You’d be forgiven for thinking Birmingham was the centre of the Social Media world but it turns out there are people in other cities who are also doing interesting things with this stuff. On Thursday a bunch of us are heading down to that London for Amplified08, a gathering of the tribes sort of event that aims to bring the various networks that have cropped up over the last couple of years together so that connections might be made. At the very least it’ll be fun and interesting but potentially this could develop into our own SXSWi.
Due to capacity issues there were only 200 places for Amplified so a load of people can’t come along but judging by those who are going there shouldn’t be a shortage of reportage as, by their nature, they can’t help sharing. There’s already a fantastic amount of stuff on the Amplified blog and wiki and much more will doubtless follow. But more importantly Amplified is intended to be the start of something and while the first one is taking place in London I believe it’s going to be a traveling circus, dropping down at cities across the country to maximise the variety of input.
Eventually, of course, it’ll settle somewhere and I’d love that somewhere to be Birmingham. I know we’ve got the people on the ground to make it work here. Whether we’ve got the civic leadership with the capacity to understand the importance of this is another matter. But one step at a time, starting with a trip to NESTA on Thursday.