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A huge thank you 34SP.com our Brighton Pavilion Sponsors!

Thank you 34SP.com for sponsoring WordCamp Brighton 2018. Why not stop by their stand and say hello, their support helps to create a great conference!

34SP logo

34SP.com is a WordPress hosting provider based in Manchester, founded in 2000 and hosting WordPress website since 2003.

Their WordPress platform provides SSL, daily backups and one click staging functionality as standard, at no extra cost. 34SP.com‘s custom built hosting stack offers unlimited page views, unlimited traffic, and can power more than 1000 users per second. Their in-house highly trained WordPress team work 100% in the UK and are focused on providing exceptional service and support 365 days a year. Oh, they charge less than 40p per day, too.

Based in the UK, 34SP.com is firmly committed to supporting the communities in which it participates. That might be the WordPress community, where they have attended every UK WordCamp in 2017, not to mention tens of meet-ups throughout the UK; or it might be the myriad small local UK charities who rely on them to help stretch their budgets – in 2017 34SP.com donated over £ 36,000 of free services to UK charities.

Without our awesome sponsors, we wouldn’t be able to keep our ticket prices so low.

A ticket costs just £30. This includes access to our two-day conference (lunch, coffee and snacks), an invitation to our after party which includes dinner, entry to Contributor Day, plus our incredible swag!

Get your ticket here.

If you’re interested in sponsoring WordCamp Brighton, we still have a number of sponsor packages available which you can view on our website. 

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Hooray for Jetpack! Our Brighton Pavilion Sponsors

Thank you Jetpack for your support. We couldn’t do it without you!

Transform how you work with your WordPress sites and rest easy knowing they’re always firing on all cylinders. Jetpack connects your site to the global services, community, and support provided by WordPress.com so you can focus on the stuff that matters.

Jetpack automatically shields your site from the unwanted attention of spammers, hackers, and malware, while real-time sync and backup means you don’t have to worry about data loss. Straightforward traffic-building tools help you attract the attention of readers and search engines. Pages and videos are delivered at high speed from a global, ad-free content delivery network.

With Jetpack’s Affiliate program you can earn 20% for every sale of Jetpack to your customers and clients. And with unlimited referrals, the sky’s the limit! Refer as many clients and contacts as you can, and get paid for every sale you generate.

Make your site work for you. Get your Jetpack today at Jetpack.com

Without our awesome sponsors, we wouldn’t be able to keep our ticket prices so low.

A ticket costs just £30. This includes access to our two-day conference (lunch, coffee and snacks), an invitation to our after party which includes dinner, entry to Contributor Day, plus our incredible swag!

Get your ticket here.

If you’re interested in sponsoring WordCamp Brighton, we still have a number of sponsor packages available which you can view on our website. 

 

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Where to stay for WordCamp Brighton

Luckily Brighton has a wide range of accommodation options so, even in the summer, it should be easy to find somewhere to stay. The venues are very close to Brighton station so you could also stay further afield in places such as Portslade, Southwick, Lewes, Eastbourne or Worthing and get the train in for WordCamp. And, if you are a party animal, don’t worry, night buses cover most of the city and surrounding area.

Budget

Hostels

If you are on a tight budget or with a group of friends the cheapest option is a dorm room in a hostel. All hostels also offer budget rooms which are usually cheaper than a hotel if you want a single room.

YHA 
Old Steine, Brighton, BN1 1NH

A short walk from the venue with prices starting at £24pn

Home Brighton
33 Richmond Pl, Brighton BN2 9NA
Home is very close to the venue, from £20 pn.

Budget rooms

University of Brighton £40

This is a great option if you are looking for a single room. It offers en suite single accommodation with free WiFi access throughout private parking free of charge, very rare for Brighton.

There are loads of Air bnbs in Brighton and the surrounding area from £20 per night.  Places such as Portslade, Southwick and Worthing will be cheaper than Brighton and have direct trains and night buses to Brighton Station.

Mid range

The nearest hotels to the venue are the Jury’s Inn Brighton and the Ibis Brighton Station . Both have good reviews.

There are loads of B&Bs in the central Brighton area such as The Brighton House Hotel and Guest and the City.

Luxury

If youv’e decided to spoil yourself then take your pick of one of the seafront hotels such as The Grand, luxury B&Bs such as Blanch House or a quirky boutique hotel such as Hotel Pelirocco or The Artist’s Residence.

 

Useful links

Visit Brighton

Trip Advisor

Booking.com

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Things to do in Brighton

Now that we have we have shared our favourite places to eat and drink, the next thing to tell you about is the all great things there are to do in Brighton!

🏖 Brighton Beach – If arriving by train, the first thing you’ll notice once leaving the station is the beach! It takes just 10 minutes to get there and is the perfect way to end the day watching the sun-set with a BBQ.

