Posts Tagged birmingham
A View of Birmingham from Baltimore, Part 2
Posted by Leland Strott in Social Media in Birmingham on November 11th, 2009
Back at the end of August, I blogged about how I observed the Birmingham social media scene before I arrived. I’m back in Baltimore already, but the month I spent in Birmingham opened my eyes to the kind of community that can really be generated and sustained through social media.
One of my first observations about Birmingham was that the academic and business communities seemed incredibly interactive. What I found was that this whole digital community was even larger than I thought, and the people who are part of it are extremely passionate about it, and keen to spread their enthusiasm. There is a quite large grassroots movement for a Digital Birmingham that is made up of academics, businesses, and regular Birmingham citizens alike.
The biggest difference I noticed between Birmingham and anywhere in the US was that Birmingham’s social media scene was constantly hosting events for digital inclusion, to discuss ideas about Digital Birmingham, or to otherwise garner attention for and praise digital efforts around the city. These events took the form of surgeries, blogger meet-ups, social media cafes, and even as large as Hello Digital, and Developing Birmingham’s Digital Districts. Here in America, I’ve never seen such consistent efforts to engage the community in the digital fever. We seem to only have big, expensive, infrequent events like SXSW, #140Conf, and Blog World Expo. Try getting to any of those for less than $300 – it’s likely to be more like $1000 that you shell out to attend and participate. What Birmingham does, I would argue is better, because it is focused locally, with goals reaching globally.
I may be naïve to speak so highly of the Birmingham social media scene – perhaps I didn’t spend enough time there to see the flaws, or I’m glossing everything over due to a tendency to be overly optimistic. But even if this were the case, I truly see a lot of potential for it to become a digital center. There is certainly a group of people very intent on making it happen, at least, and that kind of determination can go a long way. I can’t wait to watch the city and its digital industries evolve.
Concrete afterthoughts from the Creativity Gap discussion
Posted by stephencroome in Social Media & Marketing, Social Media in Birmingham on November 4th, 2009
Before I joined the Social Media course at BCU, I worked for a Digital Company as a SEO in London.
Two thoughts I had after todays talk about how Birmingham could stop talking and start doing:
1. Has anyone from BCC been to London to ask CEOs of Digi Companies what it would take to get them to move their businesses to Birmingham?
2. Is it time for a Digital Birmingham conference in London? The feedback would be enlightening
I believe Q1 would allow Brum to get narrow down the actual USP it could use as a hook to attract business and Q2 would allow Brum to start to Market itself to the rest of the UK
Econsultancy has organised days where you can go and sell yourself to Londons digital glitterati – these would provide exceptional reach at low cost
A 3rd, less related idea was that if Birmingham wants to develop Digital Business, it should dump the term Creative.
My First week in Birmingham!
Posted by Jigar Patel in General & News on September 26th, 2009
My first full week in Birmingham wasn’t as interesting as it might seem. Especially moving in on a sunday, since everything seemed to close at 5 around here in the weekends. This is my third visit to England, so I thought, I have already been here twice, I think I should be able to settle in pretty easily right? Well, on the contrary, it turned out to be a lot harder than I had thought. It was harder in a sense that, I had visited England and stayed with family the pervious two times, so ideally, staying by myself in a new country was going to be hard. However, I think as the week progressed, I started to settle in slowly. I was going to make it a day by day commentary, but it is not that exciting so here is a run down of the events.
The first two days being alone in the house I was feeling pretty homesick and was wondering why I picked BCU. I moved in on Sunday and started the International Orientation on Monday. Monday morning, I was up early and pretty excited to get the week started. I made my way over to the Baker building, where we were to get information about the orientation week. As I walked up to the building, I saw about 100 international students trying to get into the building so they can get their orientation packets. I eventually made my way in and since I had registered online beforehand, I was out of there in about ten minutes. After registration there was nothing to do until noon, when we had free lunch! The rest of the day consist of tours and information sessions. I skipped out on evening activities, since I wasn’t feel well at all (mostly because of the weather change) and went to bed. The rest of the week was going to workshops and talks about various different topics that pertained to international students. Some were interesting, others weren’t since, some of the stuff was very similar to the states. Meanwhile, durning the evening, me and bunch of my friends made our way to the local pub called, “Hare of the Dog” also known as “hotdog”. Friday evening was the finale event at Burlington Hotel in the City Centre, where we celebrated a successful end of the International Orientation.
Really, to me the first week was all about getting sick, adjusting to the weather, adjusting to the English ways of doing things, learning the transportation system, trying to figure out what terms are appropriate, and meeting new people. The only thing I have found that I wish were different is the Baker cafeteria. The reason being, at Juniata College, where I did my undergrad, their cafeteria was known as Baker as well and let me tell you, the food wasn’t all that good so, every time I go to the Baker building its like going back to Baker at Juniata!
