Looking at the stats in socialmediasurgery.com – which we started in 2010 to help people administer their own surgeries as the movement spread across England and abroad – there have been more than 500 events.
500 events is a great milestone and testament to the hard work volunteers have put into the social media surgery movement over the last four years. That’s why I’m posting this now.
While I’m here, some more numbers from the website:
122 social media surgeries started
502 events held (or booked in for the coming months)
3,122 people have booked 4,152 appointments between them
Last week I worked with VCS Learning Solutions in Manchester to train a group of people who are, or will shortly be, running social media surgeries in different areas of north west England.
A slide I showed describes seven principles for digital mentors, originally created by Stuart Parker. The principles aren’t online now, so I’ve reposted them here with Stuart’s permission.
These principles closely match the skills and qualities required of a social media surgery manager, in my view, and I hope you find them useful.
Attentive: Listen up and listen well. Understand needs, fears and desires.
Impartial: While you may be a fervent believer in a service or platform, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be right for others.
Social: Bow down to the network. Your fellow mentors are the key to achieving digital mentor nirvana.
Friendly: Confidence won’t improve with negative vibes.
Passionate: Believe in the positive changes technology can bring to everyone’s lives.
Lifelong: Understand that this is lifelong learning for everyone, Digital Mentors included.
Innovative: Recognise new and developing technologies and how they can be of benefit to everyone.
Birmingham Leadership Foundation hosted a debate asking “what does it mean to be a Brummie?” at their third Monday Masterclass at the end of August in Handsworth. I shared my notes from the debate last month. This video by Punk Zebra gives you a great flavour of the debate and the passion that young people have for the city.
The masterclasses are a mix of inspiring talks from young leaders and entrepreneurs, together with a social media surgery run by Podnosh.
The debate was part of the MyBrum consultation, led by Councillor Waseem Zaffar for Birmingham City Council’s new social cohesion and community safety scrutiny committee.
Councillor Waseem Zaffar has been leading MyBrum, a consultation by Birmingham City Council’s new social cohesion and community safety scrutiny committee asking the simple question:
“What does it mean to be a Brummie?”
I was at Birmingham Leadership Foundation‘s Monday Masterclass in Handsworth last week (Podnosh provide social media help at the events) and helped social report the debate on “What does it mean to be a Brummie?”
There was a good mix of civic and young leaders giving their opinion. Here are my notes paraphrasing the debate:
Birmingham Leadership Foundation helps new and aspiring leaders to emerge. They connect emerging leaders with established leaders to help them learn from each other’s experience.
They organise networking events, training and connect existing leadership development projects to encourage the next generation of leaders in Birmingham to develop – leaders who reflect the city’s demography. These could be:
A young person aged 16–30 with the ideas, ambition and spark to make an improvement to the lives of others in their local community.
A person who is proactive in their community.
A chief executive or senior manager of a private company or public sector organisation who wants to work with, and support, the local community but lacks the know how and contacts.
Nick and I ran a social media surgery at the Foundation’s first Monday Masterclass last month. We’ll be working with the young leaders at the upcoming Masterclasses, sharing social media skills to help them get out there, network, collaborate and make things happen.
We’re also helping the Foundation team with their social media strategy and to further develop their own social media skills.
Sue Beardsmore spoke to a class of primary school children in Birchfield, asking the children to tell her what they think of school, the city of Birmingham and what they hope to do when they grow up.
Sue tabulated the answers into a spreadsheet and I’ve had a quick play at visualising one question in the text data: “what do you think school is for?”
Here’s the result (click the link to view the image at full size). I used a word tree in Many Eyes to choose a starting keyword, in this case “learn”, and then view the children’s answers in context to the keyword.
I really like the word tree format (say over a word cloud) as a way to understand context of the text I’m interested in.
Do you need some help making sense of your data? Talk to us.
For storytelling on the web, video is great. When a person talks about their experience in a video, it can be more engaging than the same words in text. Seeing a human face and hearing the story in her own words makes a story more authentic.
But what if a person wants to share their story about a negative or dangerous experience? What if that person wants to share their story but is still at risk?
This post summarises emails I’ve sent in response to enquiries about the Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery I coordinate – and advice to other Surgery Managers.
It’s about my personal take on what – and specifically who – the surgeries are for. It also stems from feeling protective of the helpers who volunteer their time and skills for free at the surgery, the very social capital that makes the surgery work.
Social media surgeries in the UK received lots of attention last Thursday when the Prime Minister recognised the social media surgery movement with a Big Society Award for 2012.
Nick posted about the award and mentioned the wonderful people who have organised surgeries over the last three years in the UK. They’re enthusiastic, generous people who make stuff happen.
While the Big Society Awards acknowledge individuals and organisations across the UK that demonstrate the Big Society in their work or activities, I thought I should mention the surgeries outside the UK. It’s great to see an idea that originated in Birmingham spread to other shores – and I’m keen to hear how the surgeries are working in other countries.
Here are the wonderful people who have taken the social media surgery model abroad and run their own events:
Last Friday, Steph and I spent a great morning in Bexley at Orbit South housing association, with Orbit residents from Kent and Sussex.
We worked with Heather, Paula, Peter, Sue and Jackie to set up their own Posterous blogs to talk about what’s going on in their neighbourhoods and to help them in their roles representing Orbit residents where they live.
