Podnosh

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 February 18th from 09:08 to 21:55:

• 10 Keys to Effective Non-Profit Organization Websites | Vandelay Design Blog – volunteers who are offering their time and services are also critical to most non profits. The website should provide information that tells people how they can get involved, how it will make an impact, and provide them with an opportunity to express their interest in volunteering.
• 5 Ways to Express Yourself More Clearly Online – WebWorkerDaily – The fact that you have a voice doesn’t mean you have to use it at every opportunity. Talk about what’s important to both yourself and your audience — don’t just follow the crowd.
• Connecting 2.0 Communities? « – Tracey helps organisers organise: "I couldn’t help feeling that with a few “tweaks” a good event could have been great and so, I’d like to offer a few suggestions – and – an offer to help put some of them into practice at the next event."
• The Monkey Cage: What Will Make People Trust Goverment Again? – What drives the trend in political trust? By and large, it is the economy. People trust government when times are good. They don’t trust it when times are bad.
• Cardiff bloggers meet-up, March 2010 « How to microblog in high heels – Nurturing the hyperlocal: "Cardiff will host its first bloggers meet-up next month – a chance for newbie, budding and veteran bloggers to be introduced, share ideas and link up."

Let me introduce you to two new blogs about neighbourhoods in Birmingham, both run by public servants

Hands on Handsworth is written by Tracey Thorne – the neighbourhood manager for Handsworth in Birmingham;  Be Heard in Birchfield is being nurtured by Yvonne Wager – the neighbourhood manager for that particular part of the city. (Click here to see Tracey’s explanation of neighbourhood management)

Both Yvonne and Tracey are in jobs funded by Be Birmingham – the local strategic partnership.  They were inspired to start a neighbourhood blog by their colleague Kate Foley who had been running Life in Lozells – a site set up originally to address the problem of all the bad news you find when googling Lozells. Kate explains in more detail in this video made by the Chamberlain Forum.

What do they do?

They talked to us about helping them develop these sites during the Social Media Surgeries we ran in Lozells last year.  Both are built on WordPress with some changes to the back end that make it a little easier to blog and listen to what the web is saying about your neighbourhood.  There’s also a simple events system with mapping, plus the sites include a facility to easily turn plans into commentable  consultation docs.  We also provide a service that ensures the software stays updated, plugins don’t clash etc, plus training and support on using it well.

Tracey is a natural – she really enjoys writing for the site and is on a roll. Yvonne is equally enthusiastic but needs a different sort of support, so it is taking a little longer.

Why Bother

The sites are the neighbourhood managers’ home in a wider web conversation. It’s only fledgling at this stage.  The point is that over time they help the neighbourhood managers share information, ask questions, pool expertise and begin to collabroate in new ways with their community.  I’m not convinced they should attempt to become THE site for their neighbourhood.

Such an idea concerns me, because if THE site gets switched off or someone begins using it to be self serving that’s a problems for the whole neighbourhood. Instead I’m interested in how we can nurture a range of online resources and voices in a place. These blogs form  part of that process – providing a tool that can also help neighbourhood managers link to and encourage the wider conversation.

What do you think?

It will take time and patience for these sites to bed in – but what do you think? Could you encourage them by commenting a post or do you have any advice for Yvonne or Tracey?

A great turnout at February's Social Media Surgery in thestudio

Well, it seems sometimes you get what you wish for. February’s Central Birmingham social media surgery had a really good turnout. Nick decided to make me ‘organiser’ for the night and, perhaps, it would have been best if it had been a quiet night.

But, largely because everyone was so nice and actually knew a lot more about what was going on than I did, it ran very smoothly. A big thanks in particular has to go to the surgeons who did a really good job to juggle the large numbers of people, who often had very different interests.
We had folk in looking for help with everything from Twitter to Google Analytics on the evening – and from lots of different organisations.

Feryal Iqbal, of Friends of the Earth and Localise West Midlands, seemed very happy with the help that she received. Feryal will be working with both the organisations and wanted to learn how she could set up a blog, as she explains in this audio interview.
Feryal interview Social Media Surgery february

It was also great to see Neil Holland, from the Midlands Arts Centre, who wanted to find out a little bit about how to use social media.

Andy Mabbett helped the Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery set up their own WordPress site, which they are already using to publicise their petition to force Birmingham City Council to restore the listed chapels there.

Susi O’Neill, who is a Web 2.0 surgeon in Nottingham, also popped in – and helped Martin Miley, Rick Cokayne and Martin Field of the Birmingham Social Investment Trust. Martin (Miley) and Rick wanted to set up a site for the Civic Centre Residents Association. And, thanks to Susi, they now have their own Posterous site.

Chris Crean, of Friends of the Earth, was keen to see how social media could support the campaigning work he does within the organisation, as he explains here:-

Clearly I need to work on lighting for the next surgery. But I’m really hoping we get an equally good turnout again next month, when the surgery will be on March 9 – a Tuesday – from 5.30pm to 7pm. See you then!

Click below to listen to the podcast

Click here to download the podcast

These are my links for February 4th through February 6th:

• Penval – News – "Earlier this week my local council announced that it was seeking European funding for wireless infrastructure in the rural “not spots” in the County. I believe that this is the wrong approach, not that I don’t understand the motivation because rural businesses get to the point where anything will do, but I still believe it’s wrong."
• The Social Business: *Other vehicles to create social change are available – I'd be right behind a Social Business Mark which was awarded to businesses which have clear social aims, and which provide externally verified evidence of their impacts. I'd even be happy if the businesses which had certain "social enterprise" structures got a further tick in the box. But given that my interest is in social change, and is not ideologically driven by a dislike of profit distribution, I am finding it hard to get enthusiastic about the Social Enterprise Mark.
• Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Blogging: a great pastime for the elderly – "blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet"
• Your Right To Know » Blog Archive » Bad-mouthing FOI – "I’ll be keeping my eye out for any FOI bad-mouthers in the future and if you know of any please do let me know"
• Yet another UK Hyperlocal Directory… but this time it’s open data « countculture – Most importantly, I thought the directory should be open data which could be reused by anyone and not just by the person or company running the directory.

