The next Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe is on Friday 16th July from 10am-12pm and you can sign up using EventBrite.

We’re returning to the venue at Coventry University’s Institute for Creative Enterprise or ICE – More venue information here.

We will be back in the Brick Room where we were for April’s CWSMC and if you want to stay on and enjoy ICE in the afternoon then you can with Free Fridays, where anyone can come down, use the free wifi and coffee after CWSMC.

June CWSMC round-up

Last month CWSMC had a great session at the  University of Warwick’s International Digital Lab. As well as the usual chat and coffees, there was a great talk from Coventry City Council about their Facebook page.

Amongst other things, we learned that it attracted more visitors than the council’s own website, and its non-Cov fans (even 52 from Slough!) mean the page is a good opportunity to paint a positive image of the area to outsiders.

There is an excellent write up of some notes from the session by Steve Woodward and there was plenty of Twitter chatter too.

The full talk was also Qikked by Steve Rumsby, so if you’d like to watch it, set aside about half an hour and have cup of tea  and a biscuit to reproduce some of the CWSMC experience.

Thanks as always to our hosts at Warwick University and the Digital Lab, especially Ellie Lovell for making it possible and our guest speakers too.

PS Data manglers event alert – The West Midlands Regional Observatory will be holding an event on the 15th July about Open Data: Challenges and Opportunities. From their website:

This event will set out the challenges and opportunities for public bodies, particularly local authorities, in achieving this. The event will concentrate on recent policy developments in the morning session and on practical application in the afternoon, through sharing examples of best practice and innovation.

(via Andrew MacKenzie)

This month’s Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe is on Friday 18th June from 10am-12pm – you can sign up using EventBrite.

We’ll be at the amazing International Digital Lab as this month we are being hosted and sponsored by the  University of Warwick (find out more about the venue and how to get to it here).

***UPDATE*** More info about parking etc

Guest speakers

Continuing our fantastic run of speakers (last month’s report to follow) we’re really pleased to welcome the eCommunications team at Coventry City Council who recently picked up the Digital & Social Media gold award as part of the LGComms local government awards.

The award was for the Coventry Facebook page, which reported school closures and service disruptions across the city during the snow earlier in the year. The Facebook service has attracted over 12,000 fans since November 2009.

The team will be talking about their award-winning service at the next Cafe event, which will have the usual mix of coffee, pastries and chat where anyone involved in digital can share stories and make connections.  As always the event is free thanks to our sponsors, so if you’ve never been to a social media cafe before, come along and if you’re a regular, helps us check out the new venue.

For all the latest information follow @cwmsc on Twitter and don’t forget to sign up now on EventBrite

Of course you can turn up on the day, but it does help to plan for refreshments.

April’s Coventry & Warwickshire Social Media Cafe is our first on the road and (giant ash cloud permitting) is being kindly hosted and sponsored by Coventry University’s Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE). We’ll be in the Brick Room tomorrow (Friday 16th April) from 10am-12pm  More venue information here. You can sign up now on EventBrite or just turn up on the day.

We’re delighted to have Christian Payne (better known as @documentally on Twitter) as our first guest speaker.

He’s a photographer, videographer and all round media maker who specialises in getting brilliant stuff done using the power of social media. What Christian doesn’t know about social media, probably isn’t worth knowing, so we’re glad he’s visiting his alma mater of Coventry University to chat, drink coffee and eat pastries with us.  You can of course  find out more about him at his website or better still have a chat with him in meatspace tomorrow.

Also CWMSC’s very own Paul Squires will be appearing on BBC CWR’s breakfast show with Tim and Marian to talk about social media, the election and of course CWSMC – so tune in or catch it on the iPlayer. See you then.

(orginal image by Jingdianqiche adapted under Creative Commons)

After an enjoyable March Cafe, the CWSMC is about to make good on our promises to cover both Coventry AND Warwickshire!

The plan is to keep our base at the Court Street Creative Arches for regular events (so we’ll be back in May, July etc) and on alternate months, go elsewhere.

Our first stop is Coventry University’s Institute for Creative Enterprise or ICE.

They are kindly hosting and sponsoring the April CWSMC on Friday16th from 10am-12pm in the Brick Room. More venue information here. You can sign up now on EventBrite. Paul Squires and Dom Breadmore explain more…

For all the latest information follow @cwmsc on Twitter and don’t forget to sign up now on EventBrite

Of course you can turn up on the day, but it does help to plan for the all important pastries.

PS we are hoping for a surprise guest – watch out for tweets later

February’s Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe is back tomorrow, Friday 19th February from 10am-12pm (sign up via EventBrite).

This month we are kindly sponsored by Karen Thomas who is responsible for her prolific anti-bullying, anti-discrimination campaigning and emotional support service. She’s everywhere from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and will be at the cafe tomorrow.

