Birmingham Bloggers have so many pipes have we become craic heads?

Birmingham Bloggers March 2008 from aeiouz on flckr.

I always appear to be the last person to write about any particular meeting of the Birmingham Bloggers but I had no intention of being the last person to write about monday’s meeting twice! For some reason the material in this post disappeared overnight:

Stef's tweet.

So what was I saying? I think I was appreciative of people’s patience with the formal bit of the evening. We had feedback from the brum group who went to Austin, Texas for SXSW. Our first two meetings had been nothing more than a chance to chat. Stopping everyone in full flow to get formal seemed a little odd, especially given how involved and passionate the conversations were. It worked though. Pete Ashton’s post here summarises reaction to what was a very enjoyable evening and also links to a video on the more formal bit from Andrew Dubber and these blog posts:

Stef Lewandowski: Roundup of ideas
Hemminac: “Badges for bloggers builds barriers?!”
Antonio Gould: Short post
Charlotte Carey: “the rather mischievous notes/observations I made”
Antonio Roberts: “I’m very interested in seeing what a coworking space, and the people running it, can offer a communtity who are almost completely unknowledgable when it comes to technology.”
Simon Hammond: “There was a lot of discussion about ‘evangelism’, ‘conversion’ and ’spreading the word’ about social media which struck me as odd language.”

Thank you also to Lloyd Davis for talking to us about the social media club he’s nurturing in London.

It’s called the Tuttle Club, a reference to the De Niro character in the movie Brazil – a guerrilla plumber who’s able to make the system work with simple, unbureaucratic applications of effort.

Different forms of what you might call Tuttleware have sprung up from the folk of the Birmingham bloggers group. Or as Pete puts it:
Paul Bradshaw built a Birmingham Bloggers Aggregator and a Birmingham Twitterers feed.
Lloyd reminds us in the comments of the Coworking Birmingham wiki that was set up a while back. It’s there for the using.
Pete Lewis has started a Brum Planet which appears to be a massive stream of stuff being produced online in Birmingham. Something for ambient browsing.
Mark Steadman brings us Blogging Brum: a group blog for Birmingham.

Charlotte mentioned that as a group we have a very high proportion of white men. Her research at BCU is looking at why women and people from ethnic minorities rarely appear at the head of the high value, high growth businesses in the digital and media sector. Any thoughts on how Birmingham bloggers meetings, events can involve a wider range of people please share them.

I don’t think that was all I said in the original post – but I need to get on with some editing. Thank you to Al at Rooty Frooty for staying open for us. Thanks for the comments so far (which is more than you can usually says before you’ve finished a blog post) and I might leave the last tweet to you:

sixball birmingham bloggers tweet

6 comments

  1. Jon Bounds says:

    Of course “we” are likely to look for technical solutions to social issues – a fix for getting these “ideas” out in to the public domain.

    Jules and I have had a few ideas about making it seem both less “exclusive” and less scary to other people – which mainly involve:

    loads more events – so people don’t feel they’re missing something if they miss one

    different times of day / days of the week – to accommodate people with jobs/family commitments

    different locations, both geo-locations (spread it round – not just digbeth/moseley but Perry Barr, Acock’s Green – anywhere) and types. Parks, places that aren’t pubs, such a pity that the courtyard of the Mac won’t be available.

  2. Nick Booth says:

    I hope I haven\’t got the tone wrong on this. I found myself feeling a touch defensive about Charlotte\’s comments – but with no justification. I wasn\’t being got it.
    I think from the beginning I knew I would most enjoy the bloggers group if we ran it collaboratively – and that is also our most likely route to widening involvement.

  3. Def nothing personal – I realised soon after that I have as much responsibility as the next person to help widen participation.

    But can I ask? was there a posting here? for some reason I can just see the comments – but cant see what they’re responding to?

    However I also think a variety of events building a little critical mass would be good, but all with a similar remit – to enhance bham online innovation and collaboration or something.

    Cheers
    Charlotte

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