Podnosh

I had a quick look round MAC – the  arts centre in Cannon Hill park in Birmingham – thanks to Neil Holland and others from the comms team there. This video doesn’t show you everything, just a taste.  There’s plenty more to see when it opens on May 1st  with a gig from Misty’s Big Adventure and lots of other goodness – including a new commission from Stan’s Cafe and some new audio walks for the park.

I know I don’t normally write about this sort of thing but the old Mac oozed community and connection – this is brighter and fresher and better.

Jamie and Jean work on the Civic Centre Residents' Association blog

At another brilliant Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery in thestudio we saw a host of exciting and interesting projects either getting off the ground or being developed still further. Read the rest of this entry »

The surgeries are informal place to find out about social media

So what if you’ve never been to a social media surgery? You might have a few questions, right? We thought it might be good to answer a few.

So what is a social media surgery?
Social Media Surgeries are just a fun, informal way for people to meet and learn how to use social media for social good.

What is social media?
Social media is a loose term that is applied to a range of tools that use the world wide web to bring people together and communicate – including blogs and social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.

How do social media surgeries work?
Our surgeries consist of patients (the people who come to learn stuff) and surgeons (the people who can answer their questions). We pair surgeons with patients, so that the patients can learn all about how to use social media.

Who should come to social media surgeries?
Our surgeries are for anyone involved in community and voluntary organisations who is looking for new, more effective ways to communicate about the work that they do. Patients don’t need to know about computers. It’s much more important that you are keen to learn and that you have something to say!

Who are social media surgeons?
The surgeons are all terribly nice people who’ve volunteered their time for free to help people. They come from a variety of backgrounds, but they all want other people to be able to make good use of the power that comes from effectively using social media.

What happens when you get to a social media surgery?
Imagine a big coffee morning, except it’s probably in the evening! We pair surgeons with patients after quickly finding out what people would like to learn. You get to sit with a surgeon who can help you with whatever question or issue you’ve got.

What can you expect to get out of a social media surgery?
Well, that’s entirely dependent on what you want to get. Lots of people who come want to set up blogs – simple websites where they can publicise what they are doing. Other people are interested in using Twitter, or other social networking services. Often people come back to learn more and more. Sometimes people who first arrived at surgeries as patients become surgeons themselves.

Is there anything I need to bring?
No. The surgeons have computers, so you don’t need to worry. Of course, if you have a laptop and can carry it easily then please bring it along.

Where can I find out more?
To find out how the surgeries started you can read this post. John Popham, who runs surgeries in Yorkshire, has done a good job of explaining things in this podcast. This site, Podnosh, gives details of new surgeries in Birmingham and elsewhere.

Where are the social media surgeries?
We run the Central Birmingham Social Media Surgeries, but there are surgeries elsewhere in the country, too. Acocks Green runs its own, there are surgeries in Yorkshire, and there are Web 2.0 surgeries in Nottingham and others starting elsewhere.

Surgeons and patients at February's surgery at thestudio

We’ve just booked up three new dates for the Central Birmingham Social Media Surgeries – April 7, May 6 and June 8 – with the lovely people at thestudio, in Cannon Street, off New Street.

It’s great news, because we’ve been able to extend our original arrangement where we get the space in thestudio for free. It seems that the management at thestudio is quite happy with it, too – as long as we remember to buy a few drinks at the bar and clear off at 7pm, as we’re supposed to. We’ll issue reminders for these events closer to the dates, but if you’re looking for the next surgery it will be on March 9.

Have a look here for more details.

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading December 15th from 02:21 to 03:00:

• David Barrie: Love diagrams – “What followed was a sequence of graphics that map the course of human relations in the film – cutely assuming that love relationships are “dynamic” (don’t stop reading) and ignore scuzzy soap and socks left on the floor.” Original here.
• Theatre Pledge 2010 « Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company – Stan’s Cafe theatre pledge encourages people to make a commitment to support local theatre, bring new people to new experiences. What might you choose to create a pledge for?
• Official Google Enterprise Blog: Why the City of Los Angeles chose Google – “Google Apps will save the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars by allowing us to shift resources currently dedicated to email to other purposes. For example, moving to Google will free up nearly 100 servers that were used for our existing email system, which will lower our electricity bills by almost $750,000 over five years. In short, this decision helps us to get the most out of the city’s IT budget.” via @davebriggs.
• Ethical Xmas? | Birmingham Conservation Trust – My favourite Birmingham charity on how you can support it with your Christmas Shopping
• Christmas Fun at Stanhope Hall Highgate « Highgate,Digbeth and St Andrews – Andy Sheppard, neighbourhod manager, shows that praise is a key quality to deploy in blogging a community: “Father Christmas made a special visit to Stanhope Hall and presented all the children with an early Christmas Present. Special thanks for both events are due to Monica Lee Community Worker and the ladies of Stanhope Hall Womens Group who worked incredibly hard to ensure the success of both events. Special thanks are also due to Eddie Howard and Highgate Housing Liaison Board for their support for both events.”
• Hyperlocal news: profits a long way off | Media | guardian.co.uk – “2010 will not be the year of hyperlocal—these are the foothills, the beginnings of localised online publishing. But the signs are auspicious: increasing levels of online literacy and broadband connections mixed with more inevitable local newspaper closures mean it’s natural that readers—and advertisers—will shift to new outlets. Whether anyone will be making a real living from it—as a mainstream publisher or a start-up—seems unlikely in the near future… ” via @daveharte.

