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Andy Mabbett, of the Birmingham Bloggers group, has been working on this since we visited the show on Tuesday. Nice job Andy.
Author: Nick Booth
Birmingham Bloggers met.
Why did I enjoy last night’s bloggers’ meet (ask me about the apostrophe) more than any other? It was partly because we did more than sit in a pub, partly because we did sit in pub and partly because new people came. However I think it was principally because the bloggers meetings are increasingly ripe with opportunity and optimism.
Jo Geary talked to the folk in the early part of the evening about Friday’s Birmingham Social Media Cafe, (time and venue here). For those who are new to the idea it’s inspired by the the principles and ambitions of the Tuttle Club in London, established by Lloyd Davis as a place/occassion where those professionally involved in social media can meet, share skills, knowledge, contacts, opportunities, invent and reinvent. I’m going to break my tuttle duck a week on Friday.
So Birmingham will tuttle thanks to Jo’s organisation and some coffee sponsorship from the Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves. Why this excites me is who it brings to the city. Andy Dickinson is heading down from Lancaster to share his knowledge of video, it will be my first chance to meet Christian Payne, Paul Henderson is coming from Rural Net, Dave Briggs and I’m told, I think, Ewan McIntosh. (correction Ewan Spence – Mr M is of course also handsomely welcome.) Obviously lots of other lovely people will be here too.
The evening also gave me a chance to catch up with Stuart Parker who has written here the blog post I would have written Had I said anything on this site about government plans to spend £300 million of laptops and broadband for the poorest. (For some of my thoughts see here and here.)Steve Cooper came for the first time and thought we were pretty friendly but expressed soemthing I’ve heard a few times:
Bit difficult to really break into a group, still was my first time as an attendee but hopefully will get round to speak to more at the next one.
Steve also took some top photos of All the People in All The World, the Stan’s Cafe show which very kindly played host to us for our first hour or so. Jon Bounds and I provided them with www.thericeshow.com, a simple aggregator site for online reactions to the who. They added the statistic in the image above whilst we were there.
Other people it was good to see coming along were Brian Simpson and Simon Howes plus David Louis who blogs to support his product design business and is very passionate about Jewellery Quarter heritage. There were two people that bounder tells me were from www.diceproductions.co.uk, if you read this please remind me of your names! Other first timers who’s names or blogs I didn’t recall please let me know – praps leave a message.
I think the effort to do more than just go to a pub led to some who’d been reluctant to come, or come back showing more interest. I didn’t see either Bobbie Gardner or Kate Chapman, but I was delighted that they had said they would try and make it.
Any more ideas for events where we might meet very welcome. I know I haven’t mentioned everyone, so apologies and thanks all for such an enjoyable evening and my eternal gratitude to Jules for depositing me at my front door.
Update: I’ve just found Ben’s blog, he who merged three meets into one. It was a pleasure to meet you.
Stuff I've perused: September 22nd 2008.
“Its current work is witty, at times over-whelming and always thought-provoking. It is well worth going out of your way to see it. ” see also other online feedback www.thericeshow.com
“Social media outreach in the political space is more measurable than it might seem at first glance, since you should have concrete goals to hold it up to (and if you don’t have concrete goals, you probably ought to start asking why you’re in this business at all!). It may not always be possible to pin down the exact results of a given outreach effort, but proxy measurements should let you compare the relative usefulness of different strategies, at the very least. Just remember, don’t focus on the measurable and forget about what you’re actually trying to get done.”
Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008 – Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?* Two-thirds are male* 50% are 18-34
* More affluent and educated than the general population
* 70% have college degrees
* Four in ten have an annual household income of $75K+
* One in four have an annual household income of $100K+
* 44% are parents” More to come but, interesting stuff (much more at the link) about bloggers.
* More affluent and educated than the general population
* 70% have college degrees
* Four in ten have an annual household income of $75K+
* One in four have an annual household income of $100K+
* 44% are parents” More to come but, interesting stuff (much more at the link) about bloggers.
Hat tip Beth Kanter
Stans Cafe – The Rice Show! « My Fierce Placement…More on my obsession with the rice show, this time Gemma on a jaunt to Of All The People in All The World.
““It is important that Digbeth is not over- planned, otherwise it will suffocate”” Clive Dutton, Hat tips Dave Harte and Ncky Getgood.
“we are certainly shifting our activity away from the more overtly top-down courses towards initiatives – either face-to-face or online – based around knowledge-sharing.”
Links through to a very useful Guardian podcast interview with Ewan McIntosh about 4IP – includes how this is about matching tools to content and it will be good for businesses who want to “make trouble”.
The web team at the Houses of Parliament (indeed the mother of all…) switch the switch on their internal blog to make it available to us all. Please go and say hai….
Good Gossip
I’ve long been interested in the positive power of gossip to strengthen networks and share social mores. The report “Communications: some lessons from the New Deal for Communities programme” concludes that:
The development of positive word of mouth networks provides a strong
base of awareness and a means of identifying and addressing problems.
Word of mouth communication between residents is one of, if not
the most effective means of communication and encouraging resident
engagement.
– Some word of mouth communication will occur naturally as the
programme develops however there is a need to facilitate its progress
by encouraging all residents to share their experiences with their friendsand by training a group of dedicated residents to act as ‘ambassadors’ –
people who will get messages out to the community, answer questions
and quash rumours.
And also cautions:
For all the importance of word of mouth communication, local activists
with negative opinions can be very damaging – word of mouth
communication can also be negative.
– Communication strategies need to be prepared to counter negative
‘word of mouth’ – by picking up local intelligence and ensuring local
champions counter unfair negative commentary.
Besides what the report says about press relations the lessons seem to be that good comms means building good relationships with the right people, putting the right knowledge into the right networks. That is also largely the approach to take if you want to succeed on the social web.