I’ve had a great evening.
I’ve not long returned from the Birmingham Social Media Surgery held as part of Blog Action Day 08. If you’re reading this there’s a fair chance that sentence makes sense to you. If not, it was a chance for folk from community and voluntary groups to sit down with some soi-disant social media ‘experts’ and get some free advice.
Nick Booth posted in advance of the event here but the reality must have far exceeded his expectations. I arrived 15 minutes late to find the scene in the pic above – several people crowded round each ‘expert’ with some serious learning going on (on both sides).
It really was great. I spoke to some people about sharing calendars, how to sort out hosting, what WordPress is and how blogs could be used to support film making projects. I hope my advice was helpful; I certainly learned a lot about how to pass this sort of information on and apply it to the concerns of those trying to make a difference.
Anyway, as mentioned it was scheduled as part of Blog Action Day. The object of BAD08 itself is to get as many bloggers as possible talking about poverty and raise awareness/start a conversation/etc and so on.
I wouldn’t say I’ve got anything groundbreaking to put offer besides my own experience of this evening. Instead, I’d like to highlight a post Cat Bray has written called Blog Action Day: Shelter, a conversation. Essentially it’s an IM chat she had with her fella about charities, in the course of the which she said:
i think one of the most effective things charities can do is tell you where your money is going, or better, show you
Which is just what I (and several others) have spent the evening telling community/voluntary orgs to use social media to do via blogs, video, podcasts, etc.
Hopefully we’ll get the chance to do the same again sometime soon.