Nigh on a year ago Kate Cooper walked into a social media surgery here in Birmingham and started talking about a book she was going to publish.
She had, she told me, persuaded 80 or so scientists from the West Midlands to write a few hundred words in response to the question “what makes you optimistic?” Jenny Uglow (the historian who wrote the brilliant story of the Lunar Society: The Lunar Men) had agreed to write the foreword.
At the time I thought oh yeh… Read more
These are my links for August 4th through August 19th:
We’re now looking forward to the next Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery, which will be at the Studio in Central Birmingham on Tuesday June 8 between 5.30pm and 7pm. The address is 7 Cannon Street, Birmingham, West Midlands B2 5EP.
If you’re from a Birmingham-based voluntary or community group and would like to receive some friendly advice on using social media, then you can sign up for the surgery by following this link to the Social Media Surgery Plus site.
There’ll be another surgery in July and then we’re likely to take a break in August, before being back in September. I’ll give you a dates as soon as possible.
If you’re new to the Central Birmingham surgeries then you can find out a bit more about them by looking at this link. And, if you’ve never been to a social media surgery before, it might be worth reading this blog post, which attempts to explain what there all about.
It’s worth reiterating our earlier thanks to the folk at thestudio for allowing us to use their restaurant area for free. The staff have been brilliant – always very helpful and quite patient with our sometimes slightly tardy departures from the building. Hopefully the weather will be good on the 8th and we’ll be able to enjoy the terrace, too.
Although our last surgery was pretty quiet, there were some really interesting outcomes. In particular, it was heartening to see Emma Neil and Hannah Severn, who are both volunteers at the Birmingham Conservation Trust. I’ve written a little about the last surgery, which also includes a video interview with Emma and Hannah where they talk about their experiences.
It was also great to see a number of our brilliant surgeons down, including Gavin Wray, Mary Horesh of Friends of the Earth, Simon Gray, and Heidi Blanton. The surgeries wouldn’t be able to work if it wasn’t for members of the Birmingham Bloggers group, like the people I’ve mentioned above. They volunteer their time absolutely for free and have helped dozens of people.
It’s been manic recently, so I’ve not had the time I really need to talk about our first social media surgery at Balsall Heath. But, now I’ve confirmed that the next surgery – again at the Balsall Heath Forum – will be on June 2 , I thought it was a good time to look at what was a fascinating and quite exciting first outing for the newest Podnosh-run event.
Quite a few Balsall Heathers (or should that be Balsall Heathans?) have been down in one capacity or another to the Central Birmingham Social Media Surgeries in the past, so it was good to see a few familiar faces coming to the Balsall Heath surgery.
Simon Whitehouse was in attendance, helping Nisha Virdi. And John Newson was also down, getting some assistance with his blog for Balsall Heath Is Our Planet from Dan Davies (who, as it happens, also lives very nearby – even if he thinks he’s in Moseley!)
But there were also many new faces who managed to make it down, including – of course – those working at the forum themselves. I spent some time helping Abdullah Rehman and Nowrah Abdul to set up a blog for the forum, which it’s nice to see they’ve been using in the week or so since the event.
Nick Booth was able to help Zainab and Dalal from the Yemeni Women and Children’s Society – and even set up this quick blog post with them on the day. And it was particularly exciting to see Zulfiqar Ali, of the Pakistani Youth Council. Zulfiqar is really good at using online tools already, but he got some help with using RSS feeds and Yahoo Pipes, which hopefully will be very helpful with some of the interesting things he’s doing.
So, all in all, lots of interesting things happened and I’m really looking forward to the next event. Hope you can make it!
To sign up to the next event, on June 2, please visit the Social Media Surgery Plus site.