Author: Nick Booth

New Birmingham Social Media Surgery June 17th 2009

Nine months on from the very first Birmingham Social Media Surgery and Fazeley Studios hosts another session of free help and advice for Birmingham based voluntary and community groups wanting to get to grips with social media.
Chris Ivens and Mary Horesh at the last socila medis surgery

When & Where

Next Surgery: Wednesday, June 17th, 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.

What are they all about?

Volunteers from the Birmingham bloggers group are offering to show voluntary and community groups in the city how you can make best use of social media. It doesn’t matter if you are the head of communications at a major charity or an active citizen in your neighbourhood, if you’re at all curious come along.

More about what has gone on over the past nine months and what you can expect at a surgery here.

The surgeries have been nominated for the Digital Press Awards People’s Choice along with brilliant local activity like Rhubarb Radio, the Big City Talk site and the 4amproject.

In mean time, if you want to come along or know someone thatcould use the free help get them to sign up here so we have an idea of numbers.

Social Media and Local Government: What’s Working?

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 efforts on relating to the media they were left “exposed” by the conversations about their work going on on the net.

Naked in a Goldfish bowl Podnosh on social media in government

View more presentations from podnosh

Last month 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:

Social Media in Local Government What Works

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Stuff I’ve seen June 1st through June 3rd

These are my links for June 1st through June 3rd:

  • UKCOD, parent charity to mySociety is seeking trustees – We are looking for passionate applicants who are keen to give the often substantial time required, generally more than five hours a month. Demands on time can be unpredictable and lumpy and input from trustees can be required outside of board meetings and occasionally on short notice.
  • Birmingham REP deface John Baskerville’s monument | Pete Ashton – “Although our methods of advertising are environmentally friendly and meant to be non-invasive in this particular situation we made a mistake and got it wrong by placing the design where we did. We are sorry for causing offence and in addition to removing the design we have also made a donation to a Birmingham charity as a way of apologising to the local community.

    Thanks to everyone for bringing this matter to our attention.

    Kristian Jeffrey

    Street Advertising Services”

  • Connected Generation unConference – Eventbrite – Connected Generation is bringing together practitioners, researchers, innovators and policy makers on 11th July 2009 to explore youth engagement in a digital age.
  • 7 Technologies Shaping the Future of Social Media – Interesting list of hardware and ideas which may shape the future of social media
  • Reboot Britain – Nesta: “Instead of more pessimism, can we really look at how we can punch through the gloom? And in particular, how can we take advantage of the radically networked digital world we now live in to help revive our economy, rebuild our democratic structures and improve public services? Reboot Britain is a major new project, which will take a top-to-bottom look at the challenges we face as a country and the new possibilities that – uniquely – this generation has to overcome them.

    • Stuff I’ve seen May 31st and June 1st

    These are my links for May 31st and a bit of  June 1st:

  • Reselect Democracy – “We will double the membership of the local party that we support – but only if they will let us re-select our candidate.”

  • Philip Morton » Archive » The state of subtitling in online media – 7.5 million people in the UK, or about 13% of the population, have some form of hearing impairment which may reduce their ability to enjoy video content.

  • Cui bono? The problem with opening up data at Helpful Technology – open data needs a new breed of data gardeners – not necessarily civil servants, but people who know data, what it means and how to use it, and have a role like the editors of Wikipedia or the mods of a busy forum in keeping it clean and useful for the rest of us.