Tag: brumbloggers

Who’s coming to the Birmingham Social Media Surgery, BAD08

Pete Ashton stumbles across a 'shelter' for homeless people in Birmingham

I thought is was time to take stock, not least to ensure sufficient tea and coffee for the social media surgery which us Birmingham bloggy folk are organising (with BVSC) to support voluntary and community groups in the city on Blog Action Day.

If you want to know how social media can help you campaign, garner support, raise funds, change the world then please sign up through this link (Wednesday, October 15th 2008, BVSC (map) 5.30pm to 7.30 pm). Come when you can for some free, friendly, one to one support.

Sign up here:

https://birminghamblogactionday2008.eventbrite.com/

The Social Media Surgeons:

Coming from Somerset we have Steve Bridger, once of The Guardian website and Oxfam now a specialist in online fund raising and community management. I first met Steve through shared involvement with the NCVO ICT Foresight project.  Also getting here by train, this time from Sheffield, is Paul Webster. I think I first met Paul at the UKGOVBarcamp.   Paul travels endlessly, bringing vol orgs and their suport organisations up to speed with how IT and the web can help them.

Stef Lewandowksi will be there, sharing his enormous experience of producing blog based websites which achieve things, from webby award winning sites to those that build networks around curious human ideas, Stef builds some of the most elegant pages you can find on the web. He’s also offering:

half a day of my time to produce from scratch a blog-based website for one charitable organisation that works with disadvantaged or at risk kids, at no charge.

This is a brilliant offer. Stef can achieve a great deal in half a day if he’s working with an organisation that’s keen to get on with things.

Pete Ashton – who’s the first person I know to come up with the idea of a social media surgery – will also be there to help. One of the countries first professional bloggers, Pete has won national awards and helped the cities creative community burst into online collaboration and conversation through establishing Created in Birmingham. That leads me on  to another local. Chris Unitt has run Created in Birmingham for the last 6 months or so and is a very talented blogger who’s also applied his professional energies to initiatives such as cQuestrate, an ambitious project to develop an open source solution to climate change.

Others possibly/hopefully coming who can help with everything from how to set up a blog to how to run a festival (should that help reduce poverty) are Anthony Herron, Dave Briggs, Nicky Getgood and Antonio Roberts. (Update:  Joanna Geary – a Birmingham Post journalist who’s helping introduce social media to newspapers, is also hoping to come).
I (Nick Booth) will also be there with my background in BBC journalism then community podcasting and various work with local government, schools and community groups on using social media as a tool for empowerment.

Jon Bounds and Julia Gilbert, both of whom have energetically inspired and worked on this idea, can’t make Wednesday, but just thought I’d day hello and thank you.

Social Media Patients(!?):

So far I’ve had about 15 people say they’re hoping to come from various groups, some with url, some without names!  Among them are Gerry Moynihan of the Bordesley Green Neighbourhood Forum. I’ve worked with Gerry before to make this film and podcast for a European wide group of active citizens called R4R.  I spoke to Claire Rigby of Fairbridge earlier this week and if she can’t make it she means to encourage someone else to com along.  Her charity supports young people to pull themselves out of destructive patterns, often involving drugs.
Stuart Parker is establishing a social enterprise to use the power of the social web to help people who foundered in education. I’m sure he’ll be teaching and learning.
Ally Sultana works with women in Balsall Heath and has been developing a podcast project – she’s already explored some social media.  Audrey Miller helped create the Jubilee Debt campaign which put so much pressure on the 1998 Birmingham G8 to cancel debt to Africa. Serena Malone works with Rural net, and again is someone who may be able to teach as much as she learns.

Then there’s Gary Smith from firstlightmedia and also working with young people, Colin Kerrigan of the charity Stage 2.  Stephen Brook is coming along from another educational charity excell3.

Linda Hines from the Witton Lodge Community Association in Perry Common is coming. She’s also a community champion for Be Birmingham (I recently worked with Be Birmingham on simple podcasts and material for their youtube channel and flickr.)  Other community champions might join us, as might community groups who’ve worked with Groundwork in Birmingham and members of the Third Sector Assembly.

If you’re coming and I haven’t mentioned you please use the comments section to say hello. For some that will be familiar – for others commenting on this blog post might be your first step in social media!—

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Update. Beside the bloggers some key organisations have also offerred their support with links and publicity, including Digital Birmingham,  BVSC who’s providing us with space and drinks and NAVCA.

Blog Action Day in Birmingham – a social media surgery for voluntary orgs.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty

Over here Jon Bounds has reminded us of our collective Birmingham blogger wish to mark Blog Action day next week in some shared way. When Tom Watson asked us about this a while back there was plenty of enthusiastic muttering.

The theme for blog action day 2008 is poverty, considered in it’s widest sense. So rather than simply blog, we’re arranging to do something more practical:  run a social media surgery for voluntary and community groups in Birmingham. Many of these deal directly with poverty in the city, I think all of them contribute in some way to creating life opportunities or alleviating suffering or disadvantage.

The aim is simply to get a group of volunteer social media savvy people together who can give one to one advice on which bits of the social media palette might be able to help these groups accomplish more.

Perhaps we might set up some blogs, get people using video or images in a new way, help them map problems?  Who knows? I’m quite certain everyone who takes part will learn something. (I’m wondering if this will help me imagine what a digital mentor might do.

Half an hour ago Candy Passmore at BVSC  agreed to provide a room at their place (138 Digbeth, B5 6DR, map). The proposal fits very closely with their attempts to encourage the voluntary sector to find new ways to communicate, lobby and network. The offer also comes with wifi and some food between 5.30 and 9  on the evening of Wednesday 15th October 2008. Once we’ve got something written she will also pass the invitation onto their networks within the city.

So who fancies helping and who knows any community or voluntary groups who might like to come?

Update: It’s on.
Birmingham Voluntary Services Council love the idea and are happy to help us with space at their place, tea coffee and perhaps a morsel for those who want to stave off their tea time pangs. time is 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm Wednesday 15th October 2008.

Sign up here: https://birminghamblogactionday2008.eventbrite.com/  any problems with that don’t give up – leave a comment below or call me on 0777 909 5692.  If you want to find out about this stuff we want you there!

Birmingham Bloggers met.

Birmingham Bloggers at thericeshow

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.