Helping marketers meet, learn and do their job a little better

Rough Agenda is a leading events organiser, delivering the world’s biggest digital marketing conferences and training. Every year thousands of marketing professionals learn, network and get together at one of Rough Agenda’s renowned events, including brightonSEO and Hero Conf.

How it all started

Once upon a time, our founder Kelvin Newman decided it would be cool to get a group of SEO mates together in a pub to talk shop. The idea was to share ideas and chat about all the interesting stuff that we can’t really talk about with anyone outside the industry for fear of them falling asleep.

Word got out and more people showed up than he expected. So, next time he booked a larger room… again, more and more people showed up. And this turned into brightonSEO, now the world’s biggest search conference which now takes places in both Brighton,UK and San Diego, US.

We realised we might be onto something

An industry conference, talking about real issues, with practical advice from people who actually know what they’re talking about. Since then we have seen the conference continue to grow into the beautiful, if scarily large, thing we have today.

brightonSEO UK takes place twice a year in our home city of Brighton and our US edition heads to San Diego (our adopted home city) every year.

Of all the search conferences in the world, we reckon it’s biggest and also the most fun (but then we would say that wouldn’t we).

“A long way from a room above a pub”

Branching Out

With such a high demand for tickets we decided to branch out and help people go deeper into a particular topic with our smaller fringe conferences including MeasureFest and Affiliate Huddle.

In 2024, we took the logical step and broadened our events to acquire Hero Conf and PPC Hero – we think the very best conference, news and training for PPC and paid social advertising. The conferences run alongside brightonSEO in the UK and the US.

Training is also a cornerstone of Rough Agenda, providing hundreds of training courses a year covering the whole digital marketing spectrum. From standalone London training days, courses running before our conferences and bespoke in-house training options – we deliver world-class, focused workshops from leading industry experts in a format to suit you.

What we’re about

We’re about having fun, about being real, and, most importantly, educating as many people as possible on the ever expanding, fast-paced industry that is digital marketing.

If we had to sum our mission up in one sentence we say

“Helping marketers meet, learn and do their job a little better”

Our Events

The main way help digital marketers meet, learn and do their job a little better is by organising a series of digital marketing events.

These aren’t like your usual digital trade-shows where you’re herded round a bunch of exhibition stands while business cards are shoved in your hand by over-zealous sales people.

And they’re not like most digital conferences where you need to re-mortgage your house to sit in a generic hotel or football club function room and get generic advice.

We like to do things a little differently…and we’re pretty sure our attendees will agree.

brightonSEO was our first event. It brings thousands of people to Brighton and San Diego every year. It’s a large scale, in-depth SEO event, you won’t find more intelligent and passionate search marketers in one place anywhere else in the world.

Hero Conf is our conference for everything PPC. It heads to Brighton and San Diego every year and brings the top paid social advertisers together for networking, learning, tips and a great time.

MeasureFest - a brightonSEO fringe event

MeasureFest is dedicated to data driven marketing and has laser targeted focus on web analytics and conversion rate optimisation. If you want to make more from the visitors you already get to your site this event is genetically engineered just for you. It runs alongside brightonSEO once a year.

AffiliateHuddle is an event all about discussion of what works in affiliate marketing. It’s an event for publishers, networks and merchants. Relaxed, friendly and focused.

The Team

Kelvin Newman - Founder

Kelvin Newman is the Founder of Rough Agenda, the company that arranges specialist digital marketing events including BrightonSEO.

In 2014 Kelvin was voted by econsultancy as the most influential individual in digital and in 2013 won the Search Personality award at the UK Search Awards.

Tom Bailey - Head of Operations, Rough Agenda

Tom is a live event producer and event manager, with a background in large-scale live events, conferencing, arts festivals, theatre, and community projects.

With us he oversees the planning and on the day management processes across the Rough Agenda event portfolio.

After nearly 10 years with Rough Agenda, he’s getting quite good at sense checking Kelvin’s continuous ideas, and turning the good ones into successful events.

Email Tom Bailey

Dre Pratt - Head of Sales, Rough Agenda

Dre is our Head of Sales and thrives on advising our clients on the best packages across our portfolio to ensure they realise their objectives and achieve results.

Prior to Rough Agenda, Dre spent 11 years at Informa holding various senior commercial positions including Head of Advertising at Lloyd’s List.

When not working or looking after her 3 energetic children, Dre can be found pounding the streets of Oxted or enjoying good food and wine with friends.

Email Dre Pratt

Grace Allwright - Head of Marketing, Rough Agenda

As Head of Marketing for Rough Agenda, it’s Grace’s job to ensure that you know about our events and, even better, come along and join us there.

