Brighton geek cafe
Brighton Ruby User Group at The Eagle (image by Yandle - some rights reserved)
I was talking to Josh Russell and Steve Purkiss out in Brighton last night and both of them mentioned the idea of having a centrally located base for “geeks”, “social media types”, “web people” and others involved in creative industries in Brighton. Specifically both mentioned that this would be a cafe/bar with the following features:
A place for networking, any time of day or night
Open during the day and night, providing a place for people to go to and meet friends, or go alone and see who’s there. A contant networking venue.
A place for working in an alternative environment
A place to get some work done, as well as have a coffee, some lunch or a beer - I’m thinking casual working, rather than being there 9-5 - you wouldn’t run a business from here. It would however have excellent wi-fi, lots of power points and sensible furniture.
A place for events
A room from which to run sessions, workshops and talks. As its attached to a bar, its easy to grab a beer, and somewhere for meeting people afterwards.
A few facts about me, relevant to this idea:
- I work with a small design agency in the North Laines
- I attend at least one networking/training event a week, often in Brighton, occasionally London
- In my spare time I run a local arts blog and of course blog here
- I want to meet as many people in the same and similar industries as possible, to lead to collabarations and future work for our agency, and personal side projects
- When I’m in the house, I get less done than when I’m out, I try to use cafe’s and pubs to work from, but haven’t found the ideal venue yet
There’s lots of other people like me in Brighton
Brighton is packed with people like me who share some of the above traits, many of whom I know but plenty more I have yet to connect with. Richard Dallaway made this diagram showing visually the range of groups and meetups that connect many of these people.
Groups in Brighton (Richard Dallaway)
Some of these groups meet once or twice a year, some monthly and others, like The Farm, The Tuttle Club and The Open Coffee club meet weekly. Almost every event I’ve attended has had a large number of attendees, indeed The Werks is open for co-working every single day and is always busy. There are a huge amount of people working in very small teams or alone who are open to meeting and sharing.
Existing locations for events
Whilst there are many events, most of them occur in one of a small pool of possible locations.
- The Werks - a coworking office with a large room for presentations, its down in Hove so a little far to drop in for a short time if you live the other end of town. Its not a cafe so can have a slightly more formal feel, and there is no bar so people generally leave after events rather than hang around. Its a great venue, but its an office and meets a different need. Whuffie Club, UX Brighton and plenty of one off events occur here, and its ideal for more formal, structured events.
- The Eagle - a pub with a room upstairs, often used for Skill Swaps, Girl Geek and Vine events and informal drinks based events. It can get very busy and its not a pub for working in.
- The Hampton Arms - a pub used by The Farm group for the weekly meet-ups. Nothing special about the place, it just happens to be one a few people agreed was quiet and large enough for us to meet in, its not ideal though - sometimes the music can be a bit loud for a networking event.
- The Regency Townhouse - a privately owned venue which allows us to have small events there on a temporary basis whilst its being refurbished. £5 app, geek wine thing, Brighton Ruby and more meet there, but we will soon lose this venue when the refurbishment is completed (update - which according to Danny Hope is likely to be sometime yet - so essentially its like the Werks, no bar, and non central, but otherwise good for meetups).
- The Quadrant - another venue with a room upstairs, used for Tuttle Club, but isn’t perfect as the tables are very small and they aren’t as set up for coffee as some places.
- The Lighthouse - used by ClearLeft to host their SkillSwap events but isn’t always available as used for exhibitons from time to time.
- The LikeMindBri group use RedRoaster Cafe + The Basket Makers, but both can get very cramped and busy and are almost unusable as working venues due to lack of table space.
- We used to have The Black Horse who allowed us to use the back room for events like the Geek Dinners, but they have since been refurbished and the back room has now gone.
- Moksha cafe has great wifi, power points and is set up for working, but its not got a space for meetings and closes at 6PM most nights.
So, whilst we have a range of locations we can use for events and pop in and use for a drink and some work, none of the venues are perfect and none of them meet our requirements fully.
The ideal venue
I would like somewhere where…
- …I can drop in and find people we know or could meet, liked minded individuals
- …a combination of a large space and a bar is found, so talks can occur, and directly afterwards we can mingle, without having to leave the talks venue
- …great wi-fi, appropriate furniture and power points mean I can drop in and do a couple of hours of work over the weekend, and perhaps find people to chat to as well
- A centrally located place, amongst the buzz of the town - close to the cafes, restaurants and shops, so I can drop in on a Saturday but also catch a gallery, do some shopping etc. Basically somewhere you don’t have to go out of your way to get to, but can drop in when passing if the mood takes you
Money to be made
The Brighton “geek” community must be the largest community of its kind in the city, much of the available work in the town that isn’t in the leisure industry is focused on the web and creative areas. If you open a venue targetting a large existing community searching for a home, you can guarantee it will be busy. Where people gather, and food and drink is for sale, they will spend.
If a large proportion of pub based events move to this venue, and believe me, they will, there will be an event happening at least 2 nights a week. At the moment, plenty of pubs are becomng deserted during the week - but any pub hosting an event will be busy as people will be attending for another reason other than just going out for fun. Even in times of trouble, you still need to attend events and keep networking. When people gather, they want to talk, and they will have a drink, or 3. The money being spent on the drinks isn’t being wasted in the same way as it would be if you go out with your regular mates. You can get a job by being present and having a drink.
This place has the potential to be one of the most profitable pubs/cafe’s in town - especially in this economic downturn!
A great thing for the city
Brighton and Hove loves its Creative Industry types and is always looking to attract companies to the town, away from London. Having what could well be the first venue of its kind in the world would be a big selling point and help strengthen the cities position in the world of tech, geekdom and creativity.
What do you think?
I’m hoping to continue the conversation started by Josh and Steve. Do you agree there is a need for this?
Hi Mark,
Was great to meet you again too. These places are indeed needed all around the world, and not just for geeks like us!
My particular angle on this is that these places would provide and excellent environment for people to find out more about free/libre open source software - software as a service as opposed to software as a product. I also believe free software and creative commons content is the key to the sustainability and scalability of such places.
I’ll be trying a few things out in http://theskiff.org/ when we open in a couple of weeks - the downstairs area will be an open space where our trusted contacts will be able to drop in to cowork, and we’ll be housing small events, including ‘freedom fridays’ where I’ll be streaming live presentations, workshops, etc. based around free software and creative commons content, so interested to hear from people involved in those areas.
Hopefully in time we’ll be able to grow and find a larger building which will provide as you’ve described above - I know Josh has some exciting leads he’s following up and I’m sure in time these spaces will be created, lots of people all around the world are working on similar projects so we’ll no doubt have a choice of places in time.
Hope to catch up with you again soon!
I was worried that the Black Horse’s back room would be removed. The free room hire and free buffet was a huge bonus, which I’ll miss hugely.
I’d be very interested in such a place to host geek dinners in future.
I think the (relatively) easier approach would be to find a venue with the right layout and change the culture by simply going there a lot. If five people a day ask for the music to be turned down so they could work, then it won’t be too long before the music will never go up again. If the place isn’t too busy at the moment, as it isn’t “trendy”, then they’d be more likely to co-operate once the takings improve. Volunteering to help set-up the wi-fi etc. will help to build a good relationship all round.
On October 27th, 2008 at 6:16 am, Learn 4 Life » Outside the Wire - the success of informal learning spaces in the community said
[...] informal social setting that builds on the real life context. This would work just as well in a coffee shop or cafe kitted out in much the same [...]
Great article. Some Regency Town House related points:
It’s actually owned by The Brunswick Town Charitable Trust.
Renovation is happening at a glacial pace so I imagine the venue will be available for some years to come.
If anybody wants to run a geek/arts/history-related event, contact me - danny.hope@gmail.com
Hey Mark - I think it’s a great idea. Location is definitely a key factor. Somewhere very central will lure people from every corner of this great city!
Sounds like a superb idea!
Something like the old pressure point but a bit closer into town perhaps the illegally opened ‘Star Bucks’ on James St. once the council close them down again.
Jules
I’d imagine lots of OU students might be interested in this too, myself included. There aren’t many places for working adults to go and get work done in the evenings (libraries are closed too early, pubs too noisy, too many distractions at home). I’d love to be able to go to a place where I can get a coffee or beer, use the wifi, and get some work done in the evening (or late night or early morning).
