At the moment we are in the middle of a project working with the South Birmingham Safety Partnership. This involves running social media surgeries across communities in South Birmingham to improve civic conversations in those areas, get the communities and local partners talking to each other talking to each and getting their news online and hopefully by doing so positively changing their perceptions of safety.
Yesterday we had our second session in the Kings Norton. Jo Burrows, senior youth worker at the Three Estates Youth Project came along. Jo, by her own admission was a complete novice when it came to social media – she didn’t trust it – and this came through her lack of understanding of the tools that were available. After just one Social Media Surgery with us we managed to change some of those misgivings and set her up with her own blog for the Project. Here’s what she had to say :
Over the last 2 days the Podnosh team hosted 24 science communicators from across Europe. They were in Birmingham as part of the Open Places project which is looking at bringing together 69 science communication institutions and other stakeholders in European cities to partner with local policy makers to tackle socio-economic issues such as employment; education; climate change and poverty from a scientific perspective.We met with them to discuss social media and the ways in which it can be useful to them in their workplaces or on this and other specific projects.
We looked at different platforms such as blogs, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. Gave presentations on networking, sharing and listening and had brilliant guest speakers Shane McCraken of (more…)
How do scientists let us know what they’re up to? More importantly, perhaps how do they help us understand what they’re doing? The communication of science is crucial… and next week Podnosh will be working with science communicators from all over Europe to explore how social media can play a role in their work.
It’s not the first time we’ve done this. We thoroughly enjoyed social reporting for a Europe wide project on communicating science early in 2011. We were supporting Kate Cooper at The New Optimists and our work helped flush out enough detail in one conference to create a final conference report (essentially) on the day (radically speeding up how these things often happen)
It’s all part of a European project, ‘PLACES’ and as well as finding out about projects from other parts of Europe we’ll be looking at two very successful projects that we know about – Shane McCracken from Gallomanor will be giving the background to ‘I’m a Scientist Get Me Out of Here…’ and the (again) Kate Cooper’s New Optimists is a great example of how social media can help to grow a project.
Any science projects online that we should be looking at? Tell us about the ones that have caught your eye.
This morning we started our work with Birmingham Settlement – one of the city’s oldest charites with a track record that spans two century. They do tricky and incredibly supportive work working with the most disadvantaged people in their neighbourhood, the wider city and increasingly the wider world! As one of them put it – they make life better for Brummies.
We worked them through our social media awareness session – the one designed to help people get their heads in the right place, to understand the link between what they do and what we know.
Margaret Farrell is in charge of the business of outreach for Birmingham Settlement’s money advice services. She confessed that all this digital stuff is outside her experience – then at the end of a mornings worked told me this
This time our work is funded through the support Birmingham City Council gives to Neighbourhood Forums in the city . The details are below and you can download them here. If you want to come contact: (more…)
The aim was to introduce social reporting – quick and simple ways of sharing what’s going on around you with other people, using social media tools. Sharing information; getting a message across.
A social reporter might shoot a simple video about their neighbourhood. She might make notes at a meeting or conference and share notes with other people online while the event is taking place.
This post rounds up discussion and links created on the day.
It's The Ruddy Future – "Hello people! So glad you've pulled your finger out – and used it to click through to our lovely website. Just by being here, you've already taken your first step towards a super sexy, rewarding career in technology.
Well done you!"
If you don’t know TheyWorkForYou then take some time to familiarise yourself. It’s a well established site taking parliamentary data and presenting it in a queryable form. It’s free, loaded with information and very useful indeed.
Directgov | Innovate | – "Welcome to Directgov | innovate. We developed our platform to enable conversation with the developer community around innovative use of digital technologies in the government space."
We blog and encourage people to submit examples of apps developed in the government space using government data or demonstrating innovative use of technologies.
About Socialbrite.org | Socialbrite – "an affiliation of passionate social media consultants and strategists who believe in collaborating to produce positive change. Through training workshops, reports, case studies, learning materials, blogging and consulting services, we want to make sure that everyone has access to the knowledge and tools that the social media revolution offers."
