a brilliant Facebook event in scotland

After the success of the West Midlands event we thought it would be fun to go to Scotland and update it. Here's the low-down...

By Dan Slee 

Facebook is an amazing communications channel that has transformed the internet.

More than 900 million people globally are signed-up with more than 29 million in the UK.

In bad weather, civic disturbances and crisis Facebook for many is the default emergency setting for people to find out what is going on and to get fast updates.

It almost seems to be a full time job to keep up to speed with the ever-changing possibility of Facebook and the best practice across the public sector is at best patchