UX Brighton is a community group of volunteers, led by Danny Hope. We’re always looking for curators for our bi-monthly evening events. If there’s a UX or UX-related event that you’d like to see, then volunteer to run it yourself.
We will deal with all the logistical aspects of the event, including finding, booking and paying for a venue (we normally use Fabrica, Pub Du Vin or 68 Middle Street, depending on the capacity required and the venue availability).
You’ll need to find two or three speakers for the evening and help to promote the event.
We’ll add you to the UX Brighton Slack evening-events channel, where other curators will be on-hand to offer support and answer any questions you may have.
This page will walk you through all the steps you need to take, to get your event up and running.
Choose your topic for the evening
What’s the evening going to be about? As well as regular UX-focused evenings, we’ve had more participatory events and even some workshops. Decide what your topic will be and then get in touch with us.
We aim to run an event every other month, so you’ll have at least a couple of months to get your planning and promotion done. Our evening events are always on the second Tuesday of the month.
Find your speakers
Once we’ve confirmed your event, you’ll need to start thinking about who will be speaking. It would be unusual for you to speak at your own event, but if you are keen to do this, drop us a line anyway. We’d still expect you to find at least one other speaker for the evening.
You might already know who would make a great speaker, and you might even have approached them already, in which case, that’s great! But more often than not, finding and confirming speakers is where you’ll need to put some work in.
Please bear in mind that we’re a voluntary community group, so unlike paid-conferences, are unable to offer speaker stipends. We can sometimes help with local travel (e.g. a London to Brighton return train fare), but even then, ideally your speakers would already be in Brighton, or able to make their own way here.
In the next section, we’ll look at ways of finding people to speak at your event.
Make a potential speaker long-list
Your long list is absolutely everyone you can think of, who might make a great speaker. Gather email addresses, Twitter handles and other ways you might be able to get in touch.
Don’t forget to ask on the evening-events channel - other curators and UX Brighton volunteers will probably be able to suggest speakers or companies you could approach, and may even be able to introduce you to potential speakers.
Contact everyone on your list, as early as possible and ask them if they’d like to speak about your topic, and also if they could recommend someone they know, who might be interested. It’s worth reiterating this; people may be unable to speak for a variety of reasons, but are often more than happy to introduce you to someone who might be able to.
Sample email to potential speakers
Here’s a sample email you could send to an organisation that might have speakers relevant to your evening. Ideally you would send this to someone you already know at that company.