by Sarah

Just a couple of weeks to go now until Derby and Derbyshire Social Media Cafe meets for the first time. This is a bit of a round-up post of things you might be interested in and a couple of things which have merely been passing through my mind.

So – first off – Emily Robe, a social media virtual assistant from Derby, gave a great interview on Radio Derby‘s Aleena Naylor show on Wednesday 16 September. They talked about Emily’s job, how social media can help businesses and marketing through platforms such as Twitter. Emily also gave the social media cafe a mention – so if you’re checking the blog after hearing her on the radio, welcome!

If you missed it you can hear the interview on Listen Again until next Wednesday. Emily’s interview starts at about 1 hour 11 minutes in. Enjoy!

Elsewhere there have been a number of new social media cafes getting off the ground. Lichfield and Devon both held their first meetings on Tuesday 15 September and the Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe will be launching on Friday 18 September. All three are linked in the Other Social Media Cafes section of this blog.

It’s interesting to see the social media and wider community gather at these events – each run slightly differently on a localised version of the Tuttle model. I’m sure if you are in the area when one is taking place they’d be only too pleased to welcome you to a meeting – take a look at their blogs to see what they’re talking about.

Both of these things got me thinking about what the Derbyshire version of the cafe is, and perhaps even more importantly is not. I’m keen to let it grow somewhat organically from these early days but there are few things I’m pretty sure on in my head. So here is what I think the cafe is and is not. Would be great to have views from other people coming along.

It is:

• An informal networking event.
• Open to all sectors (public, private, third) and both those who work directly with online communications, digital and social media and those who want to find out more about it for personal or community use.
• Mainly for Derby and Derbyshire but welcomes others from outside these geographical boundaries as the experiences and knowledge they have to share.
• (More a it should than an is) Try to capture knowledge relevant to us all and shared at the cafe through this blog and other online spaces. Let us know if you have any ideas about how / where we could do this.

It isn’t:

• A place to sell your product – there are conferences and better places for that. The cafe is about sharing and collaborating not getting a sales pitch
• Affiliated with any one organisation or agenda.
• Over-organised. To a certain extent each meeting will be decided on by the group. I’ve set out some rough ideas about frequency and location in previous posts but it’s one of the things I’d be interested to hear your views on at the first meeting.

So, if you think I’ve missed something vital off these lists let me know. Don’t forget to pop over to Nurphy to join the introductions conversation and see what you think of the platform. Otherwise the blog is open to comments, the #smcderby stream on Twitter is running and the Facebook group and event listing is available too.

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