Tuesday was the first social media surgery held in Lozells. Below are some of the folk who turned up to learn and share. I spent the first 40 minutes with the Bangladeshi Youth Forum, warming them up to some ideas. Interestingly I don’t think I got very far. For the teenage lads I was talking to, the social web is a place to show off what’s cool.
Thanks very much to John Heaven and Raj Rattu for their energetic help with organising and the great welcome we had at the Lozells Methodist Church. We had a busy time with a huge range of ages and abilities, all dipping their toes into social media – creating blogs and trying out Twitter amongst other things.
John has blogged about it on the Digital Birmingham blog over at Lozells.info,
Mark Bent, who runs the newly-opened Boathouse Café in Handsworth Park, set up a blog: boathousecafe.wordpress.com. Saeed, an educationalist and community activist in Lozells, was the first to bag lozells.wordpress.com. I was pleased to see Sharon Morgan, from Come:unity Arts, who is already a seasoned Twitterer! (Don’t forget about the Handsworth ArtWalk that they are organising.)
I spent the second part of the session Sharon. She had already set up a blog and so we covered some theory, principles of netwroking through the web etc. Then Sharon told me the absolutely brilliant story of how she used twitter to bag a milk float:
Thanks to Dave Harte, Paul Henderson and Simon Whitehouse for their surgical skills – watch out for news of the next lozells social media surgery at BeVocal.org.uk
There’s a collection of milk floats (and similar electric vehicles) at The Transport Museum, Wythall, which might be handy to know, if any advice about maintenance or repairs is needed.
I knew that factoid would come in useful, one day…
Thanks Andy. You have nurtured that knowledge for nigh on half a generation. You have put it where it belongs. It’s work is done, you can now forget you ever knew that.
If only I could.
P.S Nick, you need a Gravatar: http://en.gravatar.com/