We’ve a couple of speakers coming along to give us the low down – Talk About Local and Philip John (The Lichfield Blog).

Philip said: ” Hyperlocal generally refers to online news reporting on a much more local level than other local media such as newspapers.

“Such sites often focus on a small community, sometimes just a few streets and have a more engaging readership as a result. It’s generally the community themselves that run hyperlocals, out of a passion to become more involved in their community.”

Philip will be covering how a hyperlocal effects and can provide value to us all whether we are public sector, commerical organisation, individual or community group.

Michael Rawlins and Will Perrin (former tech advisor to Tony Blair) will also be at SMC. Will is going to tell us the hyperlocal story on why he set up Talk About Local and Michael will tell us why he believes: “Hyperlocal should be run by the local community for the community” and his experience of running the Pits ‘n’ Pots hyperlocal site.

There’ll be a chance for a group discussion before we take the chance to revert to the informal networking of the previous meet.

Thanks to sponsorship from Fish Media there will be a tab for drinks (first come, first served until the money runs out) so come along and join us at Deda from 6.30pm on Tuesday 8 December.

You don’t need to register but it is useful to get an idea of who might be coming so if you haven’t already please drop me a note on Twitter, comment here, or on the Facebook group. Everyone is welcome so please don’t be shy (and spread the word)!

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.

Ok, maybe not fully mapping Derby and maybe it’s a bit rough round the edges, but this should give you a good idea of the impact of Social Media in Derby and possibly inspire you to do something similar or even better?

A fair few Saturdays ago, I was bored and thought I’d see how much of Derby was on Facebook. I began to search for key areas (political wards or neighbourhood names), issues, people, places etc and plotted them as nodes on a Mind Map using MindMeister.

I tweeted to Tim that I was doing this and invited him to collaborate. It grew exponentially as we both edited it live and quickly moved beyond Facebook into something more indicative of the many sites in use by or known to both of us.

You can view the map for yourself below and draw your own conclusions about what it tells us. Everything on the map is freely available to public searches. All we have done is carry out those searches for you and put them all in one place.

A Mind Map illustrating the extent of usage of Social Media in Derby, UK.

City of Derby Social Media Map by Paul Cole and Tim Cooper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

The map was briefly made available at LocalGovCamp in a session I ran entitled, “Are we listening?”. This session and the discussions it raised have been covered very well already by Sarah Lay, Jack Pickard and Pete Ashton. All posts are definitely worth a read.

I had hoped to have a hyperlink (the small arrow) from each node taking you straight to each web page. Unfortunately, these have only (mostly) been added to Facebook so far.

You should be aware that there is an issue with the links to most of the Facebook Groups as I incorrectly pasted the link to the search results for the group and not the actual group address. This will take me a while to rectify, if I do it at all. To get to a Facebook group with a faulty link, simply copy and paste the exact title as it appears on the node into the search bar on Facebook. Links I have added for Facebook Pages and other sites should be OK.

The map is presented as is, that is, as it was created on that day. It may not be organised perfectly or logically, but it does its job as far as I’m concerned.

The simple experience of searching for and finding what is out there was a good learning experience in itself. You can take what you want from it or try it for yourself in your city or area.

Please share your thoughts with us.

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.

A while ago, Paul Cole and I collaborated to document what we could find about social media activity in Derby. We did this ‘virtually’ using an online mind mapping tool called Mind Meister. Robin Good has published a useful guide to social media tools using Mind Meister, which you can view by using the following link: www.mindmeister.com/12213323.

What became apparent to us while compiling this information is the extent to which businesses, organisations and – perhaps more importantly – the public in the area are using social media. The largest area of activity is on Facebook where we found numerous groups that have been set up on issue-based subjects.

Few businesses and public sector organisations in the city have pages on Facebook, but there are a growing  number using Twitter. However, few of these are actively engaging with customers. One notable exception to this, based on my own experience, is Derby Quad (@derbyquad) whose customer service via the Twitter service has been excellent.

[Edit: I've now created a separate page for all of the social media links, which you can visit by clicking on the 'Links' page from the navigation menu or by using the following link: http://socialmediacafe.org.uk/links/]

Let us know if you know of other local organisations using Twitter and Facebook (or other services) and we’ll add them to the list.

Sarah Lay, Paul Cole and I took part in LocalGovCamp held in Birmingham a few weeks back. It was a great opportunity to meet with other people from all sectors to discuss the opportunities and challenges presented for our organisations in using social media.

As a direct result of attending that event, Sarah, Paul and I discussed the possibility of creating something similar in the East Midlands; Derby and Derbyshire in particular. This site and the Social Media Café event are the first fruits of those ideas.

Sarah initially set up a Facebook group and a site on Ning. Unfortunately, some people in the public sector (and other sectors too) do not have access to social media sites from work. We decided to create our own website in an attempt to overcome this.

I hope you’ll be able to join us at Derby Quad on 1st October. In the meantime, why not leave us a comment?