Grace has over 15 years experience in marketing events and gets a real kick out of making sure that all our communications are in line. Previous experience covers all sorts of weird and wonderful industries – but SEO is obviously her favourite!

Email Grace Allwright

Lynsey Jones - Head of Conferences, Rough Agenda

Lynsey entered the world of SEO back in 2009. A random turn of events meant that she helped to launch a new SEO conference in the UK, alongside the then SEOmoz.

The next 13 years were spent producing digital marketing conferences in the UK and US, specifically SearchLove. In 2020 Lynsey also became the driving force behind Hero Conf and she managed the PPCHero blog.

Lynsey was delighted to join the brightonSEO team in early 2023 to help launch our famous SEO conference in the US.

Email Lynsey Jones

Andrea Short - Speaker Relations | Freelance

Andrea looks after all things speaker related. When not loving being part of brightonSEO, she can be found in her kitchen cooking up a storm, relaxing with a glass of something home-made or walking them off by the river.

Email Andrea Short

Jo Walters - Data & insight | 25 Dots

Jo loves a spreadsheet and has piles of them to help the team understand who is coming to and supporting our range of events.

She got involved with brightonSEO by lending Kelvin a hand managing the @brightonSEO Twitter account when it got too much for him to keep an eye on whilst also hosting the event.

She then took over more of the marketing and community management before focusing on corralling spreadsheets and insight to help the team understand who is supporting and attending our events.

Email Jo Walters

Nic Fehrenbach - Event Project Manager, Rough Agenda

Nic joined Rough Agenda at the start of 2025 to support elements of brightonSEO.

Her background is in event management, with experience in international conferences, gala awards shows, networking events, tech meet-ups and pretty much everything in between, with companies including IBM, GSK, Centaur Media and the London Java Community.

Nic is mum to two wonderful children, and bakes a fine chocolate chip cookie.

Rhiannon Bell-Jackson - Event Admin Assistant, Rough Agenda

Rhiannon joined Rough Agenda in late 2024 as our Event Admin Assistant. She has over 8 years of experience supporting the events, live music & night-time economy industries and loves all things live and loud.

When not working with Rough Agenda, Rhi can often be found at a gig or going on big muddy walks.

Kenny Taylor - Production | Freelance

Kenny is Production Manager for brightonSEO, ensuring all the production, technical and venue related matters fit seamlessly together throughout our time on site, as well as eating more than his fair share of chocolate.

Nick Christian - Content & Marketing | Freelance

Nick first attended brightonSEO many years ago when it was at the Brighton Dome. Previously a paid search marketeer, he has since parlayed himself into the content business and now specialises (should it be generalises?) in all things media. He’s currently responsible for most of brightonSEO’s social and email activity, helping the message of brightonSEO spread far and wide.

Outside of his work for brightonSEO, Nick is a freelance cycling journalist. That means he covers the professional sport for a variety of print and online publications, as well as going off on jollies to ride up steep hills before writing up what he did on his holidays in exchange for cash.

Tim McGregor - Exhibition management | Freelance

After spending ten years as an analyst programmer, Tim escaped and headed for the bright lights and smoke machines of theatre, festivals and live events. His role at brightonSEO is to guide sponsors through all aspects of putting together an amazing stand.

Professionally, he is probably at his happiest in the thick of an event, schedule in one hand, coffee in the other and a radio in his ear.

Hannah Peacock - Registration & operations | Freelance

As a freelance event manager with 20 years of experience in the events and hospitality industry, I joined Rough Agenda in 2022 and have loved taking on this new challenge of managing the registration area. I love a fast paced, buzzing environment and brightonSEO certainly ticks those boxes!

When I am not working in the events industry, I can often be found dinosaur hunting with our 6 year old son on the Isle of Wight!

Julie Sharp - Event Manager | Freelance

Julie is a freelance Event Manager with over 15 years event experience. She has been working with the team since 2013 in various roles from Stage Manager to leading on MeasureFest and other Fringe events and most recently, as the Production Manager for Affiliate Huddle.

Email Julie Sharp

Kary Fisher - Graphic Designer | Freelance

Kary makes sure everything is on brand at brightonSEO – from designing the exhibition graphics to merch, brochures, presentation slides and more.

She’s obsessed with colour and pattern and has a background in branding and helping companies find their visual identity.

Having fulfilled her dream of going back to live in France, she works for her UK clients from her mountain home (with super fast wifi of course) and never misses a live brightonSEO event!

The community - The reason we put on events

It might sound cheesey but the community around our events are the reason they’re successful. They help us plan the events, they help us promote them and they turn up and make them the most welcoming and friendly events in the industry.

+44 1273 805525

hey@roughagenda.com

Rough Agenda,
Plus X Innovation,
Lewes Road,
Brighton, BN2 4GL

@brightonseo