The venue is the Court Street Creative Arches and the full address and postcode for Sat Nav etc is:

6 Creative Railway Arches
Court Street
Leamington Spa
CV31 2DW

For all the latest information follow @cwmsc on Twitter and don’t forget to sign up now on EventBrite

PS. Don’t forget to put your glad-rags on, as they are shooting a promotional video for the Creative Arches and you could play a starring role

Thanks to everyone who came to last month’s Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe – including first-timers Neil from Xolve (who has office space in Rugby that he is interested in ‘warm-desking’ out – get in touch with him for more details) and the guys from GreenGeek in Sydenham who run a not-for-profit computer recycling company. Thanks to Ruralnet Futures for sponsoring the event (have a sneak preview of their latest website for the Central Warwickshire Villages LEADER programme).

December has turned out to be crazy busy month for all involved, so we’re giving the Cafe a Christmas break, but will be back in 2010 on Janury 15th 10am-12pm – Sign-up now and if you’d like to sponsor the event (covering the cost of coffees and delicious Olive Garden pastries) then get leave a comment or get in touch via twitter or email.

In the mean time have a great Christmas and a very social New Year!

The November Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe is taking place tomorrow, 20th November 2009 and this month is sponsored by Ruralnet Futures.

Based in Warwickshire, Ruralnet Futures brings a wealth of experience of web design, consultancy, training and development to help clients and build and use social media and other online tools.

The event is free to attend at the Court Street Creative Arches in Leamington from 10am.  Please sign-up if you’re able to come and we look forward to seeing you there.

In case you haven’t been to a social media cafe before it’s a place to meet up with other local people working in the public, private and charity sectors to talk about what they do and how they do it, online and offline.

Conversations are varied and there are lots of chats about social media – but this is not a geek-fest, it’s about getting people away from their desks for a couple of hours to mix and mingle.  If you’re completely new to social media, or don’t know where it might fit in with your business, organisation or freelance work – pop in and have a coffee, there will be someone around to chat things over with you.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow and don’t forget to spread the word about CWSMC.

This month’s Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe is taking place on Friday 20th November and we’re looking for a sponsor to follow in the footsteps of Screen WM and PickleJar Communications who sponsored the first two events.

We just ask to cover the costs of delicious coffees and pastries supplied by the Olive Garden Cafe (about £100) in return we can give you  lots of thanks, mentions and posts on the website and Twitter and a chance to say a few words to a captive audience on the day.

If you’re interested in sponsoring this month or a future cafe, then either:

• leave a comment
• email info@cwsmc.com
• or drop a tweet to @cwsmc

We’d love to hear from you and don’t forget to Sign-up for this month’s cafe.

We’re really pleased to have Pickle Jar Communications as our sponsor for the next Coventry and Warwickshire Social Media Cafe which will be taking place on October 16th 2009.

Pickle Jar Communications is a communications consultancy with specialist expertise in new and social media communications, that was established in 2007 by former University of Warwick employee and Head of Research-TV, Tracy Playle.

The event is free to attend at the Court Street Creative Arches in Leamington from 10am.  Please sign-up if you’re able to come and we look forward to seeing you there.

At about 9.30am on Friday 18th September  there were some mildly nervous Rays (Smith and Betty) and Pauls (Squires and Henderson) getting ready for the first CWSMC. But we needn’t have been worried as we saw the ‘on our way’ tweets coming in and by 10am there was already a great hum of chatter going on as everyone made their assault on the pastry mountain.

The turn out for the first cafe was everything and more than we had hoped for.  About people 25 came, chatted, made contacts and found out more about what is going on around social media in Warwickshire. A really good mix of people from local government, universities, arts organisations, private companies and freelancers came and we are so happy that everyone gave it a punt for the first one.

We kept formalities to a minium (and didn’t want to interrupt the chat and networking) but the few official words we did say were captured below (and broadcast live on Qik by Dom Breadmore)

Some of the other comments that were tweeted

@amy_clarkeuk:

Back in office after the first ever coventry / warwickshire social media cafe – and what a very good cafe it was too! #cwsmc

@matthawthorne:

Good to meet @getgood, @kazThomas at #cwsmc today. Will be going again for sure. Thanks @paulhenderson.

and @katehughes:

I very much enjoyed @cwsmc this morning. Met some lovely folk and got poked in the eye by @paulsq. That’s all I look for in an event really.

Big thanks go to Ray Smith and Warwick District Council for the use of the Court Street Creative Arches (and we’ll be back for the next CWSMC in October), Ray Betty and Konnex Networks for WiMax-ing us up, ScreenWM for sponsoring the coffees and (endless) pastries supplied by The Olive Garden, and Sarah Allen for putting is in touch with Ray and making it all possible.

Thanks to everyone who came especially Philip John all the way from Lichfield (enabling us to compare notes with his social media cafe) and Nicky Getgood from Birmingham with her Talk About Local hat on.

What next?

Well can’t promise to poke your eye out, but we are definitely making this a regular event. So if you came and enjoyed it,  tell your colleagues and friends (especially if they’re not on Twitter) that the 3rd Friday of every month is going to be the date in the diary for the CWSMC.  We’ll be back at the Creative Arches again for the next one on October 16th 10am-12pm.

Sign up on the wiki or just turn up on the day- look forward to seeing you and thanks again for making it such a great event.

• More pictures on Flickr (tag your pictures cwsmc if you took any on the day )
• Tweets tagged #cwsmc