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Wednesday
Feb082012

facebook week and our rather fine facebook event

by Dan Slee

So, Facebook is the biggest platform the web has ever known but has the UK public sector actually cracked it?

There’s 30 million people in the UK using it and there are not masses of examples on how it can be used well.

Look around there’s lots of tumbleweed pages and people scratching their heads.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be talking about Facebook rather a lot, both on Twitter and here on the site.

We’re rather proud to say that we’ve joined with Public Sector Network’s Nick Hill to stage an event of glittering magnitude that gathers some of the best examples together in one room. In one place. At the same time. So you can learn to do it really well.

How good is that?

There’s been a stack of interest from across the country too.

The event takes place on Wednesday March 14 at Birmingham City Football Club’s St Andrew’s stadium. You can get the low down here.

And because it’s for public sector people too it’s not going to cost the earth.

We’re really quite excited about it and rather chuffed that so many decent people have agreed to come along to talk about their work.

I’ll be talking about some of the best case studies from across the world and where Facebook fits into the media landscape in Spring 2012.

Darren Caveney will be talking about how to secure buy-in from an organisation in order to get started in the first place.

eCommunications editor Ally Hook will talk about the thinking behind one of the largest Facebook pages in the UK - the excellent Coventry City Council - and how to build a community online.

Ben Proctor, from the Likeaword consultancy, is at the cutting edge of how organisations are using crisis communications and will talk about how Facebook fits into the armoury of channels that can be used.

The award-winning Steph Jennings works for Podnosh, who teach people how to use social media for civic good. She’s built up wv11.co.uk into one of the best hyperlocal community blogs in the country. Her site came to the fore in the riots when she used close links with the police to shoot down rumours and speculation. An amazing 200,000 impressions were recorded on her blog’s Facebook page alone. She’ll be talking about how hyperlocal sites use Facebook and how the public sector can connect.

Julia Burns of Sussex Police has done some real cutting edge work with Facebook in engaging with residents. Angry residents started a Facebook group in protest at how they thought their community was being policed. How her force reacted has been cited as best practice.

So there it is, it should be a good 'un and we're all sure to learn plenty.

Here's more info and joining details.

photo credit

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