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.
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:
It’s been quite an eye-opener meeting Marlon Parker. He’s visiting the UK from Cape town in South Africa and has come over here to share some of his work at the charity Impact Direct. He was here with Jon Hickman.
Below is a quick interview with him, where he explains how he began using social media to help gang members and drug addicts tell their stories, initially as a means of educating the wider community about what to expect.
On the face of it this is very similar to the social media surgeries we run here in brum, but just bolder. More like the work that wesharestuff does with young people who’ve recently been in prison.
But Reconstructed (Marlon’s original project name) blossomed from simply helping a few people to a network of people who are using mobile phones and instant messaging to mentor individual and families with a huge range of problems – from drugs addiction to HIV/Aids. Here’s a scrappy bit of video of Marlon showing Chris Unitt how the mobile phone stuff works, using an application put together by the original groups of social media trainees. It’s interesting:
The whole project is built on the some of the core principles that makes social media more than a means of connecting online, but as a means to gain or regain control:
Just get on with. Marlon doesn’t wait for funders to OK something, he gets on with it and hopes the world will catch up.
Concentrate on the useful. When encouraging people to use social media find something that’s useful for them
Get people teaching as much as they learn: the beauty of social media is it’s simplicity. It’s good to get those you are teaching to teach others, that strengthens the network and relationships.
Don’t wait for the kit, use available technology. Instant messaging and mobile phones work in South Africa because that’s what the people Marlon want to reach have.
In the end none of the work that Marlon does, we do or loads of the rest of you do with social media is to do with specific tools or bits of technology. It is essentially about helping people get to know each other well enough to be able to achive things together. To do that it pays to use whatever it takes to connect folk.
This is a project from CAN-UK, who’ve been working from Ladywood for more than a decade. Lozells already has the very fine www.lozells.info and the South Lozells Housing Regeneration area is beginning to use the web to tell the story of how it is progressing, see vision-lozells.org.
A couple of things.
The first is the question of how to integrate these a little better and so seed more local story telling? Perhaps a local social media surgery might help? It is a certainly somehting I’d be interested in.
The other is that our own experience of creating local news with young people in Frankley or Castle Vale (and others) tells us there remains a problem of how we keep things going once the project ends. There’s no lack of enthusiasm from the young people: Comments like
this was the best week ive had at Frankley, and making this podcast was a great experiance!
show there is an appetite for more. It’s rarely an issue of equipment or websites etc, these are now cheap enough and simple enought to leave behind. I think the problem is often who will take the lead/ownership in your absence.
So thoughts? How could we ensure that when the project dosh dries up the storytelling keeps flowing?
So we’ve made it to a full half a dozen surgeries, cracking.Scroll down for a report on Surgery no 5.
If you belong to a Birmingham based community or neighbourhood group or charity please Come and join us for the May 13th 2009 Surgery.
When & Where
Next Surgery: Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 drop in anytime between 5.30pm to 7.00pm at Fazeley Studios, 191 Fazeley Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B5 6DR, link to map. (not BVSC) It’s opposite the bond and a go kart track. Push the large pale blue door with the silver door knob.
Social Media Surgery in Birmingham, from HNM_1977 on Flickr
So what happened last time? Well, Paul Henderson took the photo above whilst Chris Ivens summed up the point of the surgeries rather neatly:
Q: What is a Social Media Surgery? A: With an abundance of buzz-words at every tick and turn and an almost daily mention of twitter in the news we try to look at what technologies could really help your organisation and we’re here to explain in plain English what they are. It’s not a sales pitch nor are you obliged to do anything after the meet, I guess it’s the old cliché; ‘Giving Something Back’. If you come and find the session useful, please pass on the word so more people can benefit.
As with most of our surgeries, people went away having set up new blogs or picked up tips about how else they can use the social web to help their project, programme, campaign or neighbourhood.
Thanks to the brilliant advice and support we got last time it inspired us to put our Net.website up (just), and we’ll be along to discuss building on our Social support!
Tony and his team have now begun making good use of google maps. Karen and Geoff Caine are the first people who’ve made the move from patient to surgeon, having now made good use of their newish blog for the City Centre Neighbourhood Forum, explored with google maps and begun to encourage people to use services such as the excellent fixmystreet.
It was a good evening for neighbourhood groups. Ged Hughes of the Acocks Green Neighbourhood Forum came along, her first time at a surgery. She left saying she would love to come again and the following day created a blog for the forum. (Hurrah!). The first post tells us that their AGM is on May 14th, the day after the next social media surgery. It also pointed me to another local group already using social media, the Acocks Green Focus Group.
Other neighbourhood interest came from the East Yardley Neighbourhood Forum who went away with a head crammed full of ideas and established this starting point for conquering the social web world. Also John Heaven was with us looking for help on how to build on what is already being achieved at Lozells.info.
I have to say it was a fascinating meeting and I’m really glad I went. I’m all a bit keen about what we could achieve with it. So I’m a little excited about going to work tomorrow – sad isn’t it?!
The ever brilliant all-volunteer surgeons were Ben Waddington, Nicky Getgood, Chris Ivens, Pete Ashton, Paul Henderson, Gavin Wray, Daniel Davis, Simon Whitehouse. Neil Houston – who blogs about food – joined us for his first session and Rob Annable gave some great help on open sourcemapping. I love the way the people who help at the surgeries vary from month to month, so endless thanks for their help and a particular thank you to Diane from Fazeley Studios who also volunteers her time to keep the place open. I always forget at least one person when I list these, so apologies in advance and please just tell me and I’ll put it right.
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