At the same time as running the project we’ve been working on in South Birmingham with the Community safety team we’ve been engaging with communities in east Birmingham in the same way. In fact we’ve just wrapped up the first lot of surgeries in Shard End and it looks like we’ve had some great results with people coming to learn about twitter, facebook and blogging.
One of the patients who attended was Lol Thurstan.
Lol came along to a Social Media awareness session we held at The Pump on Kitts Green Road and subsequently attended our Social Media Surgeries at Shard End Library. Chair of his residents association and lead coordinator with his neighbourhood watch, He wanted to learn how to use social media to support his Neighbourhood Watch group
In just 4 sessions (including the initial awareness session) Lol has established B26 Community, A neighbourhood website for the Sheldon community that allows him to not only share Neighbourhood Watch news but can also involve other groups in the community to improve communication in the area –
By his own admission Lol was a late comer to starting to use technology but he came with a willingness to learn and as I think you’ll see from this video, age isn’t a barrier to learning something new and getting stuck in !
Great video Steph. And Lol’s blog is lovely. His views on Facebook made me smile. I felt that way about twitter AND Facebook before becoming a convert to twitter. I’m still struggling with Facebook (choosing not to use it), though it was interesting reflecting on Lol’s opinion and challenging myself a bit. I think WordPress etc. might be more comfortable spaces for people have, and want to hold on to power. We can control what we put on there, and if we choose to we can control what comments end up on ‘our’ site. This goes beyond a traditional communications officer control of the message desire. I think it’s about different sorts of power and control. And perhaps a lack of desire in opening ourselves up to what other people are talking about and interested in. Some of us who run blogs want people to visit on our terms, around subject matter we have chosen and found interesting (I know that I do this). Facebook feels like a different sort of space entirely. Is twitter a bridge between? Hmmm… this has really got me thinking, thanks.