Birmingham Social Media Cafe

I couldn’t make it along to the meet-up on Friday but I hear that it went well and the coffee money was spent in record time. Thanks to everyone who went along and to our sponsors, Birmingham City University, for their support.

Jon Hickman and Paul Bradshaw from BCU chose not to address the masses at the Coffee Lounge, but instead recorded a short video:

BSMC – a word from our sponsors from Chris Unitt on Vimeo.

Jon also interviewed new Social Media MA student and first-time BSMC visitor, Stephen Croome, about his thoughts on the event:

Reflections on Birmingham Social Media Café from Jon Hickman on Vimeo.

Thanks again to everyone who came. The next meet-up will be on Friday 30 October – all the usual details will be out very shortly.

Last night’s event at Fazeley Studios, looking at the many, varied and increasingly important uses of data went very well, thanks to a great turnout and some fantastic talks.

The talks

Dave Harte opened proceedings. Here are the slides from his talk ‘Timely Information to Citizens‘

Dave Harte at #dmapi by chrisunitt

Michael Brunton-Spall spoke about ‘Mashing up The Guardian‘ (or their data, at least).

Michael Brunton-Spall at #dmapi by chrisunitt

Matthew Somerville covered his own and mySociety‘s dealings with data and mashups. He’s kindly uploaded his slides to his website too (featuring some lovely photos of Scotland).

Matthew Somerville at #dmapi by chrisunitt

Paul Bradshaw rounded the event off, speaking about the inspiration behind Help Me Investigate and his own thoughts on ‘database journalism’.

Paul Bradshaw at #dmapi by chrisunitt

Other media

Christian Payne was on hand to interview Michael Brunton-Spall and Matthew Somerville using Audioboo:

A few blog posts have been popping up:

• Stuart Harrison has written a great round-up of the evening and also put all the #dmapi-tagged tweets from the evening into a Google Docs spreadsheet
• Tom Graham from Jadu has posted a write-up too
• Paul Bradshaw on the Online Journalism Blog – The Guardian kicks off the local data landgrab
• Jamie Garner has rounded up his tweets
• Tom Martin liked the cupcakes

And here’s a Twitter search for #dmapi.

What next?

There certainly seems to be an appetite for similar events, hack days and the like. As I said when summing up, keep an eye on Multipack and the Birmingham Social Media Cafe for future events. For a digest of other digital events in the region visit Digital Brum.

Also, the West Midlands Regional Observatory have just announced an excellent looking event called Sharing Information Digitally, taking place at Millennium Point on 7 October. There’s further info on the event see the WMRO blog.

Thanks

I’m indebted to a number of people who helped the event run as smoothly as it did:

• The speakers – Dave Harte, Michael Brunton-Spall, Matthew Somerville and Paul Bradshaw
• The sponsors – The Guardian, Barefoot Wine and (ongoing supporters of the BSMC) Screen WM
• Kate Manion at Fazeley Studios for providing the excellent surroundings and catering
• Will Perrin (of Talk About Local) for the initial introduction to the Guardian team

Thanks to everyone who attended too.

The Birmingham Social Media Cafe returns to Coffee Lounge on Friday 28 August, 10am to midday. I hope to see you there.

Please allow a short moment for some trumpet blowing. These are a few messages about yesterday’s Birmingham Social Media Cafe that cropped up on Twitter:

• grunt121 – Had a brilliant time at #bsmc next time I promise to talk to more people. As @gabysslave said these events are a jolt of caffeine
  
• pezholio – On my way back from #bsmc Great to speak to so many like-minded, interesting people. Good coffee too!
• daveharte – wow – intense 20 mins at #bsmc that place rocks. even had a massage offer!
• grunt121 – wow there’s a lot of people here #bsmc
• Manionbird – Just been2 my 1st Bham social media cafe which was ace, then a lovely lunch with @gabysslave & @marselkins who made my day : )
• gandy – lovely to meet all the Birmingham social media crew. Amazing scene up here. Now heading back to London Village to do some real #work

There were more too which you can see on this Twitter search.

However! Lest we rest on our laurels, if you have any suggestions for the greater betterment of these get-togethers then please make haste for the comments box below.

