Brighton SEO 2026: What Happens When You Fill Up a Room With the Right People

The best way I can describe Brighton SEO comes from something Aleksej Lazanski said to me while we were sitting at Horatio’s after two days of talks, conversations, and more coffee than is probably advisable.

“You come here, spend these days with like-minded people, and it fills you up with energy. You go back home and you want to try new things.”

That’s it. That’s Brighton SEO.

Day One: Listening, Connecting, and the State of the Industry

I was speaking first thing Friday morning, so Thursday was about taking it easy, staying present, and catching up with familiar faces. One of the genuine pleasures of Brighton SEO is that when you’ve been coming for a while, it starts to feel like coming home. You know people. People know you. The conversations pick up where they left off.

And the conversations this year were telling. I heard about the current state of the marketing agency world, difficult times, clients reducing budgets due to economic instability and the uncertainty that AI is bringing with it. It feels like an in-between world right now. Nobody quite knows what comes next.

I heard about companies investing heavily in AI tools while quietly making the human element redundant, hoping the technology will resolve problems that were never really technology problems in the first place. I heard about pressure, lack of strategy, and a lot of figuring out happening in real time. Which made me think: if some organisations can’t run themselves properly yet, how can we expect them to think clearly about AI and its consequences?

I also had a brilliant conversation with Justyna Brownbridge, my fellow speaker the next morning, who opened my eyes to something I hadn’t fully considered: how important LinkedIn has become not just for personal brand but for showing up in LLM results. Most citations in AI-generated answers come from LinkedIn. That alone changed how I’m thinking about my content strategy.

And then there was OtterlyAI. I was interviewed for their content by Thomas Peham and Rick Tousseyn, two people building an AI search monitoring platform who genuinely care about the impact of what they’re creating. It is always refreshing to meet people in this space who ask “how can we help?” rather than “how can we sell?”

The Big Day

I won’t pretend I wasn’t nervous. I went home at a reasonable hour after the networking events, partly because the music was so loud it was starting to affect my throat, which I realised in that moment is my actual instrument and should probably be treated with more care.

Friday morning I spoke about AI bias and who gets left behind when we don’t pay attention to how this technology is built, used, and fed. I always introduce myself with a photo of me in my Rayo Vallecano shirt, and when I mentioned my football team, a few people in the crowd shouted in support. In a room full of strangers, that small moment of connection set the tone for everything that followed.

I talked about the three factors that drive bias in AI, who builds it, who uses it, and the data that goes in, and ended with A.C.T.: Awareness, Curiosity, and Togetherness. Because the end isn’t written yet. And what we do now matters.

The response was something I wasn’t fully prepared for. People came up afterwards with questions, with stories from their own organisations, with messages saying they were going to share the talk and actually do something about it. Not polite applause, genuine engagement from people who felt the urgency of what I was saying. 

I went into that room hoping to make people think. I came out feeling like some of them were ready to act. That is the best possible outcome for any talk.

It was also an honour to share a stage with three brilliant women. Justyna spoke about LinkedIn as a strategic tool and why organisations should be actively encouraging their employees to build their presence there. Tamara Novitovic explored why search systems disagree, and what that means for anyone trying to show up consistently across platforms. And Rebecca Peel gave a talk that I found myself nodding through entirely: how genuine journalism content is being replaced by AI slop, and why it has never been more important to create real content, conduct original research, and share data that actually means something. Her message and mine are the same one said differently, be responsible about how you use AI, before the consequences become impossible to reverse.

I also snuck into a few paid media sessions. The ex-paid media professional in me couldn’t help it. I’ll take with me the words of James Armstrong, who said that social media advertising is no longer about how you reach people, it’s about how you become the chosen one by the algorithm. Something worth sitting with.

What I’m Taking Home

Another Brighton SEO done. Another edition full of connections, learning, and moments that remind me why I do this.

But more than anything, I’m taking home the reminder that the conversations happening in rooms like these matter. The people asking hard questions about AI, about bias, about what we’re building and who it’s for, those people need to keep showing up. Keep talking. Keep challenging the status quo.

The end isn’t written yet. Let’s make sure we’re the ones writing it.