Hand Made – “new community culture”, the social media surgery and Militant Optimists.

I’m proud. The picture above is of a lovely thing Tessy Britton has sent me – the gift of a book. She asked 28 people (including me) to write about their experiments in community. My chapter is on Social Media Surgeries. The combined result is a wonderful book:

Tessy writes:

Largely (but not exclusively) these projects by-pass existing ‘systems’. They start with little or no money and ask for no permissions….Small they may be, but they represent the seeds of an emergent culture which I believe is going to spread, so potent is the glow created from the human interactions these projects generate.

The surgeries are spreading. As I write this I’m on the train to London, to speak at Open Tech (another great example of community culture stuffed full or people working on “stuff” that matters) about them. Rootling around in the back end of www.socialmediasurgery.com I find (and this site doesn’t record it all) that:

30 people have become “surgery managers” (the people who set them up – run them – keep them friendly and happy)
168 people have registered as surgeons (helpers)
506 people have attended a surgery somewhere

They are running in

34 places – 28 in the UK plus South Africa, Spain, USA, Eire and India.

We launched the site in July.

These people belong to something that David Barrie describes in his chapter in the book as the Thirteenth Tribe of community life – “Militant Optimists”: