Thanks to everyone who took a few minutes to complete the survey and give me ideas and feedback on what would make the Derby/shire Social Media Cafe really useful to the community.

I think a couple of interesting things to come out of it was a strong desire for social media surgeries as well as cafe meets. Surgeries have been established in other areas of the country where people with experience online in some way ’surgeons’ can offer free guidance and practical help to ‘n00bs’ in getting started. I think this would be an interesting area for the group to look at going in alongside developing the meets we have now.

So – here are the results anyway:

1. How often do you think the cafe should meet? 46% said monthly, 39% said every other month, 14 % said quarterly.
2. When should it be held? 78% said evenings, 18% said during a weekday, 3% said on the weekend
3. Where should it be held? 85% said central Derby (where all the meetings have been so far) but favourites after that were Matlock, Chesterfield, Alfreton and Belper.
4. What format should it be? 96% said they liked a mix of themed discussion and informal networking
5. Suggested topics. There was lots of interest in all of the topics listed with Digital inclusion and hard-to-reach groups online and the future of news coming out top. Other suggestions put in by recipients included; social web for social change, social media for business and commercial use, usability, writing good web content, citizen journalism and the future of social networking.
6. Would you be willing to lead a session? Nice to see that so many would and had an are they felt they could share something with the group about.
7. Sponsorship opportunities. There were a few replies saying they’d be interested in sponsoring the cafe – if this was you please get in touch with me (sarah l lay (at) googlemail (dot)com)
8. Offers of help to organise. Again, there were a few people saying yes so if this was you please (please) get in touch!
9. Anything else? Lots of good comments here and encouragement too – thanks.
10. Overwhelmingly the group voted for cake rather than death.

What now?

Well, with a full time job, final year of part-time Masters, freelancing work, a husband and three-year-old child I’m going to need A LOT of help to make the cafe / surgeries happen more often than they do at the moment.

It’s been pretty tough going to make the first three happen although very rewarding when they do.

I guess the first thing for me is finding out who is interested in happening and how then we can take it from there. It would be nice to get some dates and locations down in the diary with a rough idea of the themes or surgery opportunities and then run from there I guess.

So – over to you guys again!

But it isn’t really up to me – it’s up to you, the people who make up the SMC group! I want it to be something that is interesting and of value to you so I need your views!

I’ve put together a short survey (only 10 mainly multiple-choice) questions that I hope you will take a few minutes to complete.

I’ll keep it open for a few weeks to give you lots of time to respond and hopefully this will show what the group could or should become.

You can take the survey here and I’ll summarise the results in a few weeks time! Thanks in advance.

The conversation flowed all evening and we touched on  online communications in the public sector; digital natives and how they approach privacy and online identity; blurring of lines between professional and personal online identity; online personas and being your own brand; viral, apps and the stupidity of the internet; micro-payments and cashing in on stupidity; ConkerTU and hyperlocal; Evernote; the battery life of the iPhone; iPads, Google Buzz and Wave.

We ended the night with a round of cheesecake and a chat about body modification for online life – bionic eyes, harnessing kinetic power to extend battery life of phone, solar-power jackets etc.  All in all a great group of people and some really interesting topics and views.

Big thanks to sponsor Carl Bembridge for keeping the tab open and to Deda Derby for the venue again.

Attendees:

Sarah Lay
Carl Bembridge
Paul Cole
Nick Moyes
Richard Mackney
Martin Eady
Rob Beckett
Frieda
Emma Morley
Nik Hewitt

If I’ve missed you off or you’d rather I linked elsewhere just give me a shout

What next?

I’m going to pull together a short questionnaire in the next few days to try and find out what YOU all want from this group in the future. When we meet, how often, whether we have set topics, where we meet – and whether you want / can be involved in helping to organise or sponsor!

I’ll send the link out when the survey is open and hope that you’ll fill it in so we can get organised with the next dates asap! In the meantime if you have any thoughts on the future of smcderby just get in touch with me through Twitter, commenting here or on the Facebook group!

There will be free drinks thanks to sponsorship from Carl Bembridge and the Race for Life Get Social team are hoping to drop in to share how they are using the social web to support women taking part in this year’s events.

Generally it is a chance to network and catch up on all things digital in Derby/shire so come along! See you on Tuesday!

