[Update: the sessions are fully booked now but we're looking to do more in the future.]
As part of Digital Birmingham’s Get Into Digital month I’m running a couple of blogging workshops on June 26th. Titled Community Blogging they’re aimed at those members of society who just aren’t gonna take it anymore and want to do something about it. Community action groups, single-issue campaigners, youth outreach types, neighbourhood associations, anything where there’s a passionate core of people looking to inform and engage the rest of their community.
The idea is twofold. On the one hand these people and groups can, I feel, really benefit from blogging tools. They have a lot of information which they need to get out there in a structured manner, they can benefit from the commenting and discussion aspects of a blog and they can connect with similar campaigns elsewhere in the world. It’s a bit of a no brainer really that they should be on the internet in a much more efficient and effective way than most of them currently are.
On the other hand part of Digital Birmingham’s mission is to get people using digital tools in the city. When they approached me about doing “something with blogging” we worked through some ideas like getting 10 families across the city to blog their lives for a month but it all seemed a bit short term and tokenistic. Once the project was over what long term effect would it have? But by targeting those people who are more likely to grab hold of blogging and see it for what it can be, those who actually have a use for it, there’s a good chance that they’ll act as potent seeds in their communities and, if you’ll excuse the evangelistic terminology, spread the good word.
It goes back to a notion I picked up from Joey deVilla in March at SXSW when I asked him about how Toronto had gotten such an active social media scene (or words to that effect) with the idea of applying this to Birmingham. He told me they’d gotten the loudest, most passionate people together, empowered and enthused them and let them go off to do what they do best. That’s sort of what I’m thinking about with these courses. It’s about building a vibrant and sustainable online community in Birmingham that both reflects and empowers the people that live here by giving them a voice.