These are my links for December 4th through December 6th:

• Measuring digital engagement – Digigov – "Recently, I’ve been working with colleagues in COI on this problem and we’ve come up with three common measures that appear to work across all digital engagement or social media tools:

  1. Number of relationships
  2. Number of user-generated content items
  3. Number of referrals/recommendations"

• Listening to you – "Residents in Longton and Meir are invited to meet their local police commander next week, and a new billboard will leave them in no doubt of where and when to find him. A 20ft by 10ft billboard has been sited on Weston Road in Meir (near The Broadway) inviting people to come and speak to the local commander. " via @Mike_rawlins
• Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Networked Journalism: Challenges To NGOs and Mainstream Media – What a relief: "In a recent Polis private seminar with a major international NGO and a global news organisation, the head of the news media’s international division said that he now accepted that they had to work together to report the world:

  “We may have, if we are lucky, one stringer in a particular country. You may well have a dozen people there who know it well. It makes sense for us to use your resources to cover a story or issue.”

  All media organisations are now opening themselves up to gathering material from the public – including NGOs. And NGOs are now expecting their humanitarian staff to act more like journalists. "

• Freedom to Lead | John’s Idea – "In Leicestershire 92 council staff spend their time keeping government up to date on 3,000 performance indicators at a cost of £7 million a year. The need to reduce these costs, and shift the emphasis of performance reporting from central government to local people, sit at the heart of the LGA campaign Freedom to Lead."
• CivicSurf » “That’s not a blog. Blogs are boring with lots of text” – Hear, hear: "

  What struck me last night, and not for the first time, was that people still have this ingrained view of what a blog is. When I showed the cake site to one lady she blurted out, “That’s not a blog! A blog is boring with lots of text.” Wordpress.com still promotes itself to bloggers and offers:

  “Express yourself. Start a blog.”

  It’s a website that is easy to update and optimised for search engines. End of. Let’s not label it with something that puts people off.

These are my links for November 7th through November 9th:

• October Wrap-Up « Blog « WordPress.com – Last month 467,107 new blogs were created on wordpress.com. For more mind numbing statistics click on the link.
• Let me take you by the hand… « Beanbags and Bullsh!t – Really intersting thoughts on social enterprise: "Whether or not their activities are described as ‘trading’ for tax purposes, it’s hard to see how those social enterprises that just provide an outsourced public service in a specific area – and would go bust if the council (or other agency) cut their biggest contract – are businesses in any meaningful sense. Either way, Curley’s point is that these kinds of organisations – that make up a worrying large chunk of the social enterprise sector – are not sustainable unless state funders choose to sustain them."
• Center for Media Justice : Grassroots groups speak up for Net Neutrality – Interesting campaign in the USA to support net neutrality on the basis that a controlled network will discriminate on race ground – and I presume also on the grounds of wealth.
• What do you think about the way that technology can empower young people? | The Youth of Today – "The Youth of Today programme is conducting a survey of 13-25 year olds around the world to better understand how young people use information and communication technologies (ICTs). We are conducting the survey as part of our work on a publication on the subject (coming March 2010)."
• The Future of Politics is Mutual « SoloBassSteve.com: Shiny Happy People Blogging… – We now live in a world where we construct our own media consumption, where we pull together, build our own stories. Politics and the mainstream media are clinging on to old methods of distribution and delivery.
• UNB Student Union | Blog | Our Dirty Linen, Part 1: Communications – I will be working with some student unons this montha dn found this wonderful idea – admitting fault: "Welcome to Part 1 of a blog series that we’ll be calling “Our Dirty Linen.” The idea is simple: we admit to areas we haven’t been doing so well in in the past, we talk about some of the ideas we have for moving forward, and you give us feedback to guide this process."
• Campaign for better connectivity on trains « John Popham’s Random Musings – Yes

These are my links for September 10th through September 12th:

• Google’s PageRank Predicts Extinction Paths | Technology & Gadget News – "The complex algorithm that Google’s uses to rank web pages has been hailed by scientists as a way to predict extinction cascades within ecosystems."
• Mapping revisited & social change theory « CDI Europe – "The largest opportunity – and the largest experiment – would therefore be to test its social change theory in a space that so far no organisation has consistently occupied: mobile Internet and apps based on smartphones."
• The Ethics of Openness | Rebooting the System – "Today the default in our discussion of government is negative: they are doing bad things badly, and we are the watchdog who’ll catch the bastards in the act.”
• At “Blogger Roundtable” To Launch Homeland Security “Dialogue”, DHS Policy Head Heyman Asks For “Shareholders” Input As Part Of “Shared Responsibility” To Help Protect The Nation – "there were three major reasons for bringing the public into the “dialogue”: 1) to raise awareness and engage citizens about the “shared responsibility” for homeland security and address a “sense of complacency”; 2) to include the “shareholders” (ie. citizens) in discussions on how their government should be allocating its resources in homeland security; and 3) to solicit good ideas about how to keep the nation “safe and secure” from across the nation “capitalizing on the knowledge of the public”."
• Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” – PM | Number10.gov.uk – "Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later."