AI Digital

Who are you, what do you do and why do you do it?

My name’s Jason Woodford and I own and run AI Digital which is a rapidly growing digital marketing and e-learning agency based in Brighton. My education and work has allowed me to develop a broad mixture of marketing, financial and business skills which I attempt to harness in my mission at AI Digital.

Over the years I have been made redundant twice in difficult circumstances which gave me the determination to take more control over my life and career. As a result I bought my last employer (Academy Internet) off the liquidator in 2002 and got it back into business with my brother and wife. The company has grown between 30-80% p.a. since then culminating in a ranking of 34th in the 2007 Deloitte Tech Fast 50.

I’ve got a young family including my wife and 3 girls aged under 6 and my simple aim is to be very successful in business so their future is secure and I can finally achieve a better balance in my life.

What’s going to happen to Wired Sussex in the next five years?

I see Wired Sussex becoming more significant on the national and international stage yet more focussed in its target audience and mission. Having built a strong representation and relationship with the digital media community in Sussex, I would like to see Wired Sussex connecting the talent in Brighton to the financial resources of the City. Sussex needs access to sources of finance in order to achieve its potential as a leading global centre for digital media talent and business. It’s my goal to help make that happen.

What was your most unpleasant job (factory work included) and how did it help you to get where you are today?

I have had the pleasure of being a cleaner in Debenhams, silver service waiter at the Grand (in Eastbourne), a shop assistant in WalMart( in New Jersey), a sugar trader, a marketing placement for Hoverspeed, a council gardener and a pill counter in a pharmaceutical factory. I learned that education is the key to financial freedom, allegedly!

Everyone’s got a book in them, what’s yours?

My great great grandfather on my mothers side was the first Englishman born in China in the early 1840’s. Their family owned a small fleet of tea clippers running between Shanghai and Dartmouth/London and raced amongst others the Cutty Sark. I aim to go back, retrace some steps, unearth some stories and work out what that means to me today in the 21st Century. I guess we’ll need to set up a Hong Kong office to make that happen!!!

If you could pinch anyone’s genius idea (myspace, youtube, the wheel) and claim it as your own, what would it be?

The Jet Engine. How did Frank Whittle come up with the idea and then develop it on virtually no budget? It’s the invention that has kept British engineering on the world stage and the thought of using a controlled explosion to deliver safe powered flight for the masses is so mad it has to be the work of a genius.

When you’re not being a big cheese and making important decisions, what do you do for fun?

Family is important to me and I’ve got three girls aged 6, 4 and 2 so my weekends and evenings usually involve the colour pink and lots of play, which I find very relaxing!!

I play cricket, hockey, golf and tennis (though not nearly enough) and enjoy fishing for bass and canoeing in the Cuckmere estuary near Eastbourne in Sussex – it’s one of the last river estuaries in the south of England to have escaped urban development and is correspondingly beautiful.

I enjoy eating and drinking locally produced food and drink – one of the annual highlights being the English Food and Wine festival in Glynde. A few pints of Harveys in a local Sussex pub with my family on a sunny summers day is probably a highlight!

I spent many of my younger years abroad in Hong Kong, Iran, Chicago and New York and then at boarding school in Eastbourne so am trying to spend more time keeping in touch with people I’ve met over the years as well as laughing over some of the stories so far.