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.

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.

An overview of BCC DIY, by Stef from Jon Hickman on Vimeo.

• 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.

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.