Paradise Circus

The July Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery will be on Thursday July 15. It’s back at the usual venue, the Studio, which is at 7 Cannon Street, off New Street. The postcode is B2 5EP.

The surgery will take place at the usual times – from 5.30pm to 7pm – and all voluntary and community groups are welcome.

You can sign up for the surgery by following this link.

The surgeries are run by volunteers from the Birmingham Bloggers’ group and are completely free events to teach voluntary and community groups about the social web and how it can help the work that they do.
If you want to find out more about the surgeries, please have a look here.

We’re now looking forward to the next Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery, which will be at the Studio in Central Birmingham on Tuesday June 8 between 5.30 and 7pm. The address is 7 Cannon Street, Birmingham, West Midlands B2 5EP.

If you’re from a Birmingham-based voluntary or community group and would like to receive some friendly advice on using social media, then you can sign up for the surgery by following this link to the Social Media Surgery Plus site.

There’ll be another surgery in July and then we’re likely to take a break in August, before being back in September. I’ll give you a dates as soon as possible.

Ooops. I’ve just spotted that the March Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery is going to clash with the March Birmingham Bloggers’ meet. They are both on March 9. Apologies for the clash. As plenty of people will know the surgeries are the result of the Birmingham Bloggers – and a good number of the surgeons are involved in both events – so we try to make sure that they don’t clash.

However, it isn’t the end of the world. While the surgeries start at 5.30pm and the Birmingham Bloggers’ meet up is at 6pm, they’ll be pretty close to each other (see the map) so if people want to pop down to the surgery first – at thestudio, in Cannon Street, off New Street – then it shouldn’t be too difficult to get yourself down to the Birmingham Bloggers meet at The Solomon Cutler, Broad Street – Birmingham, UK, B1 2DS. And the social media surgeries are a kind of ‘drop in when you want’ affair, so there’s no pressure to turn up and leave on the dot.
View Birmingham Bloggers and Social Media Surgery in a larger map

The next CENTRAL Birmingham Social Media Surgery will take place on Thursday 11 February from 5.30-7pm at thestudio.

Thestudio is bang in the middle of the city centre – situated on 7 Cannon Street, B5 5EP. To get to Cannon Street take a right turn off New Street after H&M. You can see the location on their map here.

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Stuffed full of mince pies and still dozy from the mulled wine? Time to get back into action and put your serous Social Media cap on for 2010. We took a break in December, and instead held a Social Media Surgery Social (phew!) for all those who had attended or helped at Birmingham surgeries in the year. Now we’re back to work full of ideas for how we can use the web to aid what we do. So schedule in the January surgery to your diaries now.

The next CENTRAL Birmingham Social Media Surgery will take place on Wednesday 20 January from 5.30-7pm at our new venue – thestudio.

We moved venues from Fazeley Studios in Digbeth (above) to thestudio on Cannon Street because we found during the winter months people were reluctant to make the dark evening walk to Fazeley street. Thestudio is bang in the middle of the city centre (see directions below) and couldn’t be easier to get to.

Situated on 7 Cannon Street, B5 5EP. To get to Cannon Street take a right turn off New Street after H&M. You can see the location on their map here.

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No agenda, other than to have fun, have interesting conversation with interesting people. We’re not that fussed if you “blog”, or “twitter” or anything, it’s just nice to hang out with people that you don’t have to explain “the Internet’ to once in a while.

Please come along and meet people “off of the web”, feel free to bring some new people- we’re not a clique, bring some money for your drinks — there’s no agenda, no sponsors and nothing except friendly chat. (And some of the nicest loos in Birmingham)

Time: from 6pm till chucking out time.

For more information about Bluu Bar go here. (Be sure to click on Birmingham, wouldn’t want you ending up somewhere else completely). EDIT: bluu is closed. We’re In après next door.

One for Ben to chalk up for failcamp

Map to the venue.

Just a quick post on returning home from the second free Social Media Surgery that we held for Birmingham’s voluntary organisations at the BVSC in Digbeth. As with the first event, tonight’s event was very popular and we hope everyone went home with some practical ideas and the confidence to try them out. We look forward to online activity from organisations including City Centre Neighbourhood Forum, Perry Barr Multifaith Network, the Get Walking Keep Walking project and Digbeth Trust to name but a few.

I’m sure more details will emerge over the next few days about what was achieved (please link to any further info in the comments), but for now, I’d like to say thanks to the following ‘surgeons’ for giving up their free time to offer advice to some worthy local voluntary organisations:

• Robert Annable
• Pete Ashton
• Nick Booth
• Jon Bounds
• Joanna Geary
• Nicky Getgood
• Stef Lewandowski
• John Mostyn
• Henry Mostyn
• Phil Oakley
• Stuart Parker
• Antonio Roberts
• Chris Unitt
• Ben Whitehouse
• Gavin Wray

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.

Yesterday many in the Birmingham digerati were in attendance at the Birmingham Post‘s Big Debate on the topic Digital: Power or Powerless? The event was live-blogged by Pete Ashton, & the idea was those of us who were in the hall would also live twitter it.

An idea which started off grand & all – until disaster struck when the wifi access which had been especially arranged for us in the hall went down, with the room being a faraday cage blocking out all mobile phone signals as well.

