Birmingham Social Media Cafe

Thanks to everyone who came down to the Coffee Lounge for the BSMC earlier today. Things started off quietly but got quite nicely busy later on in the morning. There were some really good conversations going on, lots of new people (many of whom are new to Birmingham) and people seemed to enjoy themselves.

Delving into the tweets we find:

• @jaimefuters - Lovely to meet everyone this morning at @BirminghamSMC!
• @sarahs16 – really enjoyed myself this morning @BirminghamSMC met some really ncie people. Now off to @brindleyplace to explore the farmers market
• @kazkiely - Had Birmingham social media cafe this morning. Great to chat with fellow #masocialmedia students and @CharlKimbley ;)
• @paulbradshaw – Arrived at #bsmc with a fresh bunch of #maonlinejournalism students (@ Coffee Lounge) http://4sq.com/bnt1X1

We also managed to raise a little cash for the Macmillan World’s Biggest Coffee Morning. £22.27 in fact – every little bit helps, so thanks for that too.

Details of the next BSMC will be up soon – probably just after the weekend. Speaking of which, have a good one.

Lots of links to stuff:

• Top Media Agencies – NMA | Top 100 – New Media Age have published their list of the country’s top digital agencies, ranked by income. The West Midlands has the fewest of any region – just Freestyle Interactive keeping our end up. That’s it
• Birmingham Post – Places still available at free IT seminar – “The Optimise IT event at Villa Park on Thursday is hosted by OGL Computer in support of Birmingham St. Mary’s Hospice. The seminar will focus on disaster recovery, virtualisation technology and eCommerce and web marketing”
• Gamer Camp: Nano – Switchboard – Interesting scheme to get people making games with some good mentoring on offer
• Take a sneak peek around our new offices! | BARQUES BLOG – Barques welcome us into their lovely home
• Opportunity for filmmakers to screen their films as part of Hello Digital 2010 – Producers’ Forum have “a space at The Custard Factory Theatre, which seats 100 people on 21st and 22nd October from noon -18:30″. Give them a shout if you want to submit a film or two
• Screen WM – Enter The Digital Den – 3 Steps to High Growth Investment – “a specially tailored programme of intensive workshops and pitching sessions that will focus on getting your business investment-ready and putting you in front of high-growth investors”
• 500 people involved in Social Media Surgery – plus….. | Podnosh – “Between you, you have set up social media surgeries in 38 different towns cities or neighbourhoods in 5 different countries (plus some others coming). You’ve run or set up 76 different events”
• Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 list three companies from the West Midlands – Those being bet365 (Stoke-on-Trent), Probrand (Birmingham) and Entanet International (Telford).
• Arts Industry » Feature preview » Forging film’s British future – The Big Vault – “a new £25m centre for the conservations of the volatile and priceless archive of 150,000 film and and 200,000 TV programmes it holds. Work has already started on it, and it will open in the West Midlands late in 2011″
• Pecha Kucha Birmingham, UK Channel on Vimeo – Vids from the first night
• 383 Project » A weekend of fashion – On and offline work for Style Birmingham

Got any news that we missed? Add it in the comments or tweet it to @BirminghamSMC.

It’s a mere seven days to the next Birmingham Social Media Cafe. We were this close to sorting a sponsor but that’s been put back. Instead, it will of course be the Macmillan World’s Biggest Coffee Morning on 24 Sept, so we’re looking to jump on that.

Hope to see you down there. In the meantime, here are some links for you:

• 2011 submissions call : Flatpack Festival – “Lengthening nights and falling leaves mean it’s time to start cranking up for Flatpack”. Click the link for details on how to send your stuff in
• Birmingham Post – Galaxy radio puts Capital into Birmingham – “A spokesman for the firm said no jobs would be lost in Birmingham as a result of the rebrand and that breakfast and drive-time shows would be locally made”
• Birmingham Media Evening – 7th October 2010 – “Kindly hosted by Clusta and held once again at The Vaults”. Register and take your ticket along for a free drink
• Hyperlocal voices: Jon Bounds (Birmingham: It’s Not Shit) | Online Journalism Blog – Says here BiNS is “a legend of the local and national blogging scene in which Jon has been a pioneer”. Sounds about right
• Co-working event aimed at small businesses Jelly is coming to Birmingham – “The first Jelly in Birmingham will run all day from 9am on October 5 at Urban Coffee Company, in Church Street.”
• Meshed Media – University of Birmingham’s Heritage and Cultural Learning Hub – A report back from a showcase that took place as part of the U1 Cultural Heritage and Technology Conference. Many shiny objects were on display
• News  /  IT firm applies for success THEBUSINESSDESK.COM – The Warwickshire subsidiary of Australian IT firm PelicanCorp “received first runner-up prize for its new smart phone application ‘beforeUdig Mobile’ at this year’s NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge”
• Pixel Power « Mudlark – “Today marks an important day for Mudlark. We’ve merged with our older sister company, Pixel-Lab”
• Soda Blog » The CharacterShop Website – New website for the Birmingham animators

As ever, let us know if we missed something good. Add it in the comments or tweet it to @BirminghamSMC.

