Wednesday 22nd February 2012
Social media surgeries
Orbit Business Centre, Merthyr Tydfil
8:30AM – 10:30AM session for businesses
12:00 noon – 2:20PM session for community groups

Friday 24th February
Social media surgeries
The General Offices, Steelworks Road, Ebbw Vale
9:00AM – 11:00AM session for businesses
12:30PM – 2:50PM session for community groups

As you can see above there are two dates, each of which has two sessions. You can find a whole lot more event info on the A465 site or have a look at the flyer for business and the flyer for community groups/projects. Book your free place now.

Ar hyn o bryd rydyn ni wrthi’n trefnu cymorthfeydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol ym Merthyr Tudful a Glynebwy. Gweler y digwyddiadau isod sydd yn cael eu cynnal gan A465.com, menter i bobol sydd yn byw ac yn gweithio ym Mlaenau’r Cymoedd.

Dydd Mercher 22ain mis Chwefror 2012
Cymorthfeydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol
Canolfan Busnes Orbit, Merthyr Tudful
8:30AM – 10:30AM sesiwn i fusnesu
12:00 hanner dydd – 2:20PM sesiwn i grwpiau cymunedol

Dydd Gwener 24ain mis Chwefror 2012
Cymorthfeydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol
Swyddfeydd Cyffredinol, Heol Gwaith Dur, Glynebwy
9:00AM – 11:00AM sesiwn i fusnesu
12:30PM – 2:50PM sesiwn i grwpiau cymunedol

Mae dau ddyddiad o ddau sesiwn fel y dwedais uchod. Rwyt ti’n gallu ffeindio mwy ar y wefan A465 neu cer i’r daflen i fusnes a’r daflen i grwpiau cymunedol. Archeba dy le am ddim nawr.

The Guardian published an article I wrote about the National Theatre Wales Community today in their Culture Professionals Network. Here’s the link – it’s called “The next step to social networking is to build your own online community” and looks at how the community, which is built on the Ning platform,  has been used by the theatre to develop as a company.

One of the most important ways in which the community has affected the growth of the company has been to enable them to invite participation in their development of policies and initiatives. Everything that they do is communicated through the community, including the framing of their approach to commissioning, casting and theatre criticism. The community site allows the to throw the virtual doors open and invite comments and debate about their work and the direction of theatre in Wales.

Encouraging people to participate in an online community isn’t easy – it’s not just a simple matter of ‘build it and they will come’. It takes commitment from the people at the top to set participation in online discussions by the staff as a clear priority for the work of the company, something that John McGrath the Artistic Director has given in spades.

John is one of the most committed bloggers on the site, regularly sharing his thoughts and reflections about the work of the theatre, responding to people who seek his views. We trained their staff to administer the network, to blog and to help people to feel welcome and encourage them to participate in the debates and discussions held online/

One thing is certain – setting up an online community for a major national institution has been an exciting process and has brought some changes to the way that the company operates – it changes the demands on the staff team, requires training and guidance and it changes the feeling that people have about the institution – hopefully people have felt more involved and listened to.ask for his thoughts and leading debates about where theatre is going – see for example this recent discussion on the shape of political theatre.

There is still a lot to do for the company to realise all the opportunities to connect and communicate with the arts community in Wales that this resource offers them, but they have made a tremendous start and we wish them all the best as they continue to develop their online community, and the theatre community as a whole in Wales.

Tim has blogged on the Guardian about why he is writing the play and I have been commissioned by NTW to design the multiplatform element of the show. There is a group on NTW’s community site (built by NativeHQ) where the show and the issues around it are being discussed.

More will be revealed as we develop the show, which will open in Bradley Manning’s own Haverfordwest school in April, but for the moment, all I will say is that I’ve been thinking about how a live theatre performance can interact with a global audience through the internet, and how it can move beyond the broadcast thinking of the approach taken by National Theatre Live 

We are helping the Size of Wales with their environmental campaign. Check out the video to find out more. Our work is focused on using social media to raise awareness and money.

Please leave a comment on the YouTube vid which will help to boost its ranking. You can also like the Facebook page to follow the latest news. For each Like, Size of Wales’ partners will contribute £1 to the fund.

