Birmingham Social Media Cafe

The last month has seen a lot of change for us. This is mainly because Meshed Media, Chris’ company that has been managing Birmingham Social Media Cafe since March 2009, has been acquired by Made Media.

As a result, we’ve decided it’s a good time to hand over the running of BSMC to someone that can put more enthusiasm, time and effort into it than we are now able to. So, we’d like you to join us in a very warm welcome to Karen Strunks who’ll be running BSMC from now on!

Karen is a Birmingham-based photographer and social media bod at Talk About Local. She’s responsible for the wildly successful 4am Project and is a BSMC regular to boot. Chances are you’ve already met or heard of Karen, but if not her website is here and she’s on Twitter as @karenstrunks too.

We’ve had a great time running the monthly networking meet-ups and will still support them in any way we can. We’d like to thank Screen West Midlands for supporting us over the last year, all the sponsors who provided coffees, and everyone that came or contributed to a meet-up. Cheers!

We’ll let Karen do her own introduction in good time, but for now we’d like to wish her all the best and thank everyone once again for making BSMC the important fixture in the calendar that it has become.

News of a digital nature from around the region soon to be formerly known as the West Midlands:

• UKGovCamp | Groups | Hyperlocal Govcamp West Midlands | Home – “A group for Hyperlocal Govcamp West Midlands – a smallish midweek affair for West Midlands types taking place in Walsall this September”
• Screen WM – News – New pilot scheme launched to open up digital cinema to rural Shropshire – “UK Film Council awards new consortium £400,000 to run Shropshire Rural Cinema Pilot Scheme”
• Journey times to Birmingham New Street throughout the day – “This was produced as a byproduct of programming along the way of creating Mapumental for mySociety / 4IP. The animation was actually made by Francis Irving, I just set it to music” Matthew Somerville has been at it again
• Retooled — Retooled is a place to find and share experiences of the rollercoaster of redundancy. – “This site was begun by a group of employees who were all made redundant when our company MG Rover closed’
• SUPERCOOL | Branding, design for print, web development and other digital shenanigans | Birmingham – Supercool have a new site stuffed with the work they’ve done to date
• Interview with James Walters, Tomorrow People – James talks chutney, among other things
• Makin Jan Ma Online Storytelling | Kinglux – “In order to help Makin promote his new collections in the run up to London Fashion Week, we have begun a collaborative experiment using social media platforms Facebook and Posterous”
• Screen WM – Flip International Animation Festival confirms high profile guests for November’s festival – “including Clare Kitson, the first Commissioning Editor for Animation at Channel 4, and Andy Gent, Head of Puppets on the recent film The Fantastic Mr Fox”
• Screen WM – Arcade, is now a Guinness World Record holder for creating the first stereoscopic 3D console game – “UK Blitz Arcade, the downloadable games division of Blitz Games Studios, is now a Guinness World Record holder for the first video game to use stereoscopic polarised 3D”
• Birmingham Post – Birmingham Post to produce The Definitive Marketing & PR Handbook for the West Midlands – “This September, we will be producing ‘The Definitive Marketing and PR Handbook’ West Midlands edition, which will be a 52-page high quality A5 glossy product, distributed in all copies of the Birmingham Post, and also uploaded onto the Birmingham Post website”
• TAK! – At the beginning of July 2010 – exactly six years from the day they opened – we closed the doors at TAK! Towers ti explore new ideas & ventures. It’s been fun, thanks for having us!