So, thanks to everyone who came down yesterday, especially the many new faces that made it along and Jason from Clarity Digital who stumped up for the drinks. The next one will be on Friday 26 June with info going up in the usual places very soon.

Another fine turnout at the Birmingham Social Media Cafe last Friday. Thanks to everyone who came down and packed the place out again. Thanks also to Ward Lovett for sponsoring.

As before, we collected up name stickers and have photographed them for your note-adding convenience (click the pic to do that):

If you were there but your sticker isn’t then feel free to add your details in the comments on the Flickr page.

You might’ve noticed the whiteboard that was left lying around with a few pens. It was an experiment to see what, if anything, people did with it (kinda physical social media rather than the online sort). Not a great deal as it turned out, but Alex Hughes was on hand to turn his cartoon talents to filling it. It might reappear at the next one.

Also keep an eye on Someone Once Told Me to see the photos by Mario (@MarioSOTM) which should start going up soon.

Finally, any earlybirds who want to sign up to the next event on Friday 27 March can do so here:

• BSMC wiki
• Facebook event
• Upcoming

Thanks all. See you again soon.

Birmingham Social Media Cafe, Jan 09 from Chris Unitt on Vimeo.

That’s a whole lot of networking!

Thanks to everyone for another record turnout to this month’s Social Media Cafe Meet.

Special thanks to our fantastic sponsors Opera Developer Network and to Andy Mabbett who helped make this month’s sponsorship happen.

As many people have said, we may need to look at finding a bigger venue or increase the frequency of meet-ups to fortnightly. Let me know what you think.

Thanks again to Chris Unitt for the video and also for capturing the names of some of those who attended:

If you spot your name on the picture and have a Flickr Pro account, please go tag your contact details.

If you can’t see your name there and did attend, please feel free to add your name in comments here or on Chris’s photo on Flickr.

Also check out the rather excellent photos by Stephen Cooper, which are posted on the Facebook event page.

P.S Due to poor Paul Bradshaw being ill, the editors‘ training was cancelled on Friday. We hope they might be able to make it to next month’s event.

Thanks to everyone for another fantastic Social Media Cafe this month. Once again, it was great to see so many new faces – long may it continue!

If you are interested in who you might of missed (or if you’ve want to double-check the name of someone you met!), check out the video below:

Also, if you feature in it, don’t forget to add you contact details (website, Twitter name, etc..) by clicking on the “+” button and adding a comment at the point in the timeline that you appear.

This month the Cafe saw a lot of plotting and scheming – just the sort of thing we like to encourage!

This included a discussion about Birmingham’s Big City Plan and the start of a new business I So Wish – a website aimed at trying to help people turn their wishes into reality.

If you were wondering about the people who came along to the Birmingham Social Media Cafe, then this video by the brilliant Christian Payne might give you a bit of an insight:

Although not all of them arrived in time for the video we scraped just over 40 attendees this month. It was a fantastic turnout, thank you!

It was a true pleasure to watch projects planned, business cards exchanged and ideas hatched – exactly what I hoped the Brum Social Media Cafe would achieve.

I have also had the good news that E.ON have offered to pay for drinks at next month’s meet on November 28 – the free coffees shall continue!

Unfortunately E.ON are unable to sponsor next month’s event so we are looking for volunteers! Coffees at the last meet came to £150 – a bargain considering we attract so many interesting people!

And please, if you have any ideas for future meets please get in contact me at joanna.geary@birminghampost.net.

Other blog posts about the meet from:
Rachel Gillies, a community film maker

A big thank you to everyone who made the first Birmingham Social Media Cafe a success.  Speaking for myself, I had a great time, met some really interesting people and was grateful for everyone who made the journey (especially to those that came a long distance).

Thanks to everyone who helped to promote the event, to The Birmingham Post for buying the drinks and to Coffee Lounge for hosting us.

I’ve got some video to post up at some point but in the meantime, Bobbie Gardner and Steve Cooper have blogged about the event.  If you’ve written anything or taken any pics or video then please drop a link in the comments.

There’ll definitely be another next month, most likely at the same place.  I’ll announce that when I’ve got confirmation. I’m also on the hunt for an interesting guest speaker too – feel free to add some suggestions!

In the meantime, thanks very much again!