Tomorrow (Thursday) sees me meeting with Axel Andén from the Swedish magazine Medievärlden. He’s on a mission to find out about Birmingham’s social media and blogging scene and why it’s so much more vibrant than elsewhere.
Which is lovely, except I have no idea. It’s a bit like saying “the way you Brummies use buses to get from one part of the city to another is really intriguing” or “you mean you have chairs and tables in pubs so you can sit down and chat?” This stuff is normal to me, probably because I’m in the middle of it and, thanks to having made Birmingham the focus of my various projects, have nothing to compare it to.
So I need some help here lest Axel go away with a load of rambling from me that amounts to “I dunno really” and a shrug.
What, if anything, is Birmingham doing right social media wise? What can others learn from us? When Paul Bradshaw says we’ve made “Birmingham the sort of social media haven that has people around the world scratching their heads in curiosity” is he talking sense or has he drunk too much Kool-Aid? I mean, I’d love for it to be true. It may well be true. I just have no way of measuring.
I’m meeting Axel at 2pm. The comments box is yours.
Does anyone have a way to measure this? I presume not so why not play up to the attention we’re getting. We’ve always done that I think. City of a thousand trades? Did anyone ever go check out other cities to see how we compared? If folk want to think of us as having the greatest social media scene since the beginning of social media scenes then that’s great!
At some point we’ll be asked to point at what the outcomes are from being so connected. Did it bring together disparate groups? Contribute to reducing inequality? Promote debate and change the nature of power relationships?
We have some of that so far and no doubt more will come. In the meantime maybe we need to leave observers and journalists with a tagline: ‘City of a million tweets’? ‘The worlds most digitally literate city’.
@Dave Yes, you’re right from a PR perspective of course. My problem is if it’s bullshit and we believe it then we’re building on a foundation of bullshit, a substance not known for its stability. And, frankly, one hears enough hyperbolic nonsense from Mike Whitby’s office as it is without adding more.
It’s a good job I’m not in charge of marketing the city I guess. ;)
Know what you mean but on this one I think the community own the PR and we could therefore play a bit with it. If the city spin it their way we have the tools to counter-spin.
The underlying point I guess I’m making is we should have a bit of belief in what people are saying about us on this one and go for it.
I think all this newfangled social media stuff has worked well in Brum because it sprang up at a time when there was a vacuum in Birmingham in organising lots of areas like the arts. In Brum, as opposed to cities like Manchester, there has always tended to be a bunch of creative people working on their own or in very small groups. In Manc there’s established places where the photographers or the designers get together, in Birmingham there isn’t so you get a new generation of tech literate creatives who come along and reconceptualise the process of collaboration and creativity through the loose but highly effective networks created through blogging or other social media platforms.
It’s organically grown up and I think it is something to be proud of, and something that others can learn from
Hiya Pete
just remembered -here’s my two-penneth – and this is all based on if it’s real – like if Brum does have a ‘better than most’ social media scene:
My twts:
@peteashton builds on existing real-life networks like @star_one B13, web&creative inds, Academia (BCU at least) a lot of social glue
@peteashton if real then poss: scale of city-networks are small compared to London, but big enough for critical mass and global presence?
*disclaimer: not very thought through brain dump follows*
As a Londoner who moved to Bham 15 years ago to crack the arts scene (planned to stay for 6 months) I am really aware of the scale of the city and how much easier it is to know all the main players within the city. It’s comparatively easy to get yourself on the Private View scene and find yourself schmoozing with the movers and shakers/same old faces pretty quickly. I don’t mean that to sound disparaging just a difference of scale. London is made up of multiple networks over a greater geographic space, it also has a core of international/successful scene/network. Birmingham on the other hand only really has that one main core scene which although smaller/poorer (prob) does have and international presence.
I think the SocMed scene in brum is similar, easy to get to know who’s who and to meet them in the flesh. At the same time leverages the same Creative Industries network – a lot of that local arts/creative scene participate…..now. I think the scale is more conducive to successful soc med stuff – especially one can only really manage to successfully maintain a certain number of relationships.
Another perspective is that this has been bubbling away for a long time, in one form or another, those newer to SocMed networks are joining the possibly more geeky networks which have been waiting for everyone else to get it and join in and have been involved in all sorts of online social-ising(?) for the most of that 15 yrs.. anyway that’s poss a different subject and I’m poss off on one.
So long and short of it. The environment was ripe for this stuff to go mainstream. I guess it also helps that the traditional media have taken such an interest and involved themselves.
Charlotte
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Being relatively new to the blogging world, i can only comment from initial observations which include;
- people in Brum have a genuine interest in what you do
- happy to share ideas
- meet in the real world, not just cyberweb
The key i feel to having a thriving Social Network is combining online and offline community, which is what Birmingham SocMed scene does very well.
For me it has been one of the most welcoming communities I’ve stumbled upon.
A mixed bag of enthusiasts (techys and journos on the whole). People who wanted to make connections and so found plenty. I’ve met new people at work, made some friends, understood the internet better, started blogging, got some regular readers and feel more at home in my home city with these people than I have for years. Oh and of course, have also picked up a load of contacts outside of Brum too.
But really it’s about activists. We are blessed with an incredibly creative crowd who instinctively get that they can make things happen (#twitpanto, @cluedo, @twadio. None of these are exclusive to Brummies, but the pre-existing connections make them more meaningful.
To create a geographical connection from twitter is a delight for me, it proves us all to be human enough to want to retain real life relationships.