These are my links for September 20th through October 6th:

• Pits’n’Pots – The Radical Press » Labour leader Barnes impersonates Pits’n’Pots! – "Labour Group Leader Mike Barnes has admitted to impersonating someone from this website to try and find information about a rumoured news story in another Authority."
• Free music, courtesy of your library « Mabblog – "If (like me in Birmingham), you have an enlightened library service, they will have paid for a subscription to Naxos Music, so, by entering your library card number (you do have a library card, don’t you?) you can listen on-line, for free, to a “CD quality” stream of their recordings of Gilson’s music (or anything else in their vast and ludicrously high-quality catalogue). From home (or anywhere else, for that matter)."
• Kirklees Community Technology Project « Yorkshire and Humber ICT Champion – ‘Local 2.0’ will work with community organisations, individuals, service providers, ward councillors and others within one neighbourhood and will look at how new web technologies can help people share information more effectively and bring more opportunities to neighbourhoods.
• Feeding back citizen experience – Digigov – "We not only hinder the citizen in their ease of reporting (thereby potentially adding to their distress or preventing them from complimenting the service), we also lose something much more valuable – the ability to analyse where small changes across public services could result in maximum effect."
• Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: A Methodology for Learning from Social Media Pilots: Reflection – Questions to Help Deep Reflection Occur

  1.What worked really well in this project?
  2.Did it accomplish goals or outcomes? In what ways?
  3.Did it fall short? Why?
  4.What would you do differently?
  5.What surprises came up during the project? What unexpected happened? What could you learn or capture from that?
  6.What insights did you get during the project?
  7.What processes did you use that worked well? Which didn’t work so well? Why do you think that was?

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading August 8th from 12:43 to 13:15:

• Citizen involvement in local governance | Joseph Rowntree Foundation – “This Round-up outlines the challenges and dilemmas that local partners, central government, councillors, staff and communities must resolve if citizens are to have more power and influence over local services and their neighbourhoods.”
• Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0: How to address scaling and cause fatigue? – Beth challenging non profits to step uop a gear when it comes to now owning the message but being part of a network which achieves things. Excellent post
• What would you do with a journalist? « Talk About Local (alpha) – Good question asked by Will Perrin.
• Where British blogging is at | The Democratic Society – Demosc worries about whether blogging can replace msm: “a lot of sympathy with his scepticism about what blogging brings to political debate. It may be that it grows up, or that the cream floats to the top, if the traditional media do go under.” Medium and message mix up again?
• A Rebuttal & an Example of a High Performance Organization | Tactical Philanthropy – This is one of a series of interesting posts and conversations about social media and charities, high performance versus high impact. Some really intelligent stuff being chewed over on this blog.
• Hyperlocal, when you don’t want everything – jon bounds – Jon Bounds improves is Birmingham hyperlocal blog pipe, created as part of Talk About Local

Sorry it is such short notice. The next social media surgery for voluntary groups is this Wednesday March 25th 2009, as a drop in from 5.30 to 7pm.  We have a plush new venue, which is a few minutes walk from BVSC. For all the details and how to sign up please visit the link below:

http://www.paradisecircus.com/social-media-surgeries/

The surgeries are run by a group of volunteers, mostly from the Birmingham bloggers groups. They are willing to show people from the cities charities and voluntary organisation how they can make best use of social media.   If you want to see what people have made of the first three surgeries you might like to watch this video on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEPbtfdIkVY

That’s one of the questions asked on the site of a new programme being launched in Birmingham on November 7th.  The full question on Heard and not Seen is

I want to ask, “Do Muslims have a sense of humour?”.
I ask as the media portrays them in a negative way; extremism, fundamentalism etc etc. Where do Muslims go to relax and have fun as I understand they don’t drink either. I’m just curious…

One answer can be found on the site below the question, whilst I think an even better one comes from here in the form of the islamic lolcats you see on the left.

Heard and not Seen is run by Friction Arts (who’ve just shifted their own website over to wordpress) and is best described as askthedriver for Muslims.

If you also want to go to the launch and ask some questions details are here.

Above Marc Reeves sums up why The Birmingham Post must change. After 150 years as a broadsheet, he told tonight’s launch party that nothing this radical has yet happened to the paper. The loss of the Saturday edition and the change to stapled tabloid size are the the most visible changes, but to my mind the most important ones are happening elsewhere.

They will be found in the new relationships being forged online (and in the real world) that will see reporters change from people with contacts into people with real relationships. It is something that Marc and Jo Geary (and others at the paper) have been experiencing for many months.

The curious thing though is appreciating the scale of the operation at the new Fort Dunlop HQ for the Post and sister papers.  500 jobs is a huge amount to support in a changing world with business models breaking by the day. By that measure this is just the start of a communications revolution which will take brains, courage and flexibility to survive.

So lets take a moment to be proud.

Here in Birmingham the Post is changing fast to find new ways to understand how those business models will be framed.  Channel 4 has come here with 4IP to do the same. Hello Digital is looking to help us get digital faster. Independents from small companies to community groups and local bloggers are learning faster than almost anyone.

We are gaining great pleasure from plunging ourselves into solving one the key problems of the start of the 21st century.

Birmingham is learning to break and remake the rules all over again.

—

Other Reactions:

Editors Weblog.

PaidContent “We cannot carry on as we are”

Birmingham Post Cartoonist retires (I remember Bert Hackett from work experience and being at school with his daughter).

Grovesmedia:  “a tentative thumbs up for now”.

D’log,   Steve Bowbrick muses on whether we could nationalise newspapers, and Mark Steadman.