This past week was far more fun and interesting. Especially, because we got to attend actual social media events in Birmingham. I had always seen and heard about DIY hack days and coffee meet ups, but never attended one, until this week. Check out Stephen Croome on Birmingham Social Media Café and BCC DIY Explained if you haven’t so already.
BCC DIY Explained
Posted by Jon Hickman in Social Media in Birmingham on September 25th, 2009
Today the MA Social Media students took part in the BCC DIY hack day. Below Stef Lewandowski explains the project. We’ll post some more thoughts on the event and the project in the next few days.
Social Media Links for September 14th
Posted by Jon Hickman in links on September 14th, 2009
Social Media Links for September 14th
- Citizensheep » Manage your online reputation – How to respond to conversations online – from a third sector perspective
- Round up from Data, Mashups and APIs | Birmingham Social Media Cafe –
- FORA.tv – Scott Rosenberg: Say Everything: How Blogging Began – On the road promoting a book on the subject, some historical overview of blogging (via http://www.d-log.info/?p=9537)
- Master List (A Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions) – A list of software used for reputation management activity ie monitoring the net for keywords and brand mentions (an then responding)
- Babble + Context = Conversation | I Hate Mornings – Of the many responses to reports that "40% of Twitter is inane babble", this was one of my favourites. And Ben's songs are worth listening to too.
Are you being served?
Posted by Jon Hickman in Social Media & Marketing on August 13th, 2009
Local coffee, for local people
The strangest thing happened to me today. Urban Coffee, a new coffee shop found out I was off for a coffee in Birmingham City Centre and asked me to come to their shop instead of my usual place. A bit of Twitter based banter later, I was there enjoying a free croissant, beautiful coffee and more good banter.
I wouldn’t normally take the time to write up a social media marketing case study. The fact that I am leads me to the main point I want to make: Urban Coffee have used social media to take me from an unaware prospect to a brand ambassador in about ten minutes. How did they do that? Well there’s three parts to the story really.
Part 1 – The functional part
It all came about because they saw me tweet my dissatisfaction with my usual coffee shop:
Anyone in Brum for crap food, average coffee and good wifi at Coffee Lounge this lunchtime?
They followed it up, saying:
@jonhickman you should come over to Urban Coffee, great cakes, great coffee and free wifi
As simple as that. They listened, they answered. Well it’s not really that simple. I don’t just do what people tell me afterall.
Part 2 – The networking part
What made this a compelling offer rather than a corporate spam was the fact that two nice people I know – Neil & Jamie – Tweeted me to recommend I try Urban Coffee out. Suddenly my network is making a recommendation to me. I’m now near to buying in to this brand.
Part 3 – The experience part
For some reason I decided to be cheeky and request a free cake in return for my custom. This led to a lighthearted banter on Twitter ending with the offer of a free cake:
@jonhickman You have to come in and say “The weather is good for the time of year” to receive your free food
Let’s face it, it would be rude to knock back that sort of offer, so I was on my way to the coffee shop. I walked past my normal place, arranged to meet Neil & Jamie there for lunch, and my other friends were now chatting with Urban Coffee’s owner Simon too.
By this stage I had a feeling for what I was going to find at the coffee shop: a warm welcome, an independent spirit, a relaxing place where I could work and chat, and nice people. Luckily the shop followed through on these Twitter based expectations.
I was warmly greeted, the space is light and airy, the WiFi strong, and they have good stout tables, big enough to get four coworkers and their laptops around (they have plenty of plug sockets upstairs too). The coffee was great, the banter was there, and of course, my cake was free.
-
Latest on Twitter- checking out #masocialmedia tweets and videos.. interesting March 9, 2010 uniquefrequency (Daryl Tay)
- @jonhickman You #masocialmedia kids might want to get their teeth into this video. http://tinyurl.com/y9lgq9g March 9, 2010 benjiw (Ben Whitehouse)
- RT @CIPayneWMPolice: Dudley Tweeters, your sector Insp. Chris Dowen has opened an account. @cd1942 One for #bcsmc @danslee? #masocialmedia March 9, 2010 hadleypaul (Paul Hadley)
- Recognizr. Crimewatch app, or possibly something more when used by authority? http://bit.ly/ablC9F #auth2 #masocialmedia March 8, 2010 hadleypaul (Paul Hadley)
- #masocialmedia Can Authority Communicate hell no! Ad rules to take in use of Twitter and Facebook http://bit.ly/9aVux4 March 8, 2010 jigar_patel (Jigar Patel)
Recent Comments