Podnosh

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.

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?

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.

I often get asked how you make a social media surgery. To the left is a list of ingredients, below is how you use them.

This is for a standard social media surgery and is ideal for community, voluntary and neighbourhood groups.

Last year I would have said this is enough to serve a city, but since then I’ve got a bit greedy and think that every neighbourhood should have a surgery much like this one.   I’d recommend you read all the way to the end before starting to mix the ingredients.

Shopping List

A Diary: This should be full of dates and used to avoid clashes with other things

Lists of people – 3: Here in Birmingham we use three lists of people.  One is a list of people who care about where they live and get things done (some people call them active citizens).  This list can be any size, although bigger tends to be better.  These are our patients.  We have a much smaller list of people who themselves have bigs lists of people who care about where they live and get things done. We send the dates (see above) out to these people who circulate them to their lists.  Finally you need a list of people who care about where they live and get things done and know about the internet. These are your surgeons.

As you get better at this recipe you will find that people who first appeared on the patients list will move across to the surgeons list. That’s exactly the result you’re looking for. In fact those people are the sweetest part of the whole confection.  Also if you are making different social media surgeries for different neighbourhoods you will probably find yourself acquiring a whole range of different lists.  That’s normal, but do keep them in separately labeled jars.

A room (with corridors): This is the standard size social media surgery so you just need a standard sized room.  Most rooms come with corridors, please don’t discard these. We have found them very handy as marvellous overspill spaces.

Tables and Chairs: Some people like their tables and chairs in neat rows, I prefer them just how they come. So scatter these around.

Tea & Coffee: Let people help themselves.

Wi-Fi: Never skimp on this. A good social media surgery will be drenched in wi-fi.  If you find yourself tempted to drizzle the ‘nets the whole thing will certainly turn out flat.  Some types of wi-fi come with a key.  If you have that sort make sure everyone can easily find it.

Organiser (1 or more): You must have at least one of these so dates get set, rooms get found, wi-fi checked, lists updated, e-mails sent out.  It also always helps to keep a couple of spares in your store cupboard.  Don’t use too many organisers though, that can spoil things.

Welcomer (1): People really don’t believe that a surgery can last between 90 minutes and 2 hours and nothing formal happens. So it’s good to have someone to welcome the patients through the door, take their details and explain to them what isn’t going to happen (you’re not going to get lectured at, speeches won’t be made, you won’t be made to do or learn anything your don’t want to).  The welcomer also introduces the patient to their surgeon.

Social Capital: This is the most important ingredient.  We started with Birmingham Bloggers Group social capital, which had been simmering for a good 20 months, thickened by all sorts of strange ingredients. Think of social capital as the stock pot of your social media kitchen, you need to keep it constantly bubbling away.  By the way, it has to be home made and hand made.  In an emergency you can borrow some social capital from your neighbour, but please take care to return it as soon as you can.  Some people are tempted to use shop bought social capital. It never works.

Note: Some of you may be surprised to see that I have not included Expectations in this recipe.  I use zero expectations when making a surgery. Anything more than that can sour things.

Happy surgeoning.

This is the Birmingham standard social media surgery.  Other recipes may be available from Sheffield, Solihull, Brighton, Nottingham, SCIP in Brighton, in Dave’s head, A Solo Bassist, Pete Ashton, Manchester,  Mosman, Australia.

Here are some things I’ve been reading July 17th:

• MP asks UK.gov: Why are you still using IE6? • The Register – Tom Watson MP: “I feel sorry for the thousands of civil servants using the Austin Allegro of web browsers when they can have newer, faster alternatives. I want government CIOs to pull their fingers out.”
• UK Parliament – House of Lords Information Committee – Lords information Committee want to see parliament change the way it shares information with the public: “We recommend that information and documentation related to the core work of the House of Lords (including Bills, Hansard, transcripts of public committee meetings, evidence submitted to committees, committee reports, records of divisions, expenses and the register of Lords’ interests) should be produced and made available online in an open standardised electronic format that enables people outside Parliament to analyse and re-use the data.” (paragraph 66) “We ask the Government to explain how and within what timescale our recommendations will be incorporated into the work that Sir Tim Berners-Lee will lead on opening access to data.” (para 81)
• The social media paradox: success & time. | Blog | Econsultancy – “We’re about to see a wave of anti-social media feeling and a call for back to basics; with comments like “Why were we all getting so carried away!?”"
• 10 things you should cover in your social networking policy | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com – This post reminds of why controlling and obsessive business will founder with sociaol media. The whole tone of voice is about aversion to rather than embracing the social web: “To have teeth, a policy must include consequences for violations. The policy should spell out that violation of the policy can result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination, and reference other company policies that lay out the appeals process and other relevant information.”
• The Wires are gone, now for the Restrictions « FutureLibrary – “Is your library wireless friendly? And why not? It is the way we communicate and work now. People are less attached to desktops as sales suggest, with laptop and other mobile devices taking off. Yes, we are a mobile society in more ways than one.”
• A huge list of social media and blogging guidelines « Webyogi’s blog – “One policy that really sings to me is Zappos Twitter policy ‘Be real and use your best judgement’ – that’s it! Thanks to original posts listed below just for reference….”