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

Back for seconds, here’s the follow-up to last week’s first in an ongoing series of links to West Midlands digital/tech/social media news:

• Screen WM – News: Major BBC One drama series Hustle returns to film in Birmingham – “The production will once again be supported by investment from the Advantage Media Production Fund, Screen WM’s major production fund from the Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands and the European Regional Development Fund”
• Birmingham Post – Student earns more than £80k from iPhone app – “Nineteen-year-old Greg Hughes came up with a piece of downloadable software which synchronises a user’s iPhone and computer wirelessly – and, at the last count, 12,500 copies had been sold at $9.99 each since it went on sale in mid-May”. It’s called Wi-Fi Sync and available via Cydia
• Custard Factory to host launch of first PlayStation BETA event « Custard Factory – “On Saturday 31st July and Sunday 1st August, the Vaad Gallery at the Custard Factory will be hosting the first ever Playstation BETA event in Birmingham”
• NHS local – Big project developed by Maverick TV, among others – “NHS local is a range of digital services for NHS staff and the public in the West Midlands”
• Birmingham Post – Maverick TV to go behind scenes of supermodel agency – “Birmingham-based Maverick Television is to produce a new series going behind the scenes of the model agency which helped build the careers of supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer”
• Life . News . Fancy some work experience? (20th July 2010) – Life are offering a marketing student a summer placement (warning – the link goes to a pretty infuriating website)
• Made Media » Royal Court Theatre – “Made’s been working on the new Royal Court Theatre for a while now. You could say it’s been a labour of love” New website up and running
• Paul Bradshaw to leave Birmingham City University | Media | guardian.co.uk – “Founder of online journalism MA course to do consultancy, training and writing after taking voluntary redundancy”
• NESTA – Make It Local – “NESTA is offering three local authorities up to £30,000 to spend with a digital media business in their area”
• Speakers and slides: roundup of ‘Open data: challenges and opportunities’ « Observations – Great round up of Monday’s event
• Our Digital City is an online digital snapshot of Birmingham in 2010 – “Our Digital City is an online digital snapshot of Birmingham in 2010 created by anyone with an interest in the City but especially our local schools, young people, families, silver surfers and local businesses”

And don’t forget the next Birmingham Social Media Cafe is next week, on Friday 30 July.

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

We’ve just been given a bit of cash by Screen WM to make sure Birmingham Social Media Cafe events continue. We’re hugely grateful to them – it’s not going to make anyone rich but it’ll pay for our overheads and give us some money to put behind the counter occasionally if there’s no sponsor.

In return, Screen WM want to make sure the regular meet-ups happen and we’re more than happy to do that. Actually, we want to do a little more so we’ve decided to make a couple of changes to the general BSMC set-up. Nothing huge – we just want to flesh things out and continue to make the events worthwhile attending.

What won’t change

The main event will still be the get-togethers on the last Friday of every month (earlier in December). A chance to come together with others who are exploring how social media fits into their work – to share ideas, get some work done and find new friends and colleagues.

What will change

There are five things to mention:

• Occasional evening events
• Weekly news updates
• You can now follow @BirminghamSMC on Twitter
• We’ll be a bit more diligent with those monthly emails
• We’re going to kill off the wiki (as it’s only been used for spam in the past year I don’t imagine it’ll be missed).

See, nothing all that drastic. Two of those are worth a bit more explanation.

Evening events

The idea is to address certain topics and/or partner with other organisations and provoke crossovers of networks. We’re open to suggestions but are thinking of doing something a few times a year and maybe/probably getting speakers involved.

To get the ball rolling, think BSMC partnering with others to address the possibilities for social media in medicine, professional services, marketing, architecture, sport, green tech, food, education… like I say, we’re open to suggestions.

Weekly news

A round-up of WM-focussed social media/digital news with links to upcoming events (not just ours). If you remember the Friday on Jobplot then you’ll know the sort of thing.

Let us know

The BSMC has always been shaped by the people who attend it. Is there anything you want to chip in? Anything that you think would make the events (the regular ones or the extra evening ones) even better? Let us know in the comments.

Flick to page 29 of this month’s copy of Wired UK and you’ll see we got a mention as part of an article looking at free-form workplaces. Which was very nice of them.

The next meet-up is on 10am to midday, Friday 26 June downstairs at the Coffee Lounge. Feel free to just turn up on the day but it’d be nice if you could sign up on one/all of:

• Facebook event
• Upcoming
• Wiki

Just so we know to expect folk.

If you’ve got any questions, especially if you’ve not been down before and want to know what to expect, then say hi in the comments under this post.