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.