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

• Intel Social Media Guidelines – Genuinely excellent guidelines for intel staffers on getting involved with social media.
• Not what ships are for at Helpful Technology – "one of the local authority participants contributed a quote which struck a deep chord: “Ships are ’safe’ in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are for” – great spot from Steph
  Amen to that. Here’s to seafaring!
• Google – Local Government – This site is your guide to the tools and best practices your council can adopt to reach, communicate and engage with your community.
• Conversation with communities – A councillor’s guide to social media – Councillors, as local leaders, will have a key role in these changes if they take that opportunity. Enhancing local democracy through greater transparency and providing both a greater voice and a greater responsibility for citizens in setting priorities and delivering public services means that the nature of a representative democracy may change. But the need for elected officials does not go away and there are tremendous opportunities local leaders to use social media to engage with a wider range of people in a powerful, focused way.
• Kebablog » Blog Archive » Surgery anyone? – Steve's experience of the Social Media Surgery in Acocks Green: "2 ladies (bec and mandy? – I may have asked the names, but in the excitement forgot!) came in and asked about setting up a blog, Nick pointed them in my direction and I was happy to help out."
• I couldn’t possibly comment: An open, digital Iraq inquiry – "The inquiry should assume that interesting things will be done with the information they publish off their website by independents." A really thorough explanation from Will Perrin about how the UK Government Iraq Enquiry could use the web and meta data in important ways.

On Saturday I popped up to Handsworth for a community consultation event.
John Heaven, a council officer, was there live blogging with this wordpress site that he created literally as the event started. John and I also tweeted the event (using different tags – doh) and you can find the streams for the event here and for Handsworth in general here.

If you’re not sure what a hashtag is there is a complicated explication on wikipedia here or put simply its a label than any of us can use on twitter to mark that we are talking about the same subject. When used in a search of twitter the tag then brings together every thing everyone has said about that subject.

It also helps those not in the room watch and join the conversation. So as we twittered about Handsworth from a meeting room in the neighbourhood, observations were added from other parts of the city or country by David Nikkel, Leonardo Morgado, Andy Mabbett, Cyberdoyle and Carrie Bishop.

Carrie even pointed to a new service she has helped create to allow the public to reflect their opinions of police service called MyPolice.org.

So not only has social media been used to creatd a simple and immediate record of the meeting but it has also brought new attention to what is going on and the potential of fresh ideas, input and questioning.

Non of this was planned – John and I just got on with it because we could.

Why was I there? I want to meet some people who could help me set up a very local social media surgery for the area. More on that soon.

I also posted this over at Be Vocal.

A year ago I delivered a presentation at the Local Government Communications annual conference called Naked in a Goldfish Bowl. It was an evangelising rant, a wake up call for an audience that was, to a degree, still getting used to “new media” an unaware of possibilities and implications of social media.  I wanted them to understand that whilst they concentrated their effort son relating to the media they were left “exposed” by the converstions about their work going on on the net.

Last months I was back again and a great deal has changed in that time. As Liz demonstrates with her research, local government  has rushed to understand social web tools.  So this this time I tried something much more modest. A  few examples of what might be working, all on a very modest scale, and a chance for people to talk about them.   These were my slides.

So we’ve made it to a full half a dozen  surgeries, cracking. Scroll down for a report on Surgery no 5.

If you belong to a Birmingham based community or neighbourhood group or charity please Come and join us for the May 13th 2009 Surgery.

When & Where

Next Surgery: Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 drop in anytime between 5.30pm to 7.00pm at Fazeley Studios, 191 Fazeley Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B5 6DR,  link to map. (not BVSC) It’s opposite the bond and a go kart track. Push the large pale blue door with the silver door knob.

To sign up please go here.

