Tagged: birmingham

bsmc

Birmingham Social Media Cafe #bsmc 26th Feb

I’ve missed the last few Birmingham Social Media Cafes. This has been a mix of oversleeping (once) and being slightly put off by being cornered by estate agents wanting advice on using Twitter at past meetups.

This week, however, I decided to go along, get stuck in and learn the art of polite mingling!

It was a very different social media cafe, and a great one too! Paul Bradshaw (@paulbradshaw) brought along a load of his BA Online Journalism students who didn’t take long to get stuck into things. Bear with guys, it gets easier, trust me!

It was hosted by @dandavies, representing the Meshed Media, and kindly supplying the coffee!!

Also there, 2 women from West Midlands Police marketing department, keen to find out more about social media and how it can help them connect with the public.(I tapped them up for potential live blogging and events coverage, fingers crossed something comes of it!)

I also had a great Apple-themed chat with @jigar_patel  – now I started it by gushing about my new Iphone, but he’s inspired me to purchase some kind of MacIbookpro type thing … maybe in the summer!

Also had a good old chat with Jennifer from the Social Media MA!

Great – for me, BSMC has got it’s mojo back!

csi

CSI Experience comes to Birmingham

As a fan of the TV show I jumped at the chance to have a sneak preview around a new CSI Experience exhibition at Bullring Birmingham.

It’s taken over the old space left vacant by the departure of Borders Books, so there is certainly a lot of space!

To be honest, I was expecting a museum style tour of the show, the science behind it and the characters. In fact, it’s way way better than that. The exhibition lets YOU become a CSI investigator. There are 3 crime scenes, which you study, take notes and then go into various labs to try to solve the crime … and there are things you might miss to be meticulous!

Oh, and if you solve the crime you get a certificate to prove you are genuine geek! (which, it appears I am)

This is a really interesting exhibition, and a lot of fun … check out the pictures and a video interview below!

Slideshow

Created with flickr slideshow.

Video Intevew

Election Question Time Special in Birmingham: live blogging tonight from 7pm

As part of a series of pre-election session around the UK, Birmingham will tonight host a Question Time special at the City Inn.

On the panel:

Andrew Mitchell – Shadow Secretary of State for International Development
Jacqui Smith – MP for Redditch and former Home Secretary
John Hemming – MP for Birmingham Yardley
Mark Reeves – Former Editor of the Birmingham Post
Iain Dale (Chair)

Grafitti + Twitter = Tweefiti

As part of a new Birmingham arts project, this weekend that will see one of the city’s grafitti artists spraypaint inspirational messages send in on Twitter.

The theme is “life feels better”, and Aerosol Arabic will be outside Bullring shopping centre on Saturday and Sunday creating a unique piece of art from tweets sent into the @lifefeelsbetter account, which will also appear on a Twitterfall.

It’s a nice idea, and a nice push for Twitter. However, do enough people use Twitter yet? We all know Facebook is the behemoth of the social networking world (350 million users and counting), but have enough people adopted its more minimalist rival? It’s big news in the media/tech world, but every one else? A lot of my friends join Twitter, then leave again saying “I don’t understand it” or the classic “it’s not as much fun as Facebook”.

It’s a great idea, however, and it will be interesting to see the response it gets

The Bullring Arts Project launched on 25th January 2010 and Brummies are being encouraged to send in their pictures, artwork, writing or music to http://www.lifefeelsbetter.co.uk