🎢 Brighton Pier – Now you’ve seen the beach you’ll have to head to Brighton Pier which has been operating since 1899. Lined with arcades, a roller coaster and haunted house it’s great to walk to the end of the pier and look back for a great view of Brighton.

🛸 Brighton Zip – Brighton now has its very own zip line which you can ride to enjoy the sea breeze even more!

🍩British Airways i360 – Another recent addition to the Beach is the i360 take a ride up 450ft to get 360 views of Brighton.

🎮 c:\side quest – One of our new favourite ways to spend an evening is at c:\side quest with incredible views of the sea you can enjoy some of the latest games, or grab a board game whilst eating and drinking!

🐠 Sealife Center – Brighton Sealife Center is a great way to spend the afternoon, especially to get a chance to see the giant sea turtles!

🚲 Life Bikes – Brighton now has its very own bike hire scheme which means you can hire a Life bike and enjoy all the cycle lanes throughout the town.

🏰Royal Pavillion – Either stroll through the palace or sit in the gardens enjoying the sun and sounds of local buskers.

❤ The Lanes – The North Laine and The South Lanes are both wonderful ways to spend the day looking at all the little shops and discovering lots of different cafes and restaurants for a tasty meal.

🕵️‍♀️ Snoopers Paradise – With over 90 different stalls offering a wide range of antiques, collectables, jewellery, vintage clothing, you can get lost for hours wandering through the store.

🦋 Booth Museum – Founded by Edward Thomas Booth with an incredible display of birds, butterflies and bones – definitely worth checking out if you have time!

These are just a few of our favourite ways to spend the day in Brighton, but there are plenty of others! Please do share the fun things you get up to using #WCBTN

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Transport in Brighton

🚶‍♀️ Walking

Central Brighton is fairly compact so it’s easy to travel on foot. In fact touristy areas such as the North Laine, The Lanes and Brighton Pavilion Gardens can only really be explored by walking.  Both the Clarendon Centre (the main venue) and The Skiff (for contribution day) are in the centre of the city near Brighton Railway Station. From there it’s a short stroll to the North Laine for shops, pubs and restaurants and only a 25 minute walk to the beach.

Brighton Pavilion and gardens
Brighton Pavilion Gardens

🚲 Cycling

My favourite way to get around in Brighton is to cycle. It’s usually much quicker than getting the bus and there are plenty of places to lock your bike.  You shouldn’t find it too much of a work out as the town centre is quite flat. Bikes can be hired by the minute from www.btnbikeshare.com. They have docking stations around the city, so you can pick up and drop off in different places.  You’ll need to register in advance.  You can also hire bikes from a more traditional bike shop (brightoncyclehire.co.uk) which is next to Brighton Station.

For further information about bike hire and cycling in the city see the Visit Brighton website.

Brighton bike share bikes on the seafront
Brighton Bike Share

🚂 The Train

Depending on where you are staying in the city or surrounding area, it may make sense to get the train to the venue. It’s only a 5-minute walk to the Clarendon Centre from Brighton Station.  Use the exit at the rear of the station and enjoy a short walk through “Brighton Greenway” nature corridor.

🚌 The Bus

The Brighton and Hove bus company covers most of the city.  Singles cost £2.20 for the city centre and £2.60 further afield. Day tickets range from are £4.40 for 1 day and £8.25 for 2 days.  You can download an app to buy tickets on your phone (they are slightly cheaper) and look up live times.

The number 6 bus goes to Brighton station 7 minutes from the venue and the 5, 5a and 5b stop 3 minutes from the venue.

🚗 Driving

Driving around central Brighton can be quite time consuming and it’s often quicker to walk or cycle. If you do decide to drive there are on street parking and car parks available. Please make sure that you park in a marked parking space with a correct ticket as there are traffic wardens everywhere!  It’s really not worth the risk.

The closest car parks to the venue are at Brighton Station Car park and London Road car park (Providence Place, Brighton BN1 4GE).  There are blue badge parking bays near the Clarendon centre on Stroudley Road. For a full list of blue badge bays in Brighton see the council list here.

🚕 Taxi

There are taxi ranks around the city and at Brighton Station and you can also hail taxis in the street.  If you want to pre book try Radio Cabs or Streamline. You can book online or by phone. Lots of taxis take contactless card but it’s best to check in advance.

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Where to eat and drink in Brighton

Whale hello there!

WordCamp Brighton is nearly upon us and to help you plan your trip we have put together a small list of our favourite places to eat and drink.

Brighton isn’t the biggest city but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to do!

Also don’t forget about our Contributor day on Sunday 19th – more details will be released soon so keep an eye on our twitter plus you don’t need any previous contributor experience!