More info on this project to follow shortly.

The presentation was livestreamed, and the video is available online here. If you’re interested, the software I used for the slideshow is Prezi.

Rydyn ni newydd dechrau tudalen NativeHQ ar LinkedIn. Rydyn ni’n wrthi’n profi’r gwasanaeth fel busnes er mwyn ymchwilio ei werth. Tanysgrifia os wyt ti eisiau dilyn ein cofnodion ynglyn a’r defnydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol yn y byd go iawn.

This was a bit of a freeform talk about social media. There are no bullet points! Its purpose was to inspire people to think about creative use of digital media. Some quick notes follow.

Platforms & Practices: the general point was that it’s not enough to say you’re using tool X, a platform such as YouTube or Twitter or the web itself. I want to highlight the question of practices – what are you doing and how is it benefitting your work? If there is no practice then you are just playing with the platform, which is fine as long as you’re aware of that. The two need to be there together if you have a hope of any work-related strategy.

Collaboration: I deliberately began with Google Docs as a suggested improvement over email attachments for some situations. It’s an example of online collaboration with colleagues on documents, an easy thing that gives us a hint of what could be possible with bolder forms of collaboration. (At the bar afterwards someone mentioned that true collaboration is about working with people from different disciplines which was a good point. I could have added here that it’s about the practice as well as the platform of Google Docs. But we had to start somewhere.)

The cloud: it just means servers. I’m personally uncomfortable with the term ‘cloud computing‘. Beware of the buzz phrase.

Wikipedia: another glimpse of what is possible when people use social software to collaborate. Also available in Welsh, Spanish, German, Japanese, etc.

Ravelry: a social network for knitting enthusiasts. But we know that hobbies are big on the web.

Here Comes Everybody: recommended book by Clay Shirky, about easier group formation

giffgaff: just one example of a business which nurtures an online ‘community’ to fix problems and cut customer service and marketing costs. Some of the community members know more than the staff about aspects of real world use. I really wanted to emphasise that this is not merely Social Media Marketing. Mobile phone networks are an interesting area – they play to the network, including friends and family deals. The network effects keep people using the system and give value to people according to their connections/friends/etc.

National Theatre Wales Community: we worked on the strategy and trained the team. A very interesting project, with some unexpected outcomes in terms of how people participated.

1 / 9 / 90 guideline: there are wisdoms around online communities and participation. You can gather metrics on many things that are important to you, much more than just member count.

OnePeople documentary: commissioned to celebrate Jamaica’s 50th anniversary of independence. A superb example of remix and social video. Maybe the fact they’ve booked Kevin MacDonald to edit the DIY videos is the most conventional

Remix by Lawrence Lessig, another recommended book

YouTube: there is a culture of YouTube. It can be about you and your DIY video, made on a phone camera or Flipcam. It can be a mistake to hire an expensive crew with professional editing. It doesn’t have to be about broadcast quality or production values.

It’s all about your second video: just a thought that you should probably go through the process of making a short video (maybe just a conversation about your subject or industry, forget about overt marketing pitches) and uploading it. Then you have gone through the ‘initiation process’. It’s the beginning. You might get a comment, etc.

Platforms & Practices is also about play. You can experiment on a personal account. This informs your practices as a company.

There it is, there wasn’t much time to elaborate further but a lot of hints that people will have found useful – I hope.

This video is a talk by Euan Semple at the Do Lectures in Aberteifi and is called Why social network mess can benefit your business. (Embedding doesn’t seem to be encouraged so you’ll have to visit the Do Lectures site instead.)

Semple only partly answers the title question, in my opinion, but well worth a watch for his anecdotes about getting humans communicating properly in a big organisation.

Collaboration has been a good use of digital media for a number of years. But I suppose it’s inevitable that ‘feeling the squeeze’ is given as a key reason for looking at these collaboration opportunities, perhaps enough to bring what might have been perceived as a niche topic into the pages of the Guardian.

The emphasis in the article is mainly on collaboration beyond the walls of your company – with other organisations – although I’d argue that better collaboration can bring benefits within the team of an organisation too.