Community capacity-building through social media surgeries

Change Management

What are social media surgeries?

Social media surgeries bring local people together to learn and teach each other about how to use the web. They typically want to learn how to communicate, to campaign or to collaborate more effectively. The ethos behind the surgeries is that all you need is a place, and people who want to talk to each other, some of whom know how to use social media effectively – when these are in place, the interaction between the participants will ensure that learning takes place. A social media surgery’s only physical requirements are a room with wi-fi and facilities for refreshments, so that it’s a comfortable ambience. Surgeries are deliberately designed as informal learning environments, rather than formal structured training events. This means that the learning process is inclusive, fun and unintimidating. ‘Surgeons’ at the meetings are simply those people with sufficient knowledge of social media tools to give someone else advice. Some surgeons will have years of experience with ICT – whilst others may only have a few months but already want to share their experiences with other active citizens or community groups.  As part of the inclusive learning philosophy, there are no barriers or eligibility criteria – anyone can turn up, sign in and get involved.

Podnosh’s  first social media surgery took place in Birmingham in 2008, as part of Blog Action Day on Poverty. Nick Booth felt that social media surgeries would be well suited to help community groups to alleviate poverty by widening their social networks. He organised a room at the BVSC for a meeting of 15 existing bloggers and 30 people who wanted to learn more. The meeting had a very creative atmosphere, and  participants were able to immediately make valuable connections. Nick immediately realised the potential  of social media surgeries and the value of organising regular events.

Why do they work?

What’s particularly attractive about the social media surgery model is its ‘viral marketing’ character, whereby one person learns how to used social media and then teaches other people in their social network, who then teach others, and so on...  

Individuals who initially attend social media surgeries as participants have since become social media ‘surgeons’. One such example was Karen Caine, who by the time she attended her fourth meeting, was coming to help others as a volunteer ‘surgeon’ (she has since been employed by Podnosh as a member of staff). This highlights that though it is important to have highly skilled and experienced people in the room, the really important characteristic of a ‘surgeon’ is not that they know a great deal about social media but that they can help and encourage others who know less than themselves.  Surgery ‘patients’ are empowered because the relationship between experts and others is reasonably  equal – so, for example, it actually helps when a ‘patient’ sees a surgeon ‘googling’ to get an answer to a patient’s question – “just like I would!”

Despite the importance of informality, a surgery nevertheless benefits from a surgery manager who can act as a facilitator to greet ‘patients’, keep track of the learning in the room, check that people who have been ‘paired off’  are continuing to work effectively together, and that people are enjoying the event. Moreover, expectations need to be managed to prevent participants from becoming disappointed or demoralised because they have arrived hoping for more than can realistically be achieved in one session.

To make the whole process of running a social media surgery easier, Podnosh has created a website which gives people a systematic guide on how to design and run local surgeries.  This website currently supports surgeries in 63 different places -  although they are mostly in the UK, they have now also developed international roots, with social media surgeries having been run in Barcelona, Cape Town, Den Haag, Frederisksburg (Pennsylvania), and Drimnagh (Dublin). Check out the website by clicking here.

How Podnosh developed social media surgeries in Birmingham

In 2009 Nick was approached by the Department for Communities and Local Government, as part of its Timely Information to Citizens Project which funded ten English councils (including Birmingham) to enable citizens to use open data from local authorities.  

Nick’s assumption was that this openness, while welcome, would be useless if citizens and community groups could not effectively use the information provided, because they didn’t have sufficient ICT skills. Looking to overcome this barrier, Nick and some other members of his social media network ran a number of local workshops in Lozells and Acocks Green.  This proved to be a mixed success.  In Acocks Green, they were able to key into an existing capacity to run successful workshops using social media -  there were individuals with the right skills, and some of them were actually already passing these skills on to others.  However, this was not the case elsewhere - Nick discovered that in most neighbourhoods it was difficult to find people with the necessary digital skills. Clearly, the social media surgery model could be used to alleviate this problem. Nick applied for Be Birmingham’s Active Citizens Fund for funding in autumn 2009 to put this into practice. The funding began in April 2010.

Initially the project planned to target Yardley, Edgbaston and one other constituency that would be confirmed when a suitable venue was found.  In Edgbaston, Podnosh searched for a comfortable and friendly place that didn’t have to be paid for, such as a café with wi-fi, and the Arco Lounge neighbourhood café on Harborne High Street filled these criteria.

In Yardley, Podnosh found it very difficult to find a suitable venue with wi-fi. It even offered to provide wi-fi cost-free for a venue for twelve months but couldn’t find any takers.  Eventually, the surgeries were held in St Michael's and All Angels Church in South Yardley, with wi-fi routed through a door from the vicar’s study!

When looking for the third venue, Podnosh tried to find suitable venues in Weoley Castle, Northfield and other areas. Again, it proved extremely difficult to find a suitable venue with wi-fi. It was discovered that even places like public libraries which theoretically had wi-fi capability, couldn’t be used because this capability had not actually been activated. These experiences, in themselves, provided a wake up call to Birmingham Council about poor connectivity and the inability to utilise existing capacity in the city.

Following these problems, Podnosh eventually found the Learning Hub at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as the third venue. This allowed people from voluntary and community groups in the area around the hospital to improve their social media skills.

At the Yardley and QE hospital venues, Podnosh held three surgeries, and was able to hold four surgeries in Edgbaston. Each round of surgeries at the three venues was intended to take place between a month and six weeks apart – this gave attendees sufficient time to test out what they learnt and come back with fresh questions. The project was successfully completed in mid-March 2011.

Since then new organisations have joined the surgery movement.  One of Podnosh’s clients the social housing organisation Midland Heart, has taken over running the Lozell’s social media surgery.  There they continue to work with local community groups, and have helped to handover two hyperlocal blogs to be run by neighbourhood forums.

Another Podnosh client - the charity Birmingham Settlement is running a social media surgery in its main neighbourhood Aston.  This followed work with Podnosh to improve skills in the organisation, which are now being passed onto the community.

Volunteers have set up and run a number of surgeries in the Bearwood neighbourhood - bordering Sandwell. Likewise a small number of surgeries were run by volunteers in Oscott.  

A new network of surgeries is being developed in south Birmingham with funding support from the local community safety partnership. This will see a combination of Podnosh staff, public sector workers, volunteers and community activists sharing knowledge - learning from each other and supporting each other.