Hooray to our two new mini-sponsors! These are they…

Heavenly Media build and market bespoke web applications in Ruby on Rails, with a special focus on Social Media. They use Agile processes, based on the Scrum methodology, giving their clients the flexibility to change their minds mid-project if necessary.

Web Positioning Centre specialises in ethical Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and effective Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. From online marketing strategy through to implementation and management, their bespoke approach is helping a client base from start-ups and Sussex-based businesses through to international brands.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Announcing our first round of mini-sponsors for BarCamp. These are all small companies, local to Brighton, and will be paying for Students’ Union security and staff. Thanks, guys.

Please let me introduce you…

The Werks is a collaborative workspace and provides education, support, events and workshops to creative businesses in Brighton. They have a range of workspace offerings, from self-contained studios, managed desk and co-working space.

Dharmafly is a social media consultancy and web development agency. Focussing on exciting projects for social change, they get organisations blogging, build compelling websites and cutting-edge web applications.

Callender Creates offer web design, web development and web site promotion. They provide expert advice, hand-crafted websites and online applications for international businesses, charities, local councils and start-ups.

Latitude Hosting is a Brighton based web and email hosting company, specialising in professionally managed hosting services. They run their own UK-based servers and offer a person to person business support service, rather than anonymous automated systems.

Remote Matters. Web consultancy, design and build. Ruby on Rails specialists

Popularity: 6% [?]

Cogapp have kindly decided to sponsor another BarCamp. After sponsoring breakfast at the BarCampBrighton2, they have decided to take the obvious next step and buy Saturday’s lunch this time round!

Cogapp are a local company who help their clients to use online and interactive media for improved communication. Cogapp love to get involved with local events, they are also going to be at dConstruct 2008 (that’s the day before BarCamp) and have sponsored lots of other stuff in the past. I think its great to find a local company that’s so supportive of the community and we’re delighted to have them on board again.

Be sure to check out the Cogapp blog, its full of interesting posts such as their ideas for iPhone apps, a google maps mashup which lets you plan a route on foot, a GPS project they worked on at Mashed, social networking for your gran and more…

Popularity: 8% [?]

I’m pleased to announce Betavine (the open community and mobile development hub), will be sponsoring the dinner on the Saturday night.

We are hoping Betavine will be running a workshop session - more on that later…

In the meantime, here’s the Betavine story:

Betavine is an open community & resource website, whose mission is to support the developer community in stimulating ideas, developing, testing and launching great new applications for mobile and Internet communications.

We are a Vodafone Group R&D Lab, “…a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed…” ¹ but not in a stuffy old building – the Betavine lab is an open online community platform for everyone, pros & newbies alike.

Everyone is welcome to register as a member, download and play with any application, contribute to discussion threads and create or comment on blog entries. As a developer you can upload your own applications, showcase your work and get useful feedback from other members. We recently launched a pilot with Vodafone Spain, which is gaining a direct-to-market audience of 16 million users for all applications on betavine.mobi, the mobile version of our website. Students should keep an eye peeled for great competitions and other opportunities.

We want to add tangible value to the application development process wherever we can - so tell us if you think of something we can add or improve.

After all, we’re in beta too!

¹ The Wikipedia definition of a laboratory

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Great news, the guys at Osmosoft are going to be buying the beers on Sat night! They helped out with the first BarCampBrighton, so its great to have them on board again.

Osmosoft is the open source innovation arm of BT. They are a small team of techies that have a passion for open source software, and currently focusing on the TiddlyWiki product.

I saw a demo of TiddlyWiki at Open Tech last week and its well worth checking out if you haven’t already heard of it. Basically it lets you keep a personal wiki that runs entirely in the browser with no server side technology required. This means it can be used on planes, trains and indeed anywhere with or without an internet connection. Its got a great interface and some really cool features - take a look.

As well as buying the beers, some of the Osmosoft team will be attending the event and preparing some interesting talks, so things are shaping up nicely for the event.

In the meantime check out the Osmosoft twitter feed and video channel on Vimeo.

Popularity: 8% [?]