UX Brighton has been somewhat dormant in 2015. Recent years have seen it focussing less on members of the community sharing their discoveries and experiences and more on creating thematic nights and seeking guest speakers from out of town. These are not bad events, far from it, but I can imagine it is time consuming to organise and research. It has also meant that I’ve got to learn less about how people work in my immediate network.

We're about to kick off @uxbri pic.twitter.com/vm2OGiWaKv
— Emmeline (@Emm) November 11, 2015

I spoke to Danny Hope, founder of UX Brighton at the start of October with the idea of doing something small, community lead, and to serve as a reminder that this community is built upon people sharing what they have learnt, and that it doesn’t matter whether you have been doing it for 50 years or 50 minutes, everyone has something to learn and can contribute.

And with that, so has begun UX Brighton Lightning talks, an event I hope I can continue to run throughout 2016.

The format is quite simple. You have 5 minutes to talk about something you would like to share, ideally something related to digital design, but that could including coding, designing, researching, or anything that you think the community will find interesting.

Everybody gets writing... @eldevri pic.twitter.com/bn72VNsUal
— UX Brighton (@uxbri) November 11, 2015

November saw the first event which sold out, with 6 fantastic speakers, some who had done a little public speaking but more who had not. Everyone was excellent and shared some great insights into their day and advice for everyone to take home. Videos from the talks are available on the UX Brighton Youtube channel.