It is with almost heart thumping glee that I get to write about the first use of a social media surgery in Africa (at east the first I now of).

I met Marlon Parker when he visited Birmingham last year.  He taught us really interesting stuff about using mobile phones and went back intent to get a social media surgery started in South Africa.

He writes:

Today was no ordinary day for the RLabs team as they launched the first African Social Media Surgery. The idea was to take Social and New Media to the public in an open space providing them with basic skills on getting started on this exciting journey. The launch was hosted by Vangate Mall in Bridgetown (Setting up of equipment above), Cape Town and 47 people actively participated by spending at least 15 minutes each with our Social Media Surgeons. These included people signing up for email accounts (gmail), Facebook as well as Twitter accounts. There were people also interested in sharing sites such as Flickr and Youtube with also the occasional person asking about blogging. Below we see Clive, one of our Social Media Surgeons, helping a couple with an email account that could be used for their small business.

The surgeons included some people who had previously learned about using social media from Marlon.

Judging from this tweet surgeon and patient appreciated it (which is what we find here).

Birmingham’s Central Surgery carries on in a new venue tomorrow night. The folk at The Studio have kindly offered to host it. For more please look here.