Paradise Circus

Have had a brill idea for a Brum bloggers event for Jan - how about one of Ben Waddington’s fab Type Tours, perhaps on a Saturday afternoon? I’ve mentioned it to him and he is up for doing one just for us, details tbc.

He did mention that winter tours are not very popular. I was thinking that people might like to get out and about a bit in the fresh air come January and work off our xmas indulgences, but thought I’d better canvas some opinion in case everyone would rather leave it til Spring?

Since we’ve always tried to keep the bloggers group fast moving and democratic, we never decide anything untill the last moment. That led to the meets gravitating to the end of the month - as no-one got round to oranising them.

Since the lovely, but sort of overlapping, Birmingham Social Media Cafe is meeting regularily in the last week of the month I think we should go for the second week. This is also good to not get all muddled in December and Jan.

So, in an unexpected rash of planning ahead I think we should set dates in advance and I’m proposing a rolling Mon-Thurs thing second week in the month.

Which would make November’s meet Monday 10th November and December’s  Tuesday 9th.

Maybe we should fix venues too? Any thoughts?

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.

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?

First posted here.

Last year the organised of Blog Action Day invited people to add a post to their blog about the environment, it was a huge success in terms of numbers. Blog Action Day is:

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

This year the theme is poverty. While I’d encourage everyone to sign up and commit to writing a post from their own blog’s angle (just go over to the site and sign up) I’ve talked to a few other people and thought that it might be nice to have a co-ordninated effort from Brum.

Maybe we could pick a local organisation to focus on, get them some google juice, maybe even help them a little with getting into the social web as an organisation.

We’ve got ten days, so shall we have a talk about what we could do? Anyone got an organisation in mind?

Twitter, while lovely, doesn’t really work for picking dates for things that everyone can do. So, prompted by something Dave Briggs tweeted (ah see, it does work, if even by proxy) I’ve set up a poll on a site called Doodle that tries to do if for you:

Pop over and cast your vote.