Moseley Festival

Whilst many were enjoying the sunshine and owl day in Moseley Park, a crowd of webby types got together upstairs at The Cross to hear some great stories from the heart of Birmingham’s vibrant social media scene at the Moseley Barcamp.

The brainchild of WXWM and @graphiquillan and friends, the Barcamp featured presentations including Pete Ashton (co-working), MC Jon Bounds (psychogeography – don’t ask), Chris Unitt (the award-winning Created in Birmingham blog) and Andy Mabbett (tagging).

A packed audience played along as Nikki Pugh took us outside for an inpromptu game of people, porcupine, panther (like rock paper scissors but with more animated hand signs) on the village ‘green’ – much to the bemusement of passers by. But we were in Moseley, after all, so no surprise that something unusual was going on!

Tom Martin gave us some top tips in twenty seconds on why your blog is slow; and Multipack got the audience going with a debate around Brum’s web credibility. For more details of who was on, visit Moseley Barcamp website.

And all of this was broadcast live by community legends Rhubarb Radio, who did another excellent job of covering such a great social event. An audio archive of the event should be available soon.

The barcamp was a fantastic opportunity for a lot of (somewhat hungover, in certain cases) people to find out more about the Birmingham social media scene. Thanks to The Cross, the crew, and all those people who took part – including Aquila TV, who laid on the bacon butties at half time.

If you’re interested in finding out more about social media, look out for meetings such as WXWM, the Birmingham Social Media Cafe, the social media surgeries, Birmingham Bloggers, Likemind… there is quite a lot of stuff out there.

Pics and that

Sketches of the panellists and crew by Alex Hughes

Wordsa above by Rob, @elbunglio