Tag: Social Media

May’s Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery

February Social Media Surgery

We’re heading towards our next Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery, which will be on Tuesday May 11, 2010 at the studio, 7 Cannon Street, which is just off New Street in central Birmingham.

If you belong to a Birmingham-based community or neighbourhood group or charity please come and join us. You can drop in any time between 5.30pm and 7pm. All local charities and voluntary organisations are invited.

At the last SMS in April we launched the beta version of the new Social Media Surgery website, which is where you can sign up for this event and learn more about other social media surgeries that we’re organising, here.

The surgeries are organised by volunteer members of the Birmingham Bloggers group. Surgeons work as friendly advisors giving informal one-to-one help to show you how to make the best of social media. If you’ve never been to a surgery before then it might be a good idea to look here. And, if you’re interested in finding out a little bit more about what the surgeries are and their history have a look here.

Report: April's Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery


Jon Law (left) and James Robertson at Apri's Central Birmingham SMS

Last night was a really interesting surgery  at thestudio – not least because it saw the first introduction of the Social Media Surgery Plus website.

We were blessed, quite surprisingly, with a large number of people happy to help others, which was great to see. Nick Booth helped the Civic Centre Residents’ group with their efforts to use Scribd with their residents’ blog, which they set up a few surgeries ago.
Karen Caine was helped by Andy Mabbett and learned about using data sets in conjunction with her long-established site, BrumCityCentre.com, for Birmingham City Centre Neighbourhood Forum.
John Newson was helped with his blog by Danny Smith.

Another busy Social Media Surgery

Heidi Blanton very kindly came down to help as a surgeon for the first time and helped Nancy Langfeldt with the blog for the South Birmingham Food Cooperative, which she had set up at a previous surgery. Jon Law of the Balsall Heath Housing Co-operative was helped by James Robertson with his site.

As I indicated earlier a great number of other people came along. And we had more people ready to help than those needing help, including Mary Horesh of Birmingham Friends of the Earth.

What it’s like to go to your first Social Media Surgery

Social Media Surgery February thestudio
The surgeries are informal place to find out about social media

So what if you’ve never been to a social media surgery? You might have a few questions, right? We thought it might be good to answer a few.

So what is a social media surgery?
Social Media Surgeries are just a fun, informal way for people to meet and learn how to use social media for social good.

What is social media?
Social media is a loose term that is applied to a range of tools that use the world wide web to bring people together and communicate – including blogs and social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.

How do social media surgeries work?
Our surgeries consist of patients (the people who come to learn stuff) and surgeons (the people who can answer their questions). We pair surgeons with patients, so that the patients can learn all about how to use social media.

Who should come to social media surgeries?
Our surgeries are for anyone involved in community and voluntary organisations who is looking for new, more effective ways to communicate about the work that they do. Patients don’t need to know about computers. It’s much more important that you are keen to learn and that you have something to say!

Who are social media surgeons?
The surgeons are all terribly nice people who’ve volunteered their time for free to help people. They come from a variety of backgrounds, but they all want other people to be able to make good use of the power that comes from effectively using social media.

What happens when you get to a social media surgery?
Imagine a big coffee morning, except it’s probably in the evening! We pair surgeons with patients after quickly finding out what people would like to learn. You get to sit with a surgeon who can help you with whatever question or issue you’ve got.

What can you expect to get out of a social media surgery?
Well, that’s entirely dependent on what you want to get. Lots of people who come want to set up blogs – simple websites where they can publicise what they are doing. Other people are interested in using Twitter, or other social networking services. Often people come back to learn more and more. Sometimes people who first arrived at surgeries as patients become surgeons themselves.

Is there anything I need to bring?
No. The surgeons have computers, so you don’t need to worry. Of course, if you have a laptop and can carry it easily then please bring it along.

Where can I find out more?
To find out how the surgeries started you can read this post. John Popham, who runs surgeries in Yorkshire, has done a good job of explaining things in this podcast. This site, Podnosh, gives details of new surgeries in Birmingham and elsewhere.

Where are the social media surgeries?

You can mostly fine them here:

http://www.socialmediasurgery.com/