Written on March 12th, 2010 by Andrew Brightwell
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 »
Written on March 9th, 2010 by Nick Booth
These are my links for March 7th through March 9th:
Written on February 25th, 2010 by Andrew Brightwell
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.
Written on February 24th, 2010 by Andrew Brightwell
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.
Written on February 14th, 2010 by Nick Booth
These are my links for February 13th through February 14th:
Written on February 10th, 2010 by Andrew Brightwell
As we look forward to February’s Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery tomorrow, I thought I’d reflect quickly on last month’s.
One obvious highlight was the arrival of television cameras. Since the last event I went down to was November’s – where a German Camera crew was shooting – I’m beginning to think the presence of a film crew is a pre-requisite to a proper surgery!
This time the crew was there to see that social media can be used for a good cause as well as a bad, as part of a BBC Midlands Today piece that concentrated on how protest groups – including the English Defence League – have boosted turnout at their rallies by using sites like Twitter and Facebook. There was a good turnout or our own for them to film and Nick Booth put them straight, pointing out that in the right hands social media can do an awful lot of good.
I got a taste of this myself as I sat in on a session helping out the blog for Danny Reeves’ and Dave Morris’s climb to the top of Kilimanjaro. Danny and Dave, as I can see from looking at the blog, have reached the summit now – and raised more than £11,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support – exceeding their own combined target by more than a thousand pounds.
We were also in our first surgery in thestudio. Yep, it’s called thestudio, not The Studio, which might seem a lot more sensible, but is presumably a lot harder to trademark. The most brilliant thing about thestudio, aside from the fact that the venue has offered itself for free, is that it is in central Birmingham. Smack bang in the middle, in fact.
Hopefully that will ensure we meet the trade descriptions act – and that it makes it easier for more organisations and people to come down and get involved. And there’s a pub right across the road. Not a bad a location, then, really.
Written on December 17th, 2009 by Nick Booth
These are my links for December 16th through December 17th:
Written on January 2nd, 2009 by Nick Booth
Pew Internet released this report (pdf) just before the New Year which tells us that Americans who voted for Obama are expecting unprecedented levels of connection with his government:
Obama supporters who use email and social networking sites not only expect continued
communication with the administration through these channels, they also expect these
communications to occur with greater frequency than mail or telephone contacts.
- 37% of Obama voters who use social networking sites expect to receive updates from the administration on these sites. Most expect to receive these updates on either a weekly (12%) or monthly (11%) basis, while 14% expect them to occur less frequently.
- 34% of Obama voters who use email expect to hear from the new administration via email. One in ten (10%) expect to receive these email contacts on a weekly basis, and 9% expect to do so monthly.
- 38% of all Obama voters expect to hear from the administration via mail. Some 7% expect to receive mail from the new administration on a weekly basis and 12% expect to do so monthly, while 19% expect to be contacted by mail just a few times a year.
- 17% of all Obama voters expect to receive phone calls from the new administration at least occasionally. Just 2% expect to receive phone calls on a weekly basis, and most (10%) would prefer these communications to take place a few times a year.
- 11% of Obama voters who own cell phones and use text messaging expect to be contacted by text messaging, with most (6%) preferring that these text message contacts occur less than once a month.
That’s a awful lot of conversation and it will only be fruitful if Obama’s team and the government they inherit find new ways to pass authority and permission down the food chain. This is not potential, as we have with UK government. This is a reality which will be tested from this month onwards. Hat-tip.
Written on November 17th, 2008 by Nick Booth
This afternoon I spoke at the National Housing and Disrepair Forum annual conference. 100 or so council officers, solicitors, barristers, housing association types and others worrying about just how much money is spent on compensating council tenants for repairs that haven’t been done. This is a link to the presentation: Talk is cheap – so use it more.
I was invited by Kate Priest, the head of the legal department at Birmingham City Council that deals with such matters. Kate had heard me talking about local government, social media and the changing democratic relationship in one of my sessions at the Institute of Local Government.
A £3,000 pound compensation bill for a tenant could mean a £15,000 bill from their lawyers – and all that comes out of the repairs budget. So it’s worth exploring other ways to stop this.
