14 May
2009
Yesterday I spent a wonderful hour meeting Attiye Faraji at the sixth social media surgery in Birmingham.
Attiye is a health and wellbeing lead for young people at Health Exchange, which aims to “make health services available and accessible to all members of our community”. It’s a partnership development between the Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust and Birmingham City Libraries.
What’s a social media surgery?
The social media surgeries are informal meetups where voluntary and community groups can get free advice on how to make use of things like blogs, Twitter and YouTube. Chris Ivens summarises it far better than I can:
Q: What is a Social Media Surgery? A: With an abundance of buzz-words at every tick and turn and an almost daily mention of twitter in the news we try to look at what technologies could really help your organisation and we’re here to explain in plain English what they are. It’s not a sales pitch nor are you obliged to do anything after the meet, I guess it’s the old cliché; ‘Giving Something Back’. If you come and find the session useful, please pass on the word so more people can benefit.
What we did
Attiye had already set up her experimental blog at a previous surgery. This time, she wanted to learn more about writing on her blog.
We covered a lot:
- How to write a page
- Attiye published her first post
- How to review, approve and delete comments
- How to change the look of her WordPress blog
We also played with a Flip video camcorder but got a bit baffled.
It’s wonderful to see Attiye get started at blogging and I hope she grows more confident with each new post. Hopefully, we’ve demystified the technology so she can concentrate on getting her message out and getting some discussion going through the blog.
How do these surgeries happen?
Nick Booth brings it all together. The surgeons are all volunteers and change from month to month. This time it was the super Jon Bounds, Nicky Getgood, Chris Ivens, Pete Ashton, Neil Houston, Kasper Sorenson and Andy Mabbett (I’m sorry if I’ve missed anyone off). Diane from Fazeley Studios also volunteers her time to keep the meeting place open.
Keep an eye on the Paradise Circus site for future surgery dates.
Hat tip to Nick for the photo.
3 responses
2 comments
1 pingbacks, trackbacks, back pats & tipped hats
-
[...] has been teaching ever since) and finally (apart from the people I’ve inevitably forgotten) Gavin Wray – charmingly popular with the [...]
Music on
“(I’m sorry if I’ve missed anyone off”
Yup. Me. Not that I’m hurt, or anything. *sniff*
Oops, sorry Andy! I’ve updated the post now.