Creative director of MagneticNorth, Brendan Dawes “Thoughts from the lower-case now” talk with a the help of a neat custom presentation tool, which potentially opens Brendan up for abuse. Now would we?

mnatwork.com
brendandawes.com

With the help of a snare drum, hi-hat and and an empty box (don’t ask), Seb Lee Delisle, Technical Director of Plug-in Media takes us through his work. Oh and some kittens on a conveyor belt (again don’t ask).

pluginmedia.net
sebleedelisle.com

Filmed at our 3rd BLAB night on 3rd June 2010, installation designers Pete and Joel of Hellicar & Lewis take us through their history, work and way of thinking.

You can see more of Pete and Joels work at hellicarandlewis.com

Filmed by Bledar Bujupi

Filmed at our 3rd BLAB night on 3rd June 2010, Andrew Brooks takes through the process of his stunning photographic art.

You can see more of Andrews work at andrewbrooksphotography.com

Filmed by Bledar Bujupi

We talked about it for long enough and trained (kind of) for long enough, and the day finally came on Sunday for us to ride 60 odd miles from Manchester to Blackpool.

After a 7.30 start time we all managed it in between 4.5 – 5 hours. The weather held up until we got to Lytham where we got sand blasted then pissed on. Next year we’re going to do it dead fast. There were no incidents to report, apart from Aarons slow puncture and Phil having to wear a helmet.

We’ve raised £1,460 so far for Christies which is fantastic. Huge thanks to everyone who made a donation, it’s all really appreciated. You can still donate here www.justgiving.com/le-tour-de-pool

There will be more rides coming as part of the newly founded Northern Digitals Bike Club. We don’t know exactly what that is yet though.

We can now announce that Manchester based Photographer and Digital Artist, Andrew Brooks will be joining Hellicar & Lewis on stage (there is no stage) at our next BLAB night on Thursday 3rd June.

Andrew will be showing how he creates his mind blowing images such as Wheat Field (above).

Tickets are going fast, so make sure you have yours.

We’re riding the Manchester to Blackpool run on July 4th while hopefully raising £1,000 for Christies.

Come and join us. Sign up to the ride then email Phil and he’ll add you to our sponsor page. I’m sure there’ll be a couple of pub stops, I mean breaks, along the way.

The team:
Phil Jeffs
Matt Booth
Gavin Burnet
Mark Hope
Aaron Starkie
Rich Higgins
Rich’s mate Neil

We’ve announced our 3rd BLAB night. This is going to be on Thursday 3rd June at MadLab.

Speakers confirmed so far are Joel and Pete of www.hellicarandlewis.com. These guys create some awesome interactive installations which they’ll be telling us more about on the night.

More news will be announced about our second speaker soon.

The night is limited to 100 people so make sure you get your ticket sorted out here.

If you’d like to sponsor the night with some alcohol, please email us.

So we had our second BLAB night last Thursday with a f**king (his word) fantastic talk by Director Chris Gaffey. He was asking the question, “How should a brand tell a great story online?” raising some interesting points including “websites are rubbish”. Quite brave as he was in a room comprising of around 99% web designers and developers. Funnily enough he had quite a lot of backing on that point.

We also had a briefing from Mario Dubois of the BBC on the @North scheme. Unfortunately the event quick became over subscribed for the venue and some people who came to see Mario’s talk were unable to see it first time round. He was kind enough though to brief these people afterwards.

We also saw a quick round up on BBC 21st Century Classroom from Morgan Makin.

Big thanks to MadLab for our first time at their venue. We’ll defintely be using this space again. We’d also like to thank Northwest Vision and Media for the PA system and Orchard for laying on the beers.

We are planning our next BLAB nights with some great speakers lined up. The next one will probably be in March. More news on this to come.

To prevent the the venue becoming over crowded again our next events will be ticketed with a very small cost.

You may have heard through our twitter that we have a great prize to give away at our next meetup.

Well…

that prize is…

wait for it…

a free ticket to this years Flash On The Beach - www.flashonthebeach.com, which has kindly been donated by the organisers.

For those who don’t know, Flash On The Beach or FOTB is a 3 day creative/flash/film conference in Brighton from 20th – 23rd Sept.

For those who do know, will know how good this prize is.