I wanted to get across the idea that this can be thought of as a problem of trust. Lawyers thrive where trust does not. The challenge I wanted to throw to the group was how can they understand this as more than a problem of record keeping, accountability and process? Instead can they involve their people in sincere networks of trust within neighbourhoods.
The presentation is simply designed to offer examples of how and where the social web builds real networks of trust – ones which can make things happen. It was intended to give them a sense that trust is worth hard cash. The tenant who trusts their council worker and so negotiates directly with them could free up thousands for work of public value. The tenants who are part of a wider network of trust may even be able to help negotiate priorities.
Thank you for a big chunk of input on twitter (image here and here of the 19 comments). Here is what you suggested:
“By presenting an authentic face to tenants which listens and responds to their concerns and issues and by helping to link tenants up to find others in their situation, or who have resolved issues to share experience and connect” Dave Briggs.
“Listen to people where they are already talking about you (good and bad stuff)” Paul Henderson.
“Any way of improving two-way communication must surely help” Catnip.
“Councils need to improve / review their relationships offline before making a difference online” Stuart Parker.
“One easy win would be for blogs to be set up for individual estates – the council can keep tenants fully in the loop of developments, the tenants would be able to have their say, but also that blog could help develop & bind the community of the estate itself together. wins all round, for minimal financial investment, really.” Simon Gray.
“Not a council tenant, but as a private one an answerphone and email address would be a start!” and “I think the question’s wrong: maybe, ‘what are the problems facing council tenants’ and keep soc media in mind when addressing them “ Michael Grimes.
“This is helping in some respects, esp with young people on 1st tenancy http://www.inliving.co.uk ” John Popham.
“If social media is ‘informal’ it will help get over the “stigma” of phoning somone or appearing in person.” Paul Jennings.
“Human face and interaction with two-way content. Would also bring tenants into contact with each other as well as council.” Nicky Getgood.
“I think councils are way off social media. Difficult to control comms leads to degraded service. Also privacy issues and challenge of delivering service using tools and channels that are external. Eg what if Twitter down? Ian Edwards.
“Google alerts for blog posts about “dog sh*t” or “broken paving slab” + their ward, then follow it up. That’s only a semi joke”. Jon Hickman.
“Blogging for different estates. Would get people to know each other and get them talking about issues that matter to them.” Antonio Roberts.
“Works t’other way- CLG wants tenants 2 have a role in mgmt- better way 2 engage than endless meetings (although meetings r useful)”. Nick Drew.
Toronto based Michael Cayley also asked: “ pls share some references used for trust & social capital session aimed at lawyers who defend councils from housing repair claims.
I used very simple examples. I was facing an audience of 100 people, none of whom blog, only one had heard of twitter. Even though I was amongst many lawyers only a smattering had come across Linkedin. I needed to show how building networks of trust can help make good things happen. I used the example of the Birmingham Bloggers group and the Social Media Surgeries. I used the volunteer effort that mysociety can apply to ventures like fixmystreet (and not a soul in the room had heard of the site). I also talked to them about the open innovation exchange experiment and how it’s model of open collaboration to pitch for contracts is using trust to disrupt existing ways of doing business and improve the outcome for the public.
Responses were mixed. Some went for the very human (my favourites) such as getting good at saying sorry, takings flowers when you’ve messed up and having street meeting with contractors. Others talked specifically about procedures and software to track transactions. One reported how law firms use facebook to recruit people for court cases.
Overall I tried to emphasise that I wanted people to go away not so much thinking about the internet, but appreciating that whatever they can do to build trust should ultimately reduce their need to fight fruitless court battles with the very people they exist to help.
We’ll see what comes next.
Written on June 18th, 2008 by Nick Booth
After the suspension of a civil servant for blogging Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson has finally got some guidelines up to help civil servants join the online conversation. They are based on the civil service code and a big conversation which was encouraged by Tom on his blog and evolved into Richard Allan’s task force on the Power of Information. I like the simplicity and clarity. For me the advance is number 3 “Be Responsive”. Encourage constructive criticism is good but is also going to exercise some civil service structures and perhaps liberate others:
1 Be credible: Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent.
2 Be consistent: Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.
3 Be responsive When you gain insight, share it where appropriate.
4 Be integrated: Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications.
5 Be a civil servant: Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency.
Other feedback from bits of the web:Brilliant in their simplicity.