We had the second meeting of the Derby and Derbyshire Social Media Cafe last night. It was a great turn out and a really interesting talk about hyperlocal by Will Perrin, Mike Rawlins and Nicky Getgood of Talk About Local and Philip John of the Lichfield Blog.

Will told us all about how he got into hyperlocal blogging, showcased some of the sites they are supporting through Talk About Local and explained their model. We then had a look at The Lichfield Blog with Philip John and there were some interesting points about bloggers being accepted by or even working in collaboration with traditional media.

There were some good questions from the group about the potential legal issues of running a hyperlocal blog, the amount of time it takes, community-generated vs organisation trying to embed in a community (BBC Local or Local People were examples) and some general chat about what hyperlocals exist in Derbyshire.

It’s set me thinking about hyplerlocal again from a personal perspective, but that’s another blog for another day.

Attendee list:

I’m trying to do this from memory so if I’ve missed you off, firstly sorry and secondly just let me know so I can add you!

Sarah Lay
Richard Mackney
Colin Mitchell
Will Perrin
Nicky Getgood
Mike Rawlins
Philip John
Emily Robe
Antoinette Burchill
Darren Holden
Karen Thomas
Nick Moyes
Christine Cawthorne
Hadrian Cawthorne
Bel Harvey
Lee Flanaghan
Lauren Noakes
Sarah Barker
Colin MacKenzie
Emma Bryn-Jones
SubVee
warrenfree
cybrum

Useful links:

There were a few sites and posts mentioned in the presentations and chat which people asked me to link to from here.

You can of course find out about Talk About Local and The Lichfield Blog at their respective sites. Philip John also highlighted a couple of posts on his blog – one about some legal information and one about sharing ideas for hyperlocal sites.

I think we should all check out the sponsor’s site as well – Fish Media - kindly paid for the venue and the drinks so I’m sure we’d all like to thank them for that.

If you liked CUBE at Deda then check out the website for opening times – they’d welcome anyone who wanted to pop in for a coffee, bite to eat and use their wifi!

Tag anything from last night – tweets, blogs, photos – with #smcderby and I’ll aggregate when I get a chance!

Tell me what you want!

Planning is already underway for the next meeting – this will hopefully be earlyFebruary.

Let me know if there is a day / time which is best for you so we can try to set a date suitable for greatest number of people.

And is there a subject you want to talk about as a group like we did with hyperlocal? If no-one has anything in particular we can just have a networking session. Get in touch and let us know your thoughts on last night and what should happen next time!

Until then…

We’ll be meeting on Tuesday 8 December 2009 between 6.30 and 9pm at CUBE cafe/bar at Deda (Derby Dance Centre) on Chapel Street.

We’re going slightly different this time and will be having a more organised group discussion and presentations in the first part of the meeting. The theme for December is ‘hyperlocal’ and we’re welcoming some special guests:

• Philip John of The Lichfield Blog is coming along to let us know what this means to public, private and third sector.
• Talk About Local – helping communities to communicate and getting the voices online!

The second part of the session will revert to the informal, unorganised networking so you can chat to whoever about whatever (as long as it’s about online of course!)

I hope to see lots of you there – please leave me a comment on the blog or on @smcderbyshire or the facebook event to let me know if you can make it. Thanks to generous sponsorship from Fish Media there may even be a drink in it for you!

Look forward to seeing you all there!

So, yesterday the idea that Tim, Paul and I had to start a social media cafe in Derby (and indeed around the county) became a reality.

The first meeting of was held, informally, in the cafe bar at Quad Derby yesterday (1 October 2009)- and a big thanks must go to them for hosting us and supporting this idea.

The conversation was flowing, just as we hoped it would, and we’ve had a great response so far – there will definitely be more meets!

Some of the things I talked about with people and found really useful / interesting included: Google Sidewiki and Wave; promoting and getting organisations to move forward online; monitoring social media both from a ‘knowing your audience’ and a ROI point of view; managing reputation online; being and managing online workers and of course, how the social media cafe is going to continue.

How is the cafe going to continue?

Well, it will definitely meet again in Derby and at the moment I am thinking it might be nice to meet in early December.