You simply don’t get the calibre of speaker at an event like this in the UK, with speakers such as Joshua Davis, Hillman Curtis, Rob Chiu, Carlos Ulloa, Keith Peters, to name a fraction of the talent speaking.

I went to the 2007 event and was blown away with what I saw. WARNING! You may decide to give up the day job when you see the work, ideas and general crazy sh*t on show.

Other Northern Digitals members who have been included Stuart Hamilton and Adam Palmer. If you don’t want to take my word for how good FOTB is, give them a shout at the meetup.

So yes, there will only be one lucky winner at the next meetup. We haven’t yet decided how we are going to give this away but you will have to be there on the night. Keep an eye on this site and twitter for more information before the meetup.

If you aren’t the lucky winner and have a healthy interest in anything creative and digital, you must not miss this event.

At writing this there were 102 Double Early Bird tickets left at £239.

See you all there on Thu 4th June at The Northern, Tibb Street, Manchester.

The prizes for our next meetup on Thursday 4th June at The Northern just keep coming.

I can’t believe it’s been 12 months since I embarrassed myself doing a Pecha Kucha style talk at las years b.TWEEN conference, but it is, and it’s here again.

b.TWEEN is a great 2 day networking event with great talks by industry leaders. It really was worth while for me last year, making some good contacts including Northern Digitals member Warren Slingsby of Make in Huddersfield.

This year it is at FACT in Liverpool on 11-12 June and you have the chance to win a 2 day pass by coming along to our next meetup on Thursday 4th June at The Northern. We’ll let you know how you can get your hands on this prize closer to the time but one things we can say is that you will have to be a Northern Digital member, RSVP’d YES, and be there on the night. In the meantime here’s what the event organisers say about the event:

Well, here’s how you can get you hands on a ticket to either Flash On The Beach or b.TWEEN at this Thursdays meetup.

We’re going to keep it simple with a free raffle. To be in with a chance all we ask is:
You are a Northern Digitals member. If you aren’t join up here.
You are there on Thursday at The Northern when we do the draw.
You can/want to go to either of these events if you are lucky to win. These are pretty special prizes and we don’t want them to go to waste. Tickets won’t be able to be sold on.
Oh, and if you are the lucky winner, you take plenty of pics when you are there for us all to share.

That’s it really, good luck and we’ll see you all there.

It was a really great night and a great turn out to our meetup at The Northern last night. Lots of new face, lots of old all drinking, chatting and drinking.

There was also the small matter of the free event raffle. Everyone who wanted to go to either Flash On The Beach or b.TWEEN conferences got put into a hat, well it was a big glass jug really. We then did the draw.

First out the hat was Adam Palmer of Love, who won the ticket to Flash On The Beach. He already had a ticket so kindly decided to put it back into the hat, sorry, jug. So next to be drawn out was Jon Stutfield from Flame Digital who will be going down to Brighton this September. Then was the draw for b.TWEEN in Liverpool on 11th and 12th June. This went to Jen Williams from Code.

It was Northern Digitals first birthday in October but due to being a couple of days into fatherhood I wasn’t able to make it. I heard it was a great turn out.

The next one should be even better as we are going to be running free raffle like we had a few months ago. The difference now is there are even more great prizes from some very kind people. Here’s what’s in the raffle so far and by who. Keep checking back here to see if more are added.

The prizes…
Computer Arts – A years subscription to the magazine
Computer Arts Projects – A years subscription to the magazine
Fudge – £100 iTunes vouchers
Academy Class – £700 worth of free training
Northwest Vision and Media – 1 £350 day pass to The Media Festival
Code Computerlove – An Apple iPod Nano
Boom! (me) – A couple of t-shirts will be given away.

There are also 3 of the new Apple Magic Mouse which Digital Jobs expert Orchard are giving away details on how these can be won will be posted here soon and announced via twitter.

To enter the raffle all we ask is…
1). You are a Northern Digitals member. If not you can become one here. In the words of an 80′s saying – “If your name’s not down you aint getting in the raffle”, or something like that.

2). You RSVP Yes before Thursday. You can RSVP here.

3). You are there on the night.

That’s right, we’ve been talking for a while now about setting up talks by Northern Digitals members and people we love outside of Manchester. We’ve now got around to setting them up. On Thursday 12th as well as the free raffle, creative agency Fudge will be kicking off our BLAB nights. Not sure about what yet, but we’ll let you know as soon we do.