A few quick things that come to mind:
- Ideas are allowed to be aired and discussed, with others showing genuine interest. People chip in. Stuff actually gets done.
- We don’t do barriers – not sure I can easily recall the press (aka @joannageary, @marcreeves et al)working with bloggers so readily and being receptive to learning from them.
- Trust exists.
- People follow through on their ideas and involve others.
- The little things and the big things all matter to the Brummies. There’s a wonderfully distinct lack of selfishness to the SocMed community here – people giving up time, resources, things….and not necessairly expecting anything in return.
- There’s work, play, seriousness and nonsense. Marvellous stuff.
I’m with Matt Murtagh:
“I think all this newfangled social media stuff has worked well in Brum because it sprang up at a time when there was a vacuum … so you get a new generation of tech literate creatives who come along and reconceptualise the process of collaboration and creativity through the loose but highly effective networks created through blogging or other social media platforms.”
Nicely put Matt. The city regeneration was part of that feeling for me as well. The Mailbox, Brindley Place and the Bullring woke me up to the possibilities. #bsmc etc kept me coming back
I don’t know about Manchester but I do have seven years experience of living in London. Somehow it feels too big and spread out for someone to feel particularly part of anything. Everyone seems quite transient too, as though they’re all just passing through; or else they keep to their own patches.
I’ve been in Birmingham for six years. For the first three I had a social life, then circumstances suddenly made me much more lonely (and I’m rubbish at making friends). That changed dramatically when I discovered Twitter and Birmingham Bloggers about six months ago.
The point is that as soon as I found a group I could identify with it was easy to become part of it. And that, to me, is the difference between Birmingham and London. For some reason Birmingham feels compact enough to engage in it meaningfully, and Birmingham dwellers – whether native or incomers like myself – seem to identify much more with the hard-to-define entity that is Birmingham than people in London do with their city.
In my view social media enhances and supports friendships and connections, making that those that also exist offline much richer than those that exist merely online. So it’s no surprise to me that Birmingham social media has taken off in such a way, because it is simply a means for those enthusiastic local people to operate more effectively.
Thanks all. This is really useful stuff and not just for the interview. Keep it coming!
As an “exiled native” who visits Birmingham maybe 2 or 3 times a year I have to say that the social media scene has become an excellent way to keep in touch with what is going on. I wonder how many others like me quietly view (some of) the collective blogs.
One aspect has been touched on by several comments is that there is real world contact going on. Were the early Flickr meets the starting point, I wonder? It was great to be able to connect real people to their Flickr handles.
I suspect that size has something to do with it – Birmingham is large enough to reach a “critcal mass”, but not so large that people felt they were peripheral. (EG when you hold one of your Social Media Cafe’s or Birmingham Blogger Meetups, there are not many people who will be thinking “I’d go to that if it was a bit closer to where I live…”)
As Matt says, timing probably helped as well – People became aware of the networks and tools just at the time when they were able to fulfill a need
– Neither of these are much use to other places trying to emulate Birmingham, of course.
Other things that probably helped are
- Brummie friendliness. Being a local, of course, I may be biased, but I have always found Brummies to be friendlier than people from other large cities. It doesn’t surprise me that “friendly” people are better at “social networking” .
- Created in Birmingham. The work you (and then your successors) put in to making this a success helped to forge links between those connected with the arts, and showed those who may have doubted, or floundered on their own that there was a value in this sort of network. It’s success also attracted the more mainstream media, thus helping to further evangalize Birmingham’s social media network.
So I think the recipie for another city wanting to try and promote a thriving social media network is really much the same as your guidelines published here for a business to do so. Provide a framework, encourage people to particpate, provide support etc etc
Smaller geographical area fosters sense of family/community. Plus, we’re funnier than everyone else.
I think the answer lies in reactions both here and in other conversations on this subject – people don’t see this as a big deal, because “we just do it”. And it’s that “everydayness” about our use of social media which makes us seem special, in the eyes of people for whom this is still something out of the ordinary.
As for Flickr meets being the starting pints; no – the on-line community (usenet’s birmingham.misc / uk.local.birmingham) had meets as far back as 1997 (http://is.gd/ixcP). Kids today, think they invented everything, mumble, mumble…
“points”. Freudian slip?
@Andy If we were to broaden the definition of “social media”, as I am wont to do, and include zines (DIY media, conversational, networked through postal system) then I too was going to meetups throughout the 90s. In fact in 1997 I organised (with @jezhiggins) a gathering of underground comix and Kirby nuts in Birmingham that happened to co-incide with the funeral of Princess Diana, but that’s another story.
The question is now begged, if we’ve been doing this for decades what’s so special about now? Is it that the tools and attitude we helped develop are now being adopted by (shudder) “normal people”?
I must say when I suggested the Flickrmeets it just seemed like a natural thing to me but most who came (who hadn’t been involved in some sort of mildly nerdy subculture) were shocked and amazed at the concept, doubly so when it actually worked and was a good thing.
I think Clay Shirky has something to say about “bigger is different”. Maybe that’s it. Will research.
Yeah, Shirky calls it “More is Different”, in short that while we may have been doing this stuff before in our small groups, the adoption by a much larger number of people (whether they be mainstream or not) radically changes the nature of the stuff.
Annoyingly there isn’t a preview on Google Booksearch but it’s loosely mentioned via this search.
Think about the difference between the usenet meets of 97 and the brumbloggers meets of 2008. The’re essentially the same thing but am I wrong in thinking they’re different somehow?