Author Archive

Helping third sector organisations use audio to share sensitive stories online

Posted on 19th April 2012 by

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.

Here’s an example of a woman telling Birmingham Settlement what she has learned about how to use the internet:

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?

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Who are social media surgeries for?

Posted on 22nd March 2012 by

Melissa helping someone learn about Facebook at Dudley Social Media Surgery

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.

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Spotlight on international social media surgeries

Posted on 18th February 2012 by

Social media surgery at COCAP Nepal

Photo by Mero Report: Social Media Surgery at COCAP, Nepal

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:

Carolyn Deuchar, a Senior Research Officer at New Zealand Tourism and Research Institute, also likes the idea:

"Am loving this: Social media surgeries to support local community & voluntary organisations"

Do you know other surgeries I haven’t mentioned here?

Updated 12th March 2012: Kultwerk West are holding a social media surgery in Hamburg on 14th May 2012, the first to take place in Germany.

Local blog training for social housing with Orbit South residents

Posted on 7th February 2012 by

Sue, Heather and Jackie sat with laptop

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.

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Social bookmarks for social media surgery managers

Posted on 27th January 2012 by

Screenshot: Social Media Surgery stack on delicious.com

This week I’ve been playing with stacks on Delicious, the social bookmarking site. Stacks are a way to organise your links into a common theme and the new social features make collaborating much easier.

To learn how the new features work – rather than curate links around an arbitrary theme (such as “most awesome kitten stunt videos”, which someone has probably done already) – I started this stack to share resources and links aimed at social media surgery managers.

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Community-led neighbourhood planning in Balsall Heath

Posted on 19th October 2011 by

This is a short video with Joe Holyoak, a resident of Balsall Heath, an inner city area to the south of Birmingham.

Balsall Heath is one of the first 20 neighbourhood planning front runners chosen by government to write their own neighbourhood plan. The idea, part of the Localism Bill, is that instead of neighbourhood plans being written by professional planners in local government, the plan should be written by the local community itself.

Joe is working for Balsall Heath Forum. They are at the start of a six month process to write the plan (from September 2011 to March 2012). They are consulting local people, finding out what they want to see in the plan, what their priorities are, asking residents what they want Balsall Heath to become. The aim is to create a set of proposals, which will form part of Birmingham City Council’s official plan for the city.

This video was recorded at the first meeting of the Neighbourhood Planning Network, 29th September 2011, hosted by MADE in Birmingham.

New report counts cuts to spending in the UK voluntary and community sector

Posted on 8th August 2011 by

Counting the Cuts: The impact of spending cuts on the UK voluntary and community sector is a new report published today by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).

Following a collaborative project to map stories of voluntary groups told their funding will be reduced – and analysing the government’s projected spending plans for the Spending Review period 2011–2015) – NCVO estimate “the voluntary and community sector is facing nearly £3billion in cuts over the next five years.”

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How museums and arts organisations in the West Midlands are using social media

Posted on 8th July 2011 by

Wolverhampton Archives
Photo of Wolverhampton Archives by yamahapaul, Midlands Heritage Forum

Last week, we worked with a group of people from museums, archives and arts organisations from across the West Midlands to help them develop their existing social media activity and to think how they can increase the level and impact of their social media work. We met at the Wolverhampton Archives, in the fantastically restored Molineux Hotel Building.

Emma Cook, Museum Development Officer for Birmingham, the Black Country and Telford & Wrekin has posted the discussions:

Stop pretending data visualisation is easy – bring distributed skills together

Posted on 21st June 2011 by

I spent a great day at LocalGovCamp in Birmingham last Saturday, an unconference for anyone interested in how social media and digital technology relates to local authorities and improving public services.

LocalGovCamp Birmingham 18 June 2011
Photo by Glenn Wood

Toby Blume, of Urban Forum and Paul Evans ran a session on data visualisation and visualising policy (more on that in this previous post).

Partway through the discussion, one particular issue really grabbed my attention. There was some frustration from some local authority officers about how difficult it is to actually make a visualisation or to communicate issues visually. It went something like this:

“This stuff is really hard. I want a tool that will let me put my data in and will give me a nice visualisation back.”

After a few responses – useful suggestions such as starting with Google Spreadsheets or Fusion Tables – the frustration with the steep learning curve came out, and Michael Grimes refocused the room with this nugget of sense:

“The process of creation [for a data visualisation] is important. It’s about how we communicate accurately with the information we have.”

And Michael got me thinking… do local authority officers expect making a data visualisation to be a straightforward process? Should it be easier? Are the available tools not serving those new to visualisation?

Or, and this is my thinking, there’s a false expectation that visualising data is easy. The JFDI attitude prevalent in other areas of digital tools for local government may have created false expectations on ease of access to visualisation.

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