I decided it seemed to make sense to continue taking notes on my phone (until it’s battery gave out, but that’s another story…) of what I would have been twittering had it been available, & it would seem a shame to lose that, so here they are below. The live tweets up until that point (& also the tweets from outside the hall) are aggregated at Twemes amongst other sites.

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chris cook – online musician

if you’re a creative (artist, musician, whatever) using the web to promote yourself, to showcase your work – at what point do you stop giving it away for free & start charging for it ?

(related question – if you’re a band selling singles in the traditional way, selling 10,000 copies of your record has big kudos; but 10,000 plays on myspace doesn’t give the same kudos. why not ? at what point will it carry the same kudos ?)

joanna geary – digital journalist

birmingham has had a particularly high uptake of mobile interweb use.

what is the role of the regional press in the new world where people can get their local news more efficiently from the web 2.0 ?

blogs provide us with untrustworthy content – but then what makes partisan newspaper journalism any more trustworthy ?

it seems odd hearing joanna describe the created in birmingham crowd as ‘them’ – i very much consider her to be one of ‘us’ !

doug williams – bt

every time we get a new distribution channel, we get a new kind of story to tell due to the new way of telling the story. back in the days of the jester telling the story from his head & the oral tradition, he would would change the story in reaction to the reactions of the audience. theatres & books ossified – fixed – the story; the ‘new interactive media’ is actually a bit like a return to the early days, though still to all intents & purposes a lot of new media storytellling is just old media wearing a new shirt.

on the other hand, it’s all very well getting excited by the ability of the audience to shape the narrative – but i’m the audience, i’m paying the writer ect to entertain me, i want to hear the story *they’re* telling, not being expected to write the story for them !

anthony rose – head of digital media & tech, & heading the iplayer project

power is all about choice – if you ohave more choice, you have more power

i’m getting irritated at the constant stream of cynicism about the multiplicity of online content meaning that it’s all crap & so hard to find the decent stuff – how is a monopoly of media any different from this ? decent stuff is no harder to find if you’ve got a wide selection to choose from than if you’ve got practically nothing to choose from !

‘top viewed’ only really works if it gets reset every once in a while – if the top viewed is top viewed because it’s there at the top of the top viewed box, then inevitably nothing else will make it to the top unless there’s a reset mechanism

(twitter from markmedia – “does everybody in every digital debate have to rehash the history of media” – ho ho, far too true !)

(from twitter – pigsonthewing “nobody seems to remember, or at least acknowledge, Usenet (earlier BBSs) and their liberating role” – i wonder if the reason for this is the fundamental shift between then & now of the ease of access; nu-web is everywhere on your mobile & live on your fast connexion; usenet was fixed to your desktop computer in your office (or living room) & by & large periodical due to slow speed & time-metred connexion)

thinking about pete ashton’s ‘iplayer tip jar’ blog post – is the business model for the online future one of relying on honesty & donations ? let people pay what they content is worth for them ?

jo seems to agree – we need to get away from the obsession with advertising as the way to monetise our content; we need to come up with creative solutions to the problem of how to generate revenue.

why all this talk of ‘new’ ? the term ‘new media’ is 10 years old; consumer access to the web 15 & more years old – ‘the web’ surely is by now mainstream media ?

another bang-on observation from jo – young people are no more switched-on as a class than middle-aged & old people.

for a programme (or whatever) to have a website just for the sake of having one is a pointless waste of money; the show should only have a website if it actually warrants one, if there is any actual extra content about it which can go on a site to justify it.

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Other blogs about the debate:

• Stef
• Pete
• Nick
• Chris
• Jon

Groups of Birmingham Bloggers have been meeting in a kinda formal/informal way for a few months now. Mostly orgainised around the Facebook group, which has worked — up to a point.

Facebook is sort of broken at the moment (for this sort of thing, for this group) because:

• Lots of us are not using FB so much anymore, as we spend so much time on twitter. Twitter’s great for ad-hoc meetings, but not good for organising event events.
• We can’t make anymore people group admins — which is nice for the de-centrist non-hierarchical way we want to be.

I (me, Jon) resisted a website for the group because I thought that it wasn’t as democratic as using FB, but talking to Andy Mabbett and Stef Lewandowski (amongst others) at the meet-up in the Prince last night I realised I was being a bit odd. So, any Brum (or nearby) Blogger is welcome to admin rights to this site. dm me on twitter/email with email address for your very own account.

So why Paradise Circus? Well, since the very beginning of meeting up we’ve not been happy with the “Birmingham Bloggers” term. Some thought that it excluded other with not-so-much blogging social media activities (podcasters, heavy flickr users, tweeters, and so on), Birmingham is a little odd as a term too as most people don’t blog about brum (and there are a few wider WM attendees), and Danny Smith hated the word blogger.

Yeah, but why Paradise Circus? It’s nice, it sounds like a lovely and lively mess of things happening, it radiates democratic love, it’s uptopian, it’s a lovely big road island, it’s a Lilac Time album. And if/when the council (with architectural vandalism aforethought) knock the current building (pictured left) down we might be able to flog the URL to new corporate owners…

Site is totally unfinished, comments, suggestions (page with free wifi map on?), help, more posts… well, join up and get going.