Tag: Social Media Surgery

Australian local council starts social media surgeries

From Mosman Librarys superb flickr feed. Click the image to see the source.
From Mosman Library's superb flickr feed. Click the image to see the source.

I’m delighted, nay giddy,  to see that Mosman Council in Sydney, Australia, is starting social media surgeries at their library. It’s also wonderful to they consider it part of delivering their community engagement strategy.

I’ll quote a bit from the blog of Mosman Library:

Birmingham’s social media surgeries are the model we’re working off. It’s an opportunity for neighbourhoods, community groups and local residents to help each other communicate, organise and just do things online.

Mosman Library would like to facilitate this sharing of information and experience at a local level. It’s also a goal of Mosman Council’s Community Engagement Strategy.

Right now we’re looking for ‘social media champions’ – people who are already talking, sharing and doing stuff online, and who might like to drop in and work with those interested in setting up a blog, podcast or social network for their community or group.

The structure is informal – no presentations or talks, just small group or one-on-one discussion with an emphasis on practical examples and advice.

We’ll host the first few meetups in the Library, where we have a meeting room, WiFi and PCs with internet access. It’s likely to be on a Thursday evening, 6-8pm. (Would mornings be better?)

It’s interesting that the surgeries were written into the council’s community engagement strategy (and not it’s not a pdf, it’s a web page).  This extract  is well worth sharing:

Acknowledge and mentor those community members who are active participants on-line or who wish to be.

Hold workshops for Councillors to encourage their use of blogs and other social media to communicate and converse with the community.

Hold social media workshops at Mosman Library to promote Council’s on-line engagement and give practical support for community participation.

Hold a regular brainstorming session along the lines of IBM’s Innovation Jam or the Guardian’s Hack Day to generate ideas and foster creative thinking.

Make information resources, wherever possible, available under an open content licence, specifically a Creative Commons Australia licence, to promote the use and dissemination of Council’s materials while retaining Council’s rights of authorship.

Continue collaborative projects on-line that allow the community to document and share its local knowledge while also participating in other collaborative spaces, such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap (an open data map repository).

Ensure that priority is given to open data formats to allow cost-effective and efficient use of that information by other Council systems as well as external applications and users. When commissioning or upgrading data systems and services, Council should prioritise the building of an application programming interface (API) to that information.

Mosman Library also keep this fantastic flickr account which shows what a huge range of vibrant stuff happens there.

The people involved in this also write at www.stapisi.com,   twitter.com/lindach and libraryfuture.wordpress.com

Now, how do I get to visit one of those surgeries?

Using twitter to source a milk float – things you learn at social media surgeries

Tuesday was the first  social media surgery held in Lozells.  Below are some of the folk who turned up to learn and share.  I spent the first 40 minutes with the Bangladeshi Youth Forum, warming them up to some ideas. Interestingly I don’t think I got very far.  For the teenage lads I was talking to,  the social web is a place to show off what’s cool.

Thanks very much to John Heaven and Raj Rattu for their energetic help with organising and the great welcome we had at the Lozells Methodist Church.  We had a busy time with a huge range of ages and abilities, all dipping their toes into social media – creating blogs and trying out Twitter amongst other things.

John has blogged about it on the Digital Birmingham blog over at Lozells.info,

Mark Bent, who runs the newly-opened Boathouse Café in Handsworth Park, set up a blog: boathousecafe.wordpress.com. Saeed, an educationalist and community activist in Lozells, was the first to bag lozells.wordpress.com. I was pleased to see Sharon Morgan, from Come:unity Arts, who is already a seasoned Twitterer! (Don’t forget about the Handsworth ArtWalk that they are organising.)

I spent the second part of the session Sharon.  She had already set up a blog and so we covered some theory, principles of netwroking through the web etc.  Then Sharon told me the absolutely brilliant story of how she used twitter to bag a milk float:

Thanks to Dave Harte, Paul Henderson and Simon Whitehouse for their surgical skills – watch out for news of the next lozells social media surgery at BeVocal.org.uk

Stuff I've seen July 10th through July 12th

These are my links for July 10th through July 12th:

  • Intel Social Media Guidelines – Genuinely excellent guidelines for intel staffers on getting involved with social media.
  • Not what ships are for at Helpful Technology – "one of the local authority participants contributed a quote which struck a deep chord: “Ships are ’safe’ in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are for” – great spot from Steph
    Amen to that. Here’s to seafaring!
  • Google – Local Government – This site is your guide to the tools and best practices your council can adopt to reach, communicate and engage with your community.
  • Conversation with communities – A councillor’s guide to social media – Councillors, as local leaders, will have a key role in these changes if they take that opportunity. Enhancing local democracy through greater transparency and providing both a greater voice and a greater responsibility for citizens in setting priorities and delivering public services means that the nature of a representative democracy may change. But the need for elected officials does not go away and there are tremendous opportunities local leaders to use social media to engage with a wider range of people in a powerful, focused way.
  • Kebablog » Blog Archive » Surgery anyone? – Steve's experience of the Social Media Surgery in Acocks Green: "2 ladies (bec and mandy? – I may have asked the names, but in the excitement forgot!) came in and asked about setting up a blog, Nick pointed them in my direction and I was happy to help out."
  • I couldn’t possibly comment: An open, digital Iraq inquiry – "The inquiry should assume that interesting things will be done with the information they publish off their website by independents." A really thorough explanation from Will Perrin about how the UK Government Iraq Enquiry could use the web and meta data in important ways.

Please vote for your favourite piece of Brum Digital Civic Activism

As the awards site itself says:

Who do you think should win the first ever Midlands Media Awards People’s Choice Award?

This award will recognise an individual or group that has used social media tools to make a difference.

The four candidates are the Brum Bloggers Social Media Surgeries,  the Big City Talk site, the 4am Project (in the lead as I write) and the Black Country Facebook Group.  Other things could have been nominated, but I think these were the only four submitted (I nominated the surgeries).

Whatever you do,  please vote.  The Birmingham Press Club and Raffaela Goodby at Birmingham City Council have taken the time to notice interesting digital/civic things are happening in Birmingham.  It’s worth a moment to acknowledge that and get involved.

Use  this link to support the one you prefer.