Hacks on the beach

Ten journalists from the UK's Guardian newspaper compiled tomorrow's edition of the G2 supplement from the beach today - taking full advantage of Brighton's new free Wi-fi Service.

Acting deputy features editor Charlie English came up with the idea to commission, write and edit the whole section on the beach after reading a BBC News item about Brighton's seafront web connection.

Brighton currently has around six Wi-fi hotspots that allow members of the public to access a wireless broadband internet connection for free - assuming their laptop has the necessary equipment.

"We just thought it's quite interesting to look at the way people can work these days," Mr English told dotJournalism.

"Journalism is essentially very portable, and we all do our jobs through phones and laptops. So we're testing it out."

"It's also a fun thing to do - we thought we'd give the team a day at the beach."

Although the team are unlikely to take regular trips to Brighton beach to produce the supplement, they could use Wi-fi technology to work from anywhere.

"We drove here in this camper van this morning and had an editorial meeting on the way down, which is where we came up with most of the ideas for this issue," said deputy features editor Sam Wollaston.

"It beats the sofa in the office."

Images and copy from the day's work will be emailed back to the office, despite the Wi-fi connection proving a little slow. The team sensibly brought one of The Guardian's IT staff (pictured) with them to sort out any technical problems.

"Our tech guy was having nightmares for days thinking of all the things that could go wrong, but it's been OK. The whole experiment has been fine - pretty much as we expected."

The beachfront Wi-fi in Brighton - known as the Pier to Pier project - was set up by a group of local technology enthusiasts at the beginning of July.

Alex Studd, managing director of internet provider Moving Edge and one of the participants in the project, admitted there is a certain amount of self-interest involved.

"We don't have an office - we're entirely virtual. We wanted to be able to work from the beach, and now we can use the Wi-fi network as well as directing all our phone calls here," he told dotJournalism.

Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3068915.stm
http://www.piertopier.net
http://www.internet-magazine.com/news/view.asp?id=3556

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