Well, we’re currently advertising for just that – on a 12 month contract. This is mainly because myself and another of the officers have both got maternity leave coming up.

You can see the advert on the Jobs Derbyshire website as well as a job description and person spec – you can even apply online! The JD is, well it’s a job description and doesn’t go into the minute detail of the job.

If you’ve read anything on this blog or work or follow digital comms and engagement for local government you’ll have a good idea of what it might involve: content and task management for websites, digital development, reputation management etc etc etc. You can of course drop an email (as per the job ad – not to me) for an informal chat.

So if you fancy seizing the opportunity to continue developing our digital portfolio for the good of citizens and the organisation I urge you to apply!

Closing date is 26 September.

Related posts:

1. Getting the conversation started

Generally I think the presentations were well received and hopefully will help us make some moves on updating existing policies and making use of relevant social media to evolve our online communications. There were also some really interesting discussions in both of the groups and I wanted to make a note about these.

Presentation:

Explaining what social media is was a fairly wide remit so I decided to give a very quick explanation of some of the terms commonly used, see who in the sessions used social networks and then look at online as a communication channel.

The majority of people in the sessions were members on Facebook, a few were on Twitter, a couple on LinkedIn. There were some who used Flickr and had watched videos on YouTube. Everyone used Google Maps but didn’t really customise them, no-one had heard of Ning, no-one blogged. I found this really interesting and it was useful to have discussions about preferred communication channels and why they did / didn’t use online networks.

I borrowed heavily from Al Smith’s presentation from PSF Buzz NE (find out more on his blog) and also from Dave Briggs‘ Four Steps to Social Media success presentation (which you can find out more about here). This got the groups thinking and in the first session we had lots of discussion about how / who and why was going to monitor online conversations about the organisation online.

In the second group the discussion was more focused on the need to develop policy / strategy and we’ll be having more conversations about this soon. In both sessions we talked a lot about demographics of online use, the way this might change and what that means for us as an organisation.

I very briefly touched on augmented reality with both groups and they were interested and excited by this.

I think this was a good start to getting others in public relations more confident with online and I’ve had some good feedback (and some excellent ideas and questions) since this morning.

I must also thank Al Smith for sharing with me his anecdote about turning round some negative sentiment in a Facebook group while we were chatting at googlelocalgov. I regaled the group (well, I repeated the story) as part of my presentation this morning and it really helped to give a real example of how we could be working between online and offline. In a coincidental act of synchronicity while I was telling the story Al was writing it up as a case study so you can read the detail on his blog.

Related posts:

1. So this is Christmas
2. Crisis comms online
3. Social networking for councils

Things have progressed quite quickly and Tim Cooper, Paul Cole (who I discovered were also thinking about this when we chatted at localgovcamp) and myself have been doing bits and bobs to get this off the ground.

Quad Derby have agreed to host us in their cafe bar and there are now a few online spaces to find out more and sign up for the event. You can find the cafe on:

• Facebook – a group about the cafe as well as event listing where you can sign up if you are interested generally or intend to come along

• Ning – similar to the Facebook group and listing just in a different space!

• The social media cafe blog – a dedicated blog and web pages about the Derby and Derbyshire cafe

You can also follow the latest on Twitter through the #smcderby or #ddsmc hash tags.

There has been lots of interest so far and I’m confident we’ll have a great event come 1 October so if you’re interested in social media and you’re in the area why not sign up at one of the online spaces and then come along for coffee, cake and a chat?

Additional: Plans are already underway for the second event! This will be held in Matlock (venue to be confirmed) on Thursday 3 December 2009.

Related posts:

1. A social media cafe for Derbyshire
2. Cafe conversations
3. Getting the conversation started

This is my current dream.

I’ve been playing with the idea and various possible set-ups for a while now (not very JFDI but maybe as long as a year). I’ve really been spurred into action though by the inspiration I drew at LocalGovCamp.

I’ve spoken to a couple of other Derbyshire social media enthusiasts and the feeling from them is very positive. There is a feeling that there is a need for an informal meeting place to discuss what we’re doing or what we want to do with social media and online communications. Not only would this be great, from my point of view, for local government and our partners in Derbyshire as we don’t even have a formal setting for these discussions at the moment. But it would also be great to chat with people from the private and third sectors as we can all learn so much through sharing.

So, the rough plan at the moment is to get some time and a venue for sometime in September and start getting people on board. I want to be fairly fluid with where this goes so there will be no agendas and people bring / take what they need to and from each cafe in terms of things to share and actions. More medium term I would like to see it move around the county to take advantage and meet with people from our pretty big geographical area.

It’s still in the early stages but with summer underway the ideas are about to be solidified into plans. I’d welcome any advice from those who’ve already set up a cafe (particularly looking at your Birmingham), anyone in Derby/shire who wants to work with me on this and generally opinions on what folks think of this.

Watch this space for progress…

Related posts:

1. Launch of the social media cafe
2. Cafe conversations
3. Dave Briggs – four steps to social media success