I think this is a good idea, although I would say that as I’ve had a similar idea, partly inspired by Matt Weston, who’s been after a cafe/co-working environment for a while.
First off: I know someone who might be interested in running a cafe and has experience within the family of setting up and running one (a normal cafe rather than a particularly techie hangout.) So if this is going to happen and you’re after someone to do the cafe side, please give me a shout.
Random thoughts:
The way I see it, the problem is solved best by making a nice cafe environment that also supports working, and then making sure all the new media related stuff is rather ambient - i.e. it’s there if you want it, but it’s not obvious if you’re not looking for it. You don’t want to lose a nice environment by going too techno-fetish.
As well as tech groups, there are other groups (business networking groups, book clubs) that would like to use somewhere friendly in the evenings. I believe there’s also a call for a late opening non-licensed venue - i.e. it could run as a cafe for other, booked events, rather than a cafe-bar.
There are interesting cross-promotions to be done - peope coming to events could be given vouchers to use the cafe during the day. People using the cafe during the day should see advertising for the evening events & the groups that run them.
If the wifi had a captive portal as the first page (like pier to pier) you could use that to help promote upcoming events in the venue.
On decor, it would be good to have flexibility, so things like a projector and screen can be set up easily, but it doesn’t look that way when the cafe is in standard mode. Also it’d be good to hav e furniture or wall coverings that absorb noise, as a lot of current venues are a bit echoy when the networking side of events are going on.
Enough random thoughts, enough to say: I’m interested.
Great idea!
The digital worker cooperative I’m getting off the ground with some trusted folks here @ the studio has a property company as one of its trustees and angel investor.
I know that they’re always on the lookout for sustainable commercial property with a community ethic (or else they wouldn’t be involved with a coop!), so if freehold property is being discussed (such as cafe / bar downstairs) with mixed workspaces above (offices and open-plan coworking), I know we can stump up the cash to purchase and develop it along democratically-guided lines.
HTH?
Cheers,
Ralf
ralf@chapelstudiosbrighton.com
http://www.chapelstudiosbrighton.com
MSN: ralf.fletcher@gmail.com
Twitter: ralff
Another thought - could the space be child and baby friendly? It might be nice if parent geeks could also be encouraged to join in!
Interesting idea and similar to the idea of a magazine cafe which I helped a client explore a couple of years ago - he wanted to do something for journalists and journalism students, which would be a cafe and magazine shop combined. He ended up not going ahead btw.
The biggest problem is that it’s difficult to make a cafe pay financially. Running a cafe is tremendously hard work, and only a small proportion of independent cafes are successful.
Independent cafes which are successful tend to be busy with people who come in for around 30-60 minutes and spend money. They also tend to have a good takeaway trade - takeaway doesn’t take up table space, so you make more profit per square ft.
Having a theme helps, so something that was aimed at creatives would be good, and having events that draw people in is definitely good.
Having people who stay for 3 hours and only buy one cup of tea is a bad thing for making money, and such a venture is only sustainable if it makes money.
You also need someone who knows what they’re doing firsthand to run the place - running a cafe is definitely not for the uninitiated - see my diatribe about why not everyone can run a food business at http://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/resources/food.php
My last point is about Brighton rents, and planning consent - it’s difficult to get a cafe space in central Brighton because rents have risen a lot, plus with so many cafes in the North Laines the Council are not giving out any more A3 consents in that area. So unless you want to do a Starbucks and open illegally (sorry, while waiting for retrospective planning consent) then it’s a wee bit more difficult.
If you get as far as identifying premises and a manager, then I’m happy to have a look at the plans - although I’m highlighting the dangers, I’ve helped several cafes set up and keep going.
Thanks for all your comments. As some of you may know by now, the idea has been pushed forward by Josh and Steve now and looks to be going ahead! Hopefully a month from now we will have our own small space, and in time this might grow to be more along the lines of what I mentioned in the article.
Great work everyone!
Great idea.. we are on the same venture ourselves. Yet with a different twist. Please keep me updated and let me know your progress.
Happy to share my ideas.. email me if you are interested.