Places to eat

🎶 Rock-Ola – Hidden gem adjacent to one of Brighton’s oldest record stores that offer vegan pancakes, burgers and tasty milkshakes with the added bonus of a free play jukebox.

🐮 Wai Kika Moo Kau – Affordable vegetarian cafe with great juices and the best name!

♥️ We Love Falafel – In the heart of the North Laine serving the best falafel in Brighton.

🍛 Pompoko – A small popular cheap eat restaurant in Brighton, if you’re unable to get a table you could always take it away and eat in the Pavilion Gardens.

🤴 The Prince George – Great pub in the North Laine with a small garden serving an amazing vegetarian menu.

🦆 The Pond – The Pond opened last year and have been serving up their take on Taiwanese street food in steamed buns and on small plates and go fully meat-free every Monday!

🌮 La Choza – Affordable food served in a fun setting, totally worth checking out whilst you’re in Brighton!

🌶 The Chilli Pickle – Serves incredible street food-inspired dishes.

Places to drink

🦁 The Lion and Lobster – Towards Hove, one of the most well-known pubs in Brighton. Split over three floors including a roof garden.

🏖 Fortune of War – Found on the seafront a popular location in the summer.

🍻 Pleisure Pubs – We have 4 Pleisure Pubs around Brighton with each one specialising in a different spirit.
The Office – Gin, The Great Eastern – Whiskey, St James Tavern – Rum, The Pull and Pump – Tequila.

🃏 The Joker – Just around the corner from The Clarendon Centre, great beer and chicken wings.

🌎 The Worlds End – Slightly different from other pubs in Brighton, this one has four player virtual reality booths, a remote control racetrack, 50 craft beers and Asian Fusion Food!

🍹 Shuffle Bar – Loveliest bar staff in Brighton, great deals on cocktails that you can enjoy in the garden whilst picking your own favourite songs to listen to.

🍸 The Mesmerist – Amazing cocktails, live music and a brand new roof garden.

We couldn’t possibly have listed all of the amazing places to try in Brighton, and if you have the time it’s worth having a wander to see what you come across as I’m sure there are places that we haven’t even discovered yet!

If you have any suggestions of things to do in Brighton we’d love for you to share them in the comments below or over on Twitter using the hashtag #WCBTN

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Join us for a WordPress Contribution Day

We’re holding a Contribution Day on 19th August 2018, 10am – 4pm at  The Skiff. This is a different venue from the Conference Days but close by.

You’ll need to get a separate (free!) ticket for Contribution Day.

Get a ticket to Contribution Day

What is Contribution Day?

Contribution Day is for everyone, of every experience level and any specialism. It’s an opportunity to work on various aspects of WordPress, giving back to the open source project and the community.

Here are some of the teams you can work with on the day (and any day!):

  • Accessibility
  • BuddyPress
  • Community
  • Core
  • Design
  • Documentation
  • Flow
  • Marketing
  • Meta
  • Mobile
  • Polygots
  • Support
  • Themes
  • Training
  • TV

💪 If you would like to lead one of these teams, then please get in touch!

Find out more about these different WordPress teams here.

Why should I come along?

Contribution days are a great way to start or continue contributing to the WordPress project. If you’ve done this before, you’ll remember how fun it is to get together with your teams face-to-face.

If you’ve never contributed before, we’ll help you get set up with everything you need, and answer all your questions.

You’ll most definitely come away having learnt something new. And we hope you’ll be inspired to continue contributing to WordPress after WordCamp is over.

What happens on the day?

On the day, we’ll have teams contributing to as many areas of WordPress as possible.

When you claim your Contribution Day ticket, we’ll ask which teams you’d like to work with, but you can also let us know on the day.

Attendees will break up into teams focused on a particular area of WordPress. If you’d like to contribute to more than one area, that’s no problem as you can move around during the day.

You might start working on documentation with the Community team in the morning and finish up translating WordPress with the Polyglots team in the afternoon. It’s up to you!

Do I need to have experience?

No, you don’t need any experience – anyone can get involved.

There’ll also be people to help you throughout the day, especially if you fancy trying out something completely new.

What do I need to bring?

All you need to bring is yourself and a laptop if you can. We’ll provide food for everyone attending. Just come along and we’ll take care of you while you contribute.

Awesome, I want to join in the fun!

Great! All you need to do is head to the Ticket page and claim your free ticket so we know to expect you. As there is limited space, please only claim a ticket if you’ll be able to attend on the day.

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Call for Volunteers

THE CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO APPLIED. IF YOU DID, KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR INBOX FOR THE VOLUNTEER INFO PACKAGE APPEARING SHORTLY.

We’re back, bigger and better, for our third year and would love for you to join us in making WordCamp Brighton 2018 the best yet 😄 We need friendly people to form an awesome volunteering team to help make the event run like clockwork.

