What we got up to at Stourbridge Social Media Surgery today
A few photos and short stories from today’s Social Media Surgery in Stourbridge. Debbie and Nicki from Home-Start Dudley were supported to gain confidence and knowledge about how Facebook and Twitter work. With support from Melissa from Healthwatch Dudley they talked through how to set up a private Facebook Group for Home-Start volunteers to connect with each other, share useful information and ideas and support each other. Nicki talked to Nick Booth about the experience of social media surgery being different to traditional training. She said:
It’s good to get individualised support that is tailored to our level of understanding and the needs of our organisation. This will give us more confidence to use social media, as trustees of an organisation it feels like a massive door opening to us and the possibilities are endless and will help our organisation to move forward in a positive way!
Jon from Dudley District Citizens Advice Bureau bought Lorraine and Carl with him so they could learn together how to use Twitter in their different roles. Deepak from Dudley Libraries Service showed them the ropes, and helped them understand how to reach more people, have conversations using people’s Twitter handles, and how to use hashtags.
Steph from Podnosh and first-time surgeon Karl helped Alison from Stourbridge Street Pastors to understand the relevance of Facebook and Twitter to her work, and how to link them and engage with more people.
Becky from Dudley CVS worked with Nick Booth from Podnosh to find out ways she can help local community groups and voluntary organisations to use and develop data skills and use Open Data. They are meeting next week to blog about this, so we’ll share their learning here too. In the meantime you can see what other local groups have been learning from Podnosh about Open Data on this blog.
(I’ve created this entire blog post on a WordPress App on my iPhone while on a bus. It was easier than I thought, though I need to figure out how to add alternative text for the images I upload, a basic accessibility consideration.)