After the success of West By West Midlands last month (which I watched happen with delighted envy from across the Atlantic) the big question was when it would happen again. A few things have clicked together and you can put June 28th in your diary. It’ll take place at The Cross in Moseley as part of the Moseley Festival and Shona will be posting all the info soon. (Update: It’s to be called Mozcamp. Here’s the blog and Twitter.)
Meanwhile Charlie Pinder has picked up on the general chatter in the city and has set up a blog and Twitter account to work towards running a BarCamp in the classic model. My understanding is this’ll be more about technology and coding than social media which should complement WXWM (or whatever it winds up being called) nicely. Charlie’s gathering interest at the moment so leave a comment on the blog or drop her a line if you’re keen to get involved. Or just keep tabs on the blog.
As for me, I’m working out what my role could be in all this. Right now I think an overview would be useful, keeping tabs on what’s emerging and linking things together, so I’ll be doing that here. If you’re doing an event that has some kind of online community attached to it drop me a line. And then, once I’ve got my head around what’s going on and what’s needed, I’ll start developing some kind of support resource to help the likes of Shona and Charlie. How does that sound?
The “technology and coding” oriented Multipack already meets in Birmingham.
I’ve previously suggested some form of umbrella group, or brand, with which all such events in Birmingham can be associated.
@Andy I’m really not sure about an umbrella group for “all” such events in Birmingham. A number of umbrella groups, yes, but trying to associate all of them, no.
The thing is, we already have association through the social networks. You, for example, can feed ideas from your tech communities to your bird communities.
I’m pretty sure that anything an umbrella group can provide in terms of information / support / inspiration is already available in the social graph. It just needs to be realised.
But, as ever, I’m happy to be proved wrong. If someone wants to try running an umbrella group (even if it’s just a short term thing to get things moving) that’d be great.
@Pete (belatedly), by “all such events” I was thinking of the tech/ Soc Med pool, not birding or whatever; and I really was tending more to a brand than a group – certainly nothing with meetings, a commitete or suchlike. More like a badge, or a hashtag.