Chalk Summer Party, Digital Futures Accelerator Results, Set up an app using Flutter
What a month it's been! Our friends over at Silicon Brighton kicked it off with their first EVOLVE conference at Brighton Dome - huge congratulations to them on a successful event and well done to everyone who brought it together. Our team certainly learned a lot from the sessions and it was fantastic to see so many great local companies taking part in the exhibition.
A special "hello" to our new community members who have joined the Chalk Eastbourne newsletter after attending EVOLVE!
Chalk Summer Party raises £890 for charity
It was great to see so many faces at the combined Chalk Eastbourne x Switchplane x Eastbourne DigiFest Summer Party held at FOUNDRY recently.
We enjoyed meeting you all and bringing the local community closer together, over a delicious grazing board by Ashton's Catering and Events! Through our raffle, we were thrilled to be able to raise a total of £474 for the Children's Respite Trust. When coupled with the Big Give match funding scheme, the charity received a total of £890 from the evening.
Thank you all very much for your generosity - and congratulations to our prize winners!
A special shout out goes to the local businesses who donated such generous raffle prizes: Bibendum, BN21 Designs, Urban Ground, Arcade Mens Clothing, The Spot Barbers, The Grove Experience, Taboo Silver, Deliciously Sweet Chocolate Company, Ascension Cider, Jumpin Fun, The Vinyl Frontier, and Bela Rose Salon.
Digital Futures Accelerator - Results announced at showcase event!
Six months' work by young people across East Sussex on the Digital Futures Accelerator programme came to a spectacular conclusion in July with an evening of presentations and judging by industry representatives at the Kings Centre in Eastbourne.
With the aim of inspiring young people to follow Digital career paths, students were set the challenge of creating and pitching a digital product - everything from building a prototype to developing branding around their idea. The standard of work was incredibly high, showcasing the creativity, teamwork, and dedication that students, teachers, mentors, schools, colleges, and partners have put in, and their projects came to life and were presented with such confidence.
Judges Russ Miles (Technical product owner), Liz Trumper (Circus) and Donna Fielder (Switchplane) gave amazing insight and feedback to the groups involved and awarded the prizes:
Huge congratulations go to Robertsbridge Community College and Bexhill College for winning the overall age category awards - an outstanding achievement!
Well done to Peacehaven Community School for securing the Teamwork Award with an excellent pitch!
Special shout outs also go to Dv8 Sussex, Saxon Mount School, Uckfield College, and Chailey Secondary School for their work on the programme.
Spearheaded by Hannah Brookshaw, Jennie Cole, and Caroline Bragg at Skills and Employment East Sussex in collaboration with Dan Wallman at TechNative Digital, the project was funded by The Careers & Enterprise Company.
Industry mentors supported the students giving real world advice, time, and encouragement throughout the programme, including Mary Kemp (AI Potential), Kev Jones, Kitty Newman (Trapeze Media), Carlotta Zorzi-Chapman (Shopify), Kevan Smith (Epiphany Content), John Haynes (AnswerTime), Brian Drinkwater (Kyle Partnership), and Will Callaghan (LocalGov Drupal).
The project will be launching again this September, so if you're an East Sussex school, college, parent, or student, or industry professional who would like to get involved, visit digitalfuturessussex.com to learn more.
At Chalk Connect TODAY: How to set up an app using Flutter
Keen to learn how to get started with your app-building expertise? At the upcoming Chalk Connect session today, Tuesday 5th August, Switchplane's Tom Fielder will be chatting through how he goes about setting up an app on Flutter.
He'll give a bit of background on Flutter, discuss how you can target multiple platforms (iOS, Android, web, Linux, Windows, Mac) from a single codebase, and will create a basic "hello world" app with you. For those of you inspired to go away and build apps, he'll also help you get your dev environment set up too.
A nice, practical crash course in app development!
📅 TODAY, Tuesday 5th August
🕔 5pm - 7pm
📍 FOUNDRY Eastbourne (in the Beacon)
💰 FREE to attend, no need to book
If you're already looking ahead to your diary in the autumn, you can pencil in Alison Austin's talk on Tuesday 2nd September, "The Resilient Leader: How to lead effectively, without burning out", and Kiera Monaghan's session on Tuesday 7th October, "Dashboards don't change businesses - people do".
Missed a previous session, like Catrina Baker-Bassett's talk earlier this month? You can catch up now.
TeenTech Sussex Festival is back for 2025!
The TeenTech Sussex Festival returns again this year, running on Thursday 27th November at The Amex Stadium in Brighton.
The Festival is a fantastic opportunity for companies to connect with young people from across the region by running a short interactive activity and help them understand more about your company and future opportunities.
It's a powerful, high impact programme from an award-winning charity.
If you are interested in taking part and would like further details please contact Kay.Sawbridge@teentech.com.
One last thing...
Due to popular demand, we are pleased to annouce that we are able to release additional exhibitor spaces for Eastbourne DigiFest this year.
If you are still considering showcasing your company at our Tech Conference for Business, do get in touch to reserve your place.