Social Media Surgery in Birmingham, from HNM_1977 on Flickr

So what happened last time?  Well, Paul Henderson took the photo above whilst Chris Ivens summed up the point of the surgeries rather neatly:

Q: What is a Social Media Surgery?  A: With an abundance of buzz-words at every tick and turn and an almost daily mention of twitter in the news we try to look at what technologies could really help your organisation and we’re here to explain in plain English what they are. It’s not a sales pitch nor are you obliged to do anything after the meet, I guess it’s the old cliché; ‘Giving Something Back’. If you come and find the session useful, please pass on the word so more people can benefit.

As with most of our surgeries, people went away having set up new blogs or picked up tips about how else they can use the social web to help their project, programme, campaign or neighbourhood.

Cannon Hill People’s Park came along for the second time. Tony Fox said of his first surgery:

Thanks to the brilliant advice and support we got last time it inspired us to put our Net.website up (just), and we’ll be along to discuss building on our Social support!

Tony and his team have now begun making good use of google maps.  Karen and Geoff Caine are the first people who’ve made the move from patient to surgeon, having now made good use of their newish blog for the City Centre Neighbourhood Forum, explored with google maps and begun to encourage people to use services such as the excellent fixmystreet.

It was a good evening for neighbourhood groups.  Ged Hughes of the Acocks Green Neighbourhood Forum came along, her first time at a surgery. She left saying she would love to come again and the following day created a blog for the forum. (Hurrah!).  The first post tells us that their AGM is on May 14th, the day after the next social media surgery. It also pointed me to another local group already using social media, the Acocks Green Focus Group.

Other neighbourhood interest came from the East Yardley Neighbourhood Forum who went away with a head crammed full of ideas and established this starting point for conquering the social web world. Also John Heaven was with us looking for help on how to build on what is already being achieved at Lozells.info.

Laura Creaven  of LUCIA Charity set up this personal blog and has got off to a roaring start. Her take on the surgery:

I have to say it was a fascinating meeting and I’m really glad I went. I’m all a bit keen about what we could achieve with it. So I’m a little excited about going to work tomorrow – sad isn’t it?!

Also with us was Mary from Birmingham Friends of the Earth and Attiya from the Health Exchange who left having set up an experimental personal blog.

The ever brilliant all-volunteer surgeons were Ben Waddington,  Nicky Getgood, Chris Ivens, Pete Ashton, Paul Henderson, Gavin Wray, Daniel Davis, Simon Whitehouse.  Neil Houston – who blogs about food – joined us for his first session and Rob Annable gave some great help on open source mapping. I love the way the people who help at the surgeries vary from month to month, so endless thanks for their help and a particular thank you to Diane from Fazeley Studios who also volunteers her time to keep the place open.   I always forget at least one person when I list these, so apologies in advance and please just tell me and I’ll put it right.

I’ve been asked by MADE to write 200 words for the Birmingham Post. They’re gauging opinion before the Technical and Environmental  Mayor of Copenhagen speaks in Birmingham next week. Klaus Bondam will be at Town Hall on April 6th to share with us how he expects Copenhagen to stays a wonderful place to live.

I was asked about an hour ago and the deadline is tonight.  Here’s a bashed out draft of what I fancy saying. Please encourage, discourage amend etc in the comments. Does anyone have details of that survey that put us the 2nd best place for social media behind, is it Chicago?

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Is this a good place to talk?  It’s not a question we often ask about cities.  After all the whole point of a city is that we can connect, trade and work.  Non of that happens without talk, does it? No it doesn’t, and neither does innovation.

Conversation is about scale, it happens where it’s easy for people to gather in small groups.  The ICC is evidence that we know about audience on a grand scale, but how well do we do small scale gathering?

We need many places where we can meet, deliberately or by accident.  That means a city which is easy to walking but above all has many interesting and modestly scaled places that people want to go.   It means a tolerance of other’s ideas and interests, a city where people also like to listen.

These are partly planning issues and partly cultural issues. How good are our public services at setting the example and being interested in us, how good our our planners and designers at encouraging the interesting?

And of course we don’t just want to talk to ourselves. Birmingham needs take part in a global conversation.  So our schools need open access to the internet and our school teachers and pupils helped to have the confidence to take part in sharing and developing ideas with people across the planet.

Oh and Birmingham doesn’t have free internet access in the city centre, whatever our PR folk may so. So Birmingham Fizz needs to be turned of or turned into a proper free wifi service, so we can finally start hearing each other speak.

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Well?