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Brum vs Belfast #13: Social Media Scenes

Written by Nicky Getgood on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: andy mcmillan, andymabbett, belfast, Blogger/Twitter/Whatever, bmibaby, Brumbloggers meets, brumvsbelfast, build, cupcakecamp, iced coffee, jason roe, karenstrunks, opencoffeebelfast, phil o'kane, ryanair, Social Media Cafe's, Social Media Surgeries

Andy Mabbett asked how Belfast Social Media Surgeries and Cafe’s are doing.  Now, I don’t know much about Belfast’s social media scene but I was lucky enough to meet someone who did – Phil O’Kane, a Belfast photographer who took part in the 4am Project, met up with Karen Strunks and I for a drink (and didn’t make it home until the following morning after falling asleep on a sofa, but that’s another story).  He seemed to know his stuff, so I took the opportunity to milk him for the information Andy wanted.

Seems their social media cafes are more commonly known as OpenCoffee Belfast, ‘an informal meet-up for people with an interest in technology, the internet, business and startups’ in Charlie’s Coffee Shop every other week.

Rather than our Barcamps, Belfast has San Fancisco export Cupcake Camp, ‘an ad-hoc get-together where participants bake and bring cupcakes to share and socialise. It’s organised primarily over the internet, making use of the most modern communications to get people involved.’

For the more tech savvy, there’s Build, ‘a leading-edge event covering design, standards, best practice and accessibility on the web.’  It’s organised by Andy McMillan, who seems to have a bit of a habit of organising good stuff like events, fringes and photo walks in and around Belfast.  Good chap.

There’s quite a bit going on down south too, which many from Northern Ireland make the effort to go to.  Phil feels because there’s more money and people in southern Ireland, the scene seems to be growing a lot more down there.

There’s the Irish Blog Awards, for congratulating those who’ve done a job well done, which Phil had a grand time attending in 2008.

There’s also Blogger/Twitter/Whatever meet-ups, ‘an informal gather of people who are interested in (but not limited to) blogging, social media and the web’ that sound not unlike our Brumbloggers meets.  BTW’s have popped up in Dublin and Cork.  They’re organised by an Irish blogger called Jason Roe, an interesting man who caused a very heated debate after he noticed a little ‘bug’ in Ryanair’s online booking system and blogged about it.  Rather than thanking him for highlighting the error, staff proceeded to leave some pretty angry coments on the post.  Ryanair’s official response to this bad behaviour?:

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion.  It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.  Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel.”

So it seems Ryanair don’t like bloggers half as much as BMI Baby, who are itching to fly us to their destinations.

Anyway, I digress.  My point is, Belfast and Ireland have a very healthy social media scene.  But how does that compare to Birmingham’s Brumbloggers meets, Social Media Cafe’s, Social Media Surgeries, etc.?  The Birmingham social media scene has been the subject of much internal and external attention, discussion and debate of late.  It seems to be thriving to the point where people are actually taking steps to prevent it disappearing up its own arse.

I’m loathe to say Birmingham wins this one for being awesome, for fear of sounding far too self-congratulatory, so I’ll leave the outcome up to you. But it is nice to swap notes with people from other places and see what’s going on elsewhere. And it was lovely to meet Phil, even if he was unconscious by midnight. Lightweight.