Continue reading “Call for Volunteers”

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Diversity tickets at WordCamp Brighton – free entry for under-represented groups

*UPDATE*

Thanks to the generosity of our wonderful sponsors, we’ve been able to add an additional 10 diversity tickets to the original quota ☺️ If you are from an under-represented group and want to come along to WordCamp Brighton 2018, we would love for you to claim one of these tickets!

If you followed WordCamp Brighton 2017, you might remember that we gave 10 free tickets to those from under-represented groups to help encourage diversity in our community. And we’re really pleased to say that we’re able to continue this initiative at WordCamp Brighton 2018 😊

We’re trying to make WordCamp Brighton as inclusive and accessible as possible, so that anyone who has an interest in WordPress can attend.

The WordPress community can provide a number of fantastic opportunities to those involved, and we believe that everyone should feel welcome to join in.

And what better opportunity are there than WordCamps? Organised entirely by volunteers, they’re a chance for the community to get together, learn, exchange knowledge and celebrate WordPress.

Free tickets for under-represented groups

We’re giving away 10 WordCamp Brighton tickets to people from groups under-represented at WordCamps.

Under-represented groups include, but are not limited to, women, individuals with a disability, Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people and LGBTQIA+ people.

Continue reading “Diversity tickets at WordCamp Brighton – free entry for under-represented groups”

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What does a successful speaker application look like?

Do you want to play a part in making WordCamp Brighton awesome? Of course you do! And now’s your chance 😎

We’ve officially opened our call for speakers, and will be welcoming applications until 14th May 2018. Whether you’re an experienced speaker, or a first-timer, everyone is welcome to apply to speak at our conference.

You can find more information on potential topics and how to apply over in our Speakers area, but if you’re interested to see what a successful speaker application looks like, look no further. We’ve shared a couple of successful entries from 2017.

You’re also welcome to get in touch with the team if you require any help, want to sound out an idea, or have any questions at all. And if you’re local to Brighton, the team will be at WordUp every month! The next WordUp meetup is on Monday 30th April 2018 and is a contribution special! A fantastic public speaking coach will be there to offer support and guidance for any budding speakers.

An application from Izzy Crouch

Bio: Izzy Crouch is a freelance digital marketing consultant in Brighton, working with a variety of SMEs and also on digital products in order to fund her horse habit. Izzy also enjoys photographing bugs.

Talk title: How to politely market your digital product

Talk outline: This talk is aimed at anyone who is considering developing a digital product or SaaS, but will also be relevant to anyone wanting to learn more about marketing.

There is much information available on the internet about how to market a digital product, but a lot of it is terrifying to the average developer, involving techniques that can make your skin crawl just thinking about them. “Reaching out” and “going viral” may sound good in theory, but are near impossible to put into practice for anyone other than the most outgoing extroverts.

This talk will give you some “polite marketing methods” that are easy to put into practice and achieve results without having to undergo a full personality change.

Izzy Crouch on stage at WordCamp Brighton

Watch Izzy’s talk here

An application from Katie Elenberger

Bio: All in. Go-getter. Laughs the loudest. With more than a decade of industry experience, Katie excels at developing effective design and messaging that cuts through the clutter and connects with target audiences. Katie’s enthusiasm for her work is contagious, her clients have noted creative talents and outcomes, personality and easy-going nature, and general feeling that she is an extension of staff as just a few reasons why they love to work with her. Plus, as an adjunct design instructor for six years, she will naturally coach you through any process. Katie is the owner and Creative Director at Elenberger Creative, a premiere, full-service design + digital studio that partners with clients to solve complex business problems through strategy and effective communication. Katie is dedicated to the quality of her work and it shows—her designs have earned her 14 ADDY awards and she prides herself on strong client relationships by being focused on building brands with robust identities and measurable results.

Talk title: Pursuing your creative passion: Turn your side hustle into a full-time gig

Talk outline: Explore actionable items to kick start your WordPress side hustle, allowing you to pursue creative passion projects, expand your skill set, build your freelance or live out entrepreneurial dreams. Katie will present a thorough list of dos and don’ts, resources, project management tips and how to successfully build and maintain strong client relationships so you’ll be ready for your next step. Peppered with personal, relatable stories of how she lived and breathed the process from going in-house, freelance as a side gig to full time and now running a successful boutique agency.

Katie Elenberger on stage at WordCamp Brighton 2017

Watch Katie’s talk here

So, are you tempted? We certainly hope you are! Head over to our Speakers page to submit your own application for WordCamp Brighton 2018!

WordCamp Brighton will be a safe and positive conference for everyone. Learn more in our code of conduct.

WordCamp Brighton 2018 is over. Check out the next edition!