The Allotment Office are hosting an open day for all freelancers to come and take advantage of the facilities available. They will be presenting various workshops throughout the day to assist you in setting up your own business from business planning to funding.

You'll be able to network and work within the 'Allotment'.

Free entry, beverages and nibbles.

Designing Your Creative Business (DYCB) is a full day workshop and toolkit for creative entrepreneurs, to help them to design successful creative and digital businesses, and to help established enterprises to grow in a focused way.

With Nesta anouncing that five arts and cultural projects will receive funding from the £7 million Digital R&D Fund for the Arts earlier this month - is it about time that we saw more of this money coming to the North West more speciaficaly Liverpool based arts and cultural organisations.  

These R&D projects are testing the use of digital technologies to widen audience access and engagement in the arts, with the purpose of developing useful products, services and knowledge for the wider the arts and cultural sector so surely we could be applying for some of this money here. 

Over 30 events, 34 artists, 9 venues, 4 days.

Sonica kicks off this week with some fantastic names and performances from across the sonic art biosphere so if your in Glasgow here is what you'll get to see. 

One of the outcomes from last weekends Oggcamp - if you missed it catch it next year - is that a new group is being set up on Merseyside to look at building drones. No not for crusing the city and spying on us - well not yet anyway but as a way of honing engineering skills and inspiring other people to build their own projects.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mavit0/

An exclusive evening is planned with 'Everyplay Evangelist' Oscar Clark, hosted by The Studio School, Liverpool and ACME

If you're a gamer or a creative and digital business interested in how your business can harness the power of games to engage communities and generate revenue, this is a session for you.

Oscar has a passion for online entertainment and community and has spent the last 12 years on the bleeding edge of this technology.

Tired of tweeting and fed up of Facebook?

Well, this social media surgery is the ideal thing to put your social media back in the swing... 

Members of local voluntary and community sector groups are invited to this free social media advice session.

You'll get practical hands-on advice for putting social technology into action for your cause, to help you reach a wider audience and promote the good work you do.

Take a listen to my interview  on BBC radio Merseyside with Sean Styles ahead of the Social Media Surgery

This year, the seventh annual Get online campaign takes place from 14-20 October 2013. The campaign encourages everyone in Britain to get digital for the week.

It's been away awhile but it is now back with us and we are hoping for a great weekend discovering all sorts of digital quackery. Yes, people will be constructing their own internet and taking selfies while on the loo, so suffice to say yes it is the AND Festival. The same people who brought you David Shrigley giving people tattoos in Untility's window are entertaining us over the wekend with a pile of other mad performamces, cinema and digital interventions. (Yes I said interventions)  

There are loads of really cool events and workshops so do check out the AND website for those.

News straight from the Open Labs 

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) published their new £26m Creative Industries Strategy last week. Alongside the Strategy, the TSB is announcing a number of funding programmes to be launched in the next six months. This major new investment is intended to boost innovation and growth for the UK's creative and digital businesses. The funding is aimed at major collaborative research and development projects. If you want to know more, details are on their website.