globalisation) or online services 'one size fits all' (localisation)?

If anyone can let me know where such converstaions are already taking place then that would be cool.