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’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)!