I’d propose we meet in a dedicated space this time and have something more formal to head up the session – a case study or debate for example – with an informal networking event afterwards.

What I’d like people to let me know (either comment here, tweet me or through the Facebook group) is:

• What day of the week and time is best for you? A few people have said evening would be better – how do people feel about this?
• Do you have any suggestions for the ‘formal’ part? Would you like to volunteer to run a session on something?
• Is there anything else you would like to do to be involved with the cafe?

I’ll set up some sort of event listing where people can register their interest and then we can look at a suitable venue and get the date and time organised.

The Derby meet will be alongside taking the cafe out around the county. There will be a meet in Matlock on 3 December and I’d really, really appreciate hearing from anyone who would be interested in coming along or help organise this one!

Who came yesterday?

I said I’d post the attendance list up so people could follow each other and continue conversations online. If I’ve missed anyone please forgive me and give me a nudge to add you on! Most people seem to be using Twitter as their main online identity at the moment but if you have another space you’d rather use (or think we should look at) then let me know. Here’s the list:

• Sarah Lay
• Paul Cole
• Tim Cooper
• Alistair Smith
• Russell Tanner
• Ben Spiller
• Nik Hewitt
• Darren Holden
• Nigel Brunsdon
• Sophie Ballinger
• Lee Flanaghan
• Dan White
• Neil Cauldwell
• Emily Robe
• Graham Pyman
• Richard Mackney
• Simon Mackney
• Robin Morley
• Sian Hoyle
• Ruth Myring
• Jessica from Quad

I’d like to say a massive thanks to everyone who came and turned our idea into a reality. I look forward to continuing the conversations online and seeing you all (and more people too!) at the next meet.

Thank you to everyone for coming along to the Social Media Cafe event today at Derby QUAD. Lots of interesting conversations and ideas – as well as coffee and cake!

If you have any photos you’ve taken and are prepared to share with us, please leave us a comment with a link to them. We’ll then add them to the blog.

A big thankyou to QUAD for their support and allowing us to use their facilities. Here’s to the next time in Matlock.

Word is getting out – the Derby and Derbyshire Social Media Cafe launches on Thursday 1 October 2009 in the cafe bar at Quad Derby.

I’m really pleased with the interest we’ve had so far and am looking forward to chatting with so many different people (drop-in any time between 2 and 5pm!) on the day.

I would be eternally grateful if you could reply to this post or sign up on the Facebook event page if you’re intending to come along. While everything is pretty informal – the cafe won’t be exclusively for our use, you’ll have to pay for your own coffee, we have no agenda other than to meet and chat – it would be great to have an idea of numbers!

For future cafes we’ll probably make sign up easier via a wiki or eventbrite (or let us know if you know a better way) but if you’re coming just let me know!

I’d also be interested to hear from you if you’d like to have come but can’t because of the day, time or location. We can then take this into consideration as we plan future meets.

Quad has lots of advice on their website about getting to the venue by car, train, air, foot, bicycle or bus as well as information on accommodation if you want to make a night of it. Take a look at their directions page.

Look forward to seeing you on the 1 October!

I’ve been playing with the idea and various possible set-ups for a while now (not very JFDI but maybe as long as a year). I’ve really been spurred into action though by the inspiration I drew at LocalGovCamp.

I’ve spoken to a couple of other Derbyshire social media enthusiasts and the feeling from them is very positive. There is a feeling that there is a need for an informal meeting place to discuss what we’re doing or what we want to do with social media and online communications. Not only would this be great, from my point of view, for local government and our partners in Derbyshire as we don’t even have a formal setting for these discussions at the moment. But it would also be great to chat with people from the private and third sectors as we can all learn so much through sharing.

So, the rough plan at the moment is to get some time and a venue for sometime in September and start getting people on board. I want to be fairly fluid with where this goes so there will be no agendas and people bring / take what they need to and from each cafe in terms of things to share and actions. More medium term I would like to see it move around the county to take advantage and meet with people from our pretty big geographical area.

It’s still in the early stages but with summer underway the ideas are about to be solidified into plans. I’d welcome any advice from those who’ve already set up a café (particularly looking at your Birmingham), anyone in Derby/shire who wants to work with me on this and generally opinions on what folks think of this.

Watch this space for progress…