These are my links for March 28th through March 29th:

• Living with rats: Why communty activists are angry. – Julian Dobson: “communities aren’t built and nourished on information, useful as it is. They’re built on relationships – forged by people who have found common cause, who’ve had arguments and battles, who have learned to celebrate success together. People who are focused on the next policy objective or yesterday’s ministerial demand don’t have the time or the energy to build such relationships, even if they want to.”


• Audiences central add a social media module for their customers. – One of the organisations I’ve worked with over the last few months gets it’s head down to share their knowledge fo social media with arts orgs in the West Midlands, Abby Corfan includes on example: ” Birmingham Contemporary Music Group have been busy capturing audience reactions to their recent concert, and have created their first video broadcast. This was done very simply (and cheaply) using the video setting on a digital stills camera- tv on a shoestring! You can keep up to date with BCMG’s latest news on twitter @BCMG”


• Nicky Gettgood on Where is the Whitby Bus? – Where is the Whitby Bus? A game for Brum Twitter crowd concoted on the pub after last week’s social media surgery for voluntary groups. Nickys says: “In his response to the Big City Plan bus-thieving debacle, Clive Dutton said, ‘I really do hope we can move forward beyond this unfortunate experience’. Can we heck, where’s the fun in that? So if you’re on Twitter hop aboard and play Simon Howes’ ‘Where is Whitby’s bus?’ game. If you can make it stop in Highgate you’re already doing better than the council.”

What can you say!

58% of Aussies take part.

The cautionary tale of how not to use twitter to tell folk you don’t like the job you’ve just been offered.  “Use your brains. The internet is a very public place. More so even than the water cooler. Exercise the same common sense and decorum you would in “real life” social situations.”

Participo on the home energy monitoring software Googlewatt: “Ambient data management, and visualisation at a personal level, along with the massive aggregation of zillions of households, plays right into Google’s core strengths…a lot like the really interesting Google Flu Tracking initiative that uses their search data to detect trends in search terms that predict early outbreaks.

The NHS has had the wisdom to spend some money with google for the search term Jade Goody – it point people to the site which encourages take of of the jab which can protect against cervical cancer.
Tessy at Thriving Too has this quick post about a whole resource of tools for what she calls purposeful play:   “An amazing resource for learning through games has been created by James Neill. Neill is a lecturer at the Centre for Applied Psychology at the University of Canberra (Australia). His highly valuable collection of Games and Activities is one of the very best I have seen.”

Flashswap was a huge success, with loads of professional and hobby photographers swapping prints to support the campaign for a Birmingham Photospace.

Screen West Midlands on it’s first joint funding with 4iP – yoosk.com

Museum 2.0 reviews have 2004 project to get people to find their own content in museums: “Which brings us back to Sweden. In 2004, the firm Smart Studio created a unique flashlight-based interpretative interface for exploration of a historic blast furnace site in the old Swedish steel town of Avesta. The site itself has no interpretative material-no labels or obvious media elements. But each visitor is given a special flashlight, used both to illuminate the space (for general exploration) and to activate interpretative experiences include light projection, sound, and occasional physical experiences (i.e. smoke and heat). There are indicated hotspots in the site which activate interpretative material when the flashlights light on them. Smart Studio launched with two layers of content in the hotspots-educational (how the blast furnace works, explanation of certain elements and history) and poetic (imagistic stories from the perspective of steel workers, based on historical content). Visitors can walk through the blast furnace site and receive none of the interpretative material if they choose, or they can use their flashlights to activate content.”

Hi folks,

Sorry it is such short notice. The next social media surgery for voluntary groups is this Wednesday March 25th 2009, as a drop in from 5.30 to 7pm.  We have a plush new venue, which is a few minutes walk from BVSC. For all the details and how to sign up please visit the link below:

http://www.paradisecircus.com/social-media-surgeries/

The surgeries are run by a group of volunteers, mostly from the Birmingham bloggers groups. They are willing to show people from the cities charities and voluntary organisation how they can make best use of social media.   If you want to see what people have made of the first three surgeries you might like to watch this video on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEPbtfdIkVY

I hear-by outlaw the tiresome term social media. ( thanks )