You can now book a place for the next York Social Media Surgery. It will take place on March 1, between 5:30 – 7 p.m. at the Priory Street Centre in York. Booking is free and can be done via the eventbrite website. If you plan to attend please try and make a booking as it helps us keep track of numbers.
Promoting the surgery: If you want to promote the surgery, you can download leaflets (in colour and black and white) designed by the very talented @hyggedesigns. They are available for download here.
Surgeons: This time round, the following surgeons will be present. If you would like to volunteer, please get in touch with me via twitter @gopaldass or you can contact me atabhay dot adhikari at gmail dot come.
York Social Media Surgery
March 1, 2010
5:30 – 7 PM
Priory Street Centre
15 Priory Street
York, YO1 6ET
Yep folks, it is time for another Social Media Surgery in York. These surgeries are aimed at charities and community groups in the city – to assist them to use the www (particularly social media and web 2.0) in a variety of constructive contexts. They are held in a relaxed, informal setting (no speeches, presentations or jargon). The ‘Patients’ sit down with a surgeon for a one-to-one Q&A session. These sessions usually last between 15-25 minutes, so that every patient gets a chance to speak to a couple of surgeons.
I help organize these surgeries along with @CMoz and @JohnPopham. The first one was conducted last year in November and went rather well. We had around 10 different charities attend and around 12 surgeons volunteered their time.
Attend: You can follow updates on York’s Social Media Surgery on twitter by searching for the #YorkSMS hash-tag. I am in the process of setting up an eventbrite website, if you or anyone you know would like to attend, please book a ticket. These are free, but if you book before hand it helps us keep track of numbers.
Volunteer: If you would like to volunteer as a surgeon, please get in touch with me via twitter – @gopaldass or you can drop me a line at the following mail address: abhay dot adhikari at gmail dot com.
I am hopeful that this blog will survive the first few posts simply because the intentions behind setting it up aren’t all that grandiose (or so I would like to think).
For some time now, I have not been at ease with the ubiquitous presence of social-media platforms. The prevailing sense of urgency attached to them is quite tiresome, which is why I am keen to shed the have thought must tweet style of functioning. It denies me the moment of reflection which is intrinsic to my professional and personal lives. Consequently I have begun to feel a bit like a rudderless boat.
But then again, I have no one else to blame. It was never necessary to broadcast myself through endless and often meaningless status message updates, tweets, pokes and so on. In fact I miss the days when a thought would strike, fade into the subconscious only to emerge in another avatar a few hours, days, weeks or even months later.
Before proceeding further, I would like to clarify that I am not against social media in any sense whatsoever. In fact this medium has lead to some interesting friendships and professional collaborations. It has given me access to people who would have never taken notice of small fish like me. On the whole, it is a tremendously exciting medium which affords much spontaneity. But I would like to bring back those moments of reflection, when allow me to momentarily disconnect from the prevailing chaos and steer my thoughts/decisions in a particular direction.
It might seem strange that I want to create a record of these moments via a blog. The irony of this decision does not escape me. However, this is where I feel the power of social media platforms comes into play – their ability to contextualize information. Very often I come across examples where people ignore this aspect and end up creating endless, jumbled narratives.
So what is it that I want to achieve through this blog, I wonder. Perhaps create a neat chronological record of reflections in a variety of contexts – thoughts that spur me into action, a general commentary or a moment of inspiration. I hope to be able to delve into these at some future date when energy and enthusiasm begin to ebb. For the audience I hope the constellation of plugins, tags and categories will enable me to present information within a meaningful framework so that I can carry on making new professional acquaintances and perhaps work together.
On that note I end this post, lets see if I can restrain myself from reaching out for that twitter app on my iphone or the shortcut on my browsers bar, and instead, take a moment to reflect by myself.
