WEBVTT

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We help people in deprived or isolated communities

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around the country to find a voice online for their community,

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so that they can talk about what they are doing to the wider world

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and not be smothered by local political interests or local newspapers.

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We help people find a powerful find a powerful

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respected voice online. Now, we set up

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in Birmingham basically because of things like this

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Social Media Cafe. When I was going round the country a

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few years ago, raising money to try and start a business,

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it was coming to Birmingham and seeing this fantastic

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underground social media scene that goes on here in Birmingham,

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whether it's huge activity that goes on on flickr, or on facebook

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or in twitter, or in the amazing hyper local blogs here in Birmingham.

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And so that why we raised money here and decided to set up here.

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Birmingham Social Media Cafe Birmingham, you are in Wired,

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in the recent edition of Wired. I don't know if anyone has

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spotted that. It has a big league table of social media meet ups

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around the country and Birmingham is sitting in there slightly

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above the middle for the size of the SMC. I've been working

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in Birmingham for about 2 and half years, it's been a fantastic

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experience. I've worked with quite a few people here in the room.

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You are very lucky to have some excellent academic

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institutions here that are not just leading in the UK, but leading

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in the world in issues such as date and local journalism.,

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around BCU in particular. In fact Paul has brought some of

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his students and we have academics like Dave,

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not really an academic though Dave. Dave: "Blogger first"

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Yes, blogger first, academic second. And we always happy

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to talk to anyone as a business. Nicky Getgood is here. Karen who

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works with me. We have the remarkable Mike Rawlins. Give us

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a wave Mike. I know you want to. Michael, it turns out is an

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artists model! If you see his latest blog post, he's an artists model

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from his early work on the internet. You'd never know just looking at him.

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He was younger and more beautiful I think then.

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Mike: "Just think yourselves lucky it wasn't Lucian Freud"

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We are always happy to talk to anyone who wants to

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to get into the hyperlocal scene, who wants to find out about

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self publishing on the internet. We try and run as a public

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service business, which is that we raise money

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from big corporate clients and any surplus we make goes

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back into helping people in communities or just helping

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the scene as a whole. We are very interested over the next

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few months in working with people in Birmingham on

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new forms of local media ownership, very interested in seeing

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if we can create some sort of media co-operative here in

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Birmingham genuinely owned by the people, broadly based that

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has nothing whatever to do with traditional local television or

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the radio, but it comes from the web but is owned by the

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people that create the content. And that's about it really

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I'm around if you want to talk to me about anything at all.

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Or any of the team. And just get on and enjoy the coffee.

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And thank you to Karen by the way for organising this

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and persevering.