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Brighton is a small city that packs a punch in the technology world. It's the place to go if you work in the web industry and is home to a huge amount of cutting edge talent thanks to it's vibrant tech community. Every week in Brighton sees a range of small events for people within the web and mobile industry, some of the largest events to come out of these happen in the Autumn. This year, a large number of the larger events are coming together in September under the umbrella of the Brighton Digital Festival, co-ordinated mainly by local company Lighthouse.

There is so much going on in the festival it's impossible to summarise in a short post, so here we'll take in the big conferences.

dConstruct (September 2nd)

This highly regarded conference enters it's seventh year of talks about the web industry and it's future. The theme this time is "Designing digital products" and will look at how the gap between physical and digital products can be bridged, with talks on interaction design, mobile design and ubiquitous computing.

Every dConstruct has been widely regarded as excellent and it is known for it's thought provoking talks which cater to the more considered website worker and app maker. If you're a web industry professional, or starting on a career in the area, this is the perfect conference to attend.

Update (September 5th)

A new conference organised by international speaker Aral Balkan, Update is all about mobile design and development, with a solid interest in user experience, which Aral believes is key to producing a good application for mobile devices.

While this is a new conference, Aral has experience in running events and has talked at numerous conferences in the past, and he has a top selling iPhone app under his belt. This promises to be an interesting and enlightening day and a must for anyone writing or thinking of getting in to creating iPhone apps, or ones for other mobile platforms.

Flash on the Beach (September 11-14th)

Running since 2006, FOTB is back for three days of talks about what is possible with the widely web technology. This conference always has top names within the Flash community to spread the word about the latest things you can do with it, future developments with the player and language, and information on the up and coming alternatives like HTML5 with Javascript. Judging by previous years the days will contain a bit of controversy, a set of shiny demos, and a hell of a lot of useful information.

If you work in Flash, whether it's making games, rich applications or anything else, this is a must-attend conference. And being by the sea, you'll get time to visit the beach and relax in Brighton's pubs too.

Barcamp Brighton (September 10-11th)

This is an 'unconference', a free two day event of talks, panels and presentations given by the participants. Barcamp's are free and are like a conference in that there are many talks going on at the same time, but unlike a conference because they are run by their attendees, and every attendee is asked to give a talk, run a panel or in some way get involved with making it a fun and interesting event.

The idea of giving a talk is daunting for many, but it can be on any topic and everyone is in the same boat so are very supportive. Previous events have had talks on how engines work, demoes of games that had people running around in fields, and advice on baking. There is always a broad range of talks on building websites, including using WordPress as a CMS, web sockets, copywriting, using Google Maps within sites, and many other areas.

If you want to see a huge variety of talks on all sorts of subjects, all for free, Barcamp is for you.

WP-Brighton (September 23rd)

This is another brand new conference, run by WordUp, the local WordPress developer group. It will host a number of practical talks for using the popular WordPress blogging platform/CMS software, helping attendees understand how to use it to promote their or their client's business, run large sites with it, and how to push it to it's limits without causing crashes. If you're a heavy WordPress user, or want to develop for it professionally, this is the day for you.

Whatever technology you are in to, Brighton has an event for you in September. It promises to be a great month with some amazing visitors coming to the city, both to give talks and to see them. If you are working in the web industry, please do come down and join in, make it a holiday in Brighton and you'll not only see a great conference, but a great city too.