A slightly more subdued list than last week but some good stuff nonetheless:

• Digital Academic Publishing event report :: interactivecultures – “Representatives of Sage, Palgrave, Berg, Humanities eBooks, Intellect, Adam Matthew Digital, JURN and several University publishing houses joined academics from the Birmingham Centre for Media and Culture Research on Monday 6th September at a conference to discuss the field of Digital Academic Publishing”
• The High Definition Grid System by SMILE – Way above my head this, but looks interesting – “Our criteria was to design content that would degrade transparently onto older technology and recognise limits put in place by running HD through a SD output”
• Hacks/Hackers Birmingham (Birmingham, England) – Meetup – Just added this group to the Other Events page. Next event is 1pm on 20 Sept at the Coffee Lounge
• Birmingham Post – Friend For Media launches anti-piracy technology for music industry – “Groundbreaking technology which plants a digital watermark on illegally downloaded music has been developed by a Birmingham company.”
• Meshed Media – ARS Electronica 2010 – Part one – Ian Ravenscroft was part of an Arts Council delegatiom to the media/arts/tech festival and reports back
• NHS campaign urges Birmingham women to cut daily drinking – …and the website gets a savaging in The Drum’s comments
• Boris Johnson announces appointment of City Hall Digital Advisory Board – Includes Mudlark’s Toby Barnes. Nice one

The usual offer applies – if we missed anything then please add it in the comments or tweet it to @BirminghamSMC.

Ah, that’s better – much more stuff to link to this month. There are some new appointments, new work and it looks (now everyone’s getting back from holidays) that a tasty programme of events is picking up again. Dive in:

• Birmingham Post – Skibbly Media celebrates UEFA contract – “Skibbly Media will produce promotional trailers, interviews and background details on the 32 Europa League teams for broadcasters around the world”
• Recent news round-up – Meshed Media – Lots of stuff going on for the digital and social media agency
• SBS signs up Inspired for English football coverage – “Danish broadcaster SBS TV has appointed Staffordshire production company Inspired Film and Video to help with its coverage of the English Premier League”
• Palmer’s works on social media with Clusta – “Clusta’s work aims to build online advocates for the brand through third party promotional activity, eCRM and celebrity endorsement”
• New MD for Seal amid Birmingham promotions – “Nigel Pipkin, Seal’s PR director for the last four years, has been promoted to managing director of its Birmingham office”
• BCU links up with software developer – “Birmingham City University’s School of Computing, Telecommunications and Networks has signed a major deal to work with global software development company, 5G Technologies”
• Pesky People – Happy 1st birthday to Pesky People and congrats on the new site
• Digital Participation seminar round-up :: interactivecultures – “As promised (although delivered later than I planned) here’s a round-up of the Digital Participation – Measuring the Unmeasurable seminar that we ran here at Birmingham City University on the 19th July 2010″
• Hacking Warwickshire….again « Warwickshire Open Data – Round 2 of the Hack Warwickshire competition has launched “We have another 15 datasets to play with following on from the first Hack Warwickshire competition, so there’s plenty of scope for new applications”
• Screen WM – RedRex – Quarterly Media and Film Education, Film Archive & Film Exhibitors Forum – “a meeting for those working in media and film education in the West Midlands” . The next one is on 30 Sept
• Meet ‘em Up: DJ Hero 2 in association with BAFTA – Eventbrite – “This month we’re in association with BAFTA and are joined by Freestyle Games talking about their follow up to the #1 New Game IP of 2009, DJ Hero 2″. On 29 Sept at the HMV Institute
• Connecting Business with a Digital Future | Hello Business – The holding page is up and you can register your interest for the two-day conference now. Happening in Birmingham 21-22 October 2010
• Next BCSMC: Does a virtual sun shine in a virtual Black Country? – Talks on virtual worlds from John Kirriemuir (Virtual World Watch) and David Baden (Daden Ltd) at the next Black Country Social Media Cafe on 21 Sept
• Pecha Kucha Birmingham – Home – Speakers revealed. Tickets on sale

Got any news that we missed? Add it in the comments or tweet it to @BirminghamSMC.