Tag: Third Sector

Stuff I've missed during my quick holiday

These are my links for August 7th through August 8th:

  • BrandNew – “BrandNew is a friendly, informal gathering in London, UK, for those employed to represent a brand online to get acquainted, chat and share.” Jo Geary, yes she who set up the Birmingham Social Media Cafe, starts something new in London. You can still come home though Jo.
  • Mappa Mercia: Is this the shortest bus journey in Birmingham? – I linked to this simply because it shows the potential benefits of having attentive eyes on the street. I might not want time/money spent putting this right, but volunteer mappers are bound to find things worth changing.
  • ‘Total Place’ in Birmingham « – Total Place is an important idea, one which I first came across many years ago when Dr Dick Atkinson was trying to work out the total public spend for Balsall Heath. I know he shared that passion with both government an opposition. It helps at city level, but I think key decision making will change when there is also some way of making ti work at neighborhood level. To quote from one of the local MP’s: “The BeBirmingham partnership recently estimated that in total around £7.5 billion of public money was invested in the city in 2008-09. That’s a huge amount. Over a billion is spent on education.”
  • Government names successful projects to help young people unlock their talent – Corporate – Communities and Local Government – Have we on just got round to doing this? “The Inspiring Communities initiative is about getting people in communities working together to boost the aspirations and achievements of their young people.”
  • Social Media Provide Untapped Opportunity to Engage High Dollar Non-profit Donors, According to Community Philanthropy 2.0 Research Study : New Communications Review – The social web offers a welcome place for individual philanthropic activity. New research funded by the Columbus Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrates that High dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the new research study, “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Beth Kanter, Society for New Communications Research Fellow Geoff Livingston, and Qui Diaz of CRT/tanaka.

Need a Fairy Blogmother? Fancy being one? Read on…

Since the beginning of the Birmingham Social Media Surgeries lots of people have taken their first steps in blogging and have done fantastically well (here is a list of the ones we know about)

But blogging can be tricky to begin with and after the surge of excitement of getting your first post up, sometimes it’s hard to know what to do next. The good news is that among the Birmingham Bloggers Group there are some kind folks who can help.

So if you’ve been to a surgery and started a blog (which means you’re a Birmingham based community oor voluntary group)  and would like a volunteer ‘Fairy Blogmother’ to give some extra tips and keep an eye on your blog while you get going – all you have to do is:

Write a post on your blog saying you’d like some help and link back to this post

link button(To make a link, copy the address (URL) of this post and write some text that you want to make into the link. If you’re using WordPress, highlight the text and click on the link button) then paste in the address.

You can just ask for help or if you’ve got a question, write about it and someone will try and head over to you blog.

How does it work?

Just by linking to this post (as if by magic) a little trackback will be created and that will let the Fairy blogmothers (and fathers) know that you need some help.  It won’t necessarily appear like magic, but hopefully some Fairy Blog Father or mother  will then leave a comment on your blog post saying they’re willing to help.  With that comment you will get their private e-mail address, which you can use to keep in touch with them.

What is a Fairy Blogmother?

From time to time we get people who would like to help at the social media surgeries saying they can’t make it.  We hope that some might be willing to offer you advice etc by e-mail.   They’ll be doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, so take care not to overburden them.

For more Social Media Help have a look at these guides and if you want help – link here!

For face-to-face help check out details of the next surgeries at Paradise Circus or  BeVocal or the wonderful Digital Brum.

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 1st through July 4th

These are my links for July 1st through July 4th:

  • It's The Ruddy Future – "Hello people! So glad you've pulled your finger out – and used it to click through to our lovely website. Just by being here, you've already taken your first step towards a super sexy, rewarding career in technology.
    Well done you!"
  • Do you care about Wales? Can you code? Fancy helping TheyWorkForYou then? | Quixotic Quisling – "TheyWorkForYou are looking for volunteer coders interested in working on Welsh Assembly data. If that’s you, please join the new discussion list and let’s figure out how to do it."

    If you don’t know TheyWorkForYou then take some time to familiarise yourself. It’s a well established site taking parliamentary data and presenting it in a queryable form. It’s free, loaded with information and very useful indeed.

  • Directgov | Innovate | – "Welcome to Directgov | innovate. We developed our platform to enable conversation with the developer community around innovative use of digital technologies in the government space."

    We blog and encourage people to submit examples of apps developed in the government space using government data or demonstrating innovative use of technologies.

  • CKAN – Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network – Home –
  • Socrata –
  • About Socialbrite.org | Socialbrite – "an affiliation of passionate social media consultants and strategists who believe in collaborating to produce positive change. Through training workshops, reports, case studies, learning materials, blogging and consulting services, we want to make sure that everyone has access to the knowledge and tools that the social media revolution offers."