Social Media – Page 10

Last week I talked to the Ma Social Media Students at Birmingham City University about social media surgeries for community and voluntary organisations. I was explaining how they emerged from a wide range of activity that was building social capital here in Birmingham.

It’s a story I’ve told before but never really in such a concentrated way – in fact I told it twice in one day. The students were a guinea pig for the talk I was planning to give at Michael Overduin’s Science Capital event on “Networks, Nodes and Knowledge: from local enterprise to global engagement”.

The slides are here but what I’d like to share if what one of Dave Harte’s students made from the talk. Dave shared the whole thing with his overseas students who study the degree remotely. He asked them to:

This week I would like the distance learning students to reflect on the talk by Nick Booth and consider how you might go about setting up a social media surgery in your own town. What would your strategy be? Have a read of Nick Booth’s ‘recipe’ listas a starting point.

Your response should be a short (5-10 mins) video that tells us the following:

What’s your town like? – rich? poor? digitally deprived??

Is there a way to connect to voluntary groups and community organisations (an umbrella organisation of some sort)?

How would you go about connecting to other digitally minded folk to persuade them to help set up a surgery?

What’s stopping you doing this?”

This is a question about social capital and innovation, where is it, how does it happen. Can you nurture or grow both. Dave highlighted one response from Jeff Sage.

http://youtu.be/lvJESMqHRBg

Jeff talked about how a group in London Ontario developed “Emerging Leaders” a network for connecting people. As yu can see they also work with different agencies in the city to help improve their community. Principles that struck a chord with the social media surgery ethos include:

never duplicate efforst of others or create silos and making mistakes should be a goal, rather than something you’re tryng to avoid.

Also very much inline with the work Tessy Britton is doing at social spaces and David Barrie’s Militant Optimists,

One coincidence – Michael Overduin, who asked me to compile the initial story on the surgeries – hails from Ontario.

I’ve just found another blog (courtesy of the Be Birmingham site) set up following last months Birmingham social media surgery for Blog Action Day. (Next surgery November 26th is also supported by the Third sector Assembly and BVSC but continues to use volunteers from the Birmingham Bloggers group. Community groups and voluntary orgs hugely welcome, please click here for details)
Bend it Like Linda can be found here. She writes:

Hi, this is my first experience of blogging so I’m a little nervous about what to write! I live in Perry Common and have been actively involved in my community for 18 years now. I was recently invited to become a “Community Champion” by Be Birmingham which means that I represent the community at a very high level and am able to feed others views and ideas into the strategic partnership

Linda Hines is a remarkable woman (who’s nerves I can understand but they might surprise some) who first became an active citizen when the council told her they would have to demolish her house. I’ve worked with her a number of times, including with residents for regeneration, the Third Sector Assembly, the local strategic partnership and the now defunct b:cen. Whoever gets to coach Linda at our next surgery will have a great time.

If you want to prepare yourself listen to the sometimes tearful story of why she does what she does please listen to this podcast from the Grassroots Channel in July 2006.