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?

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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).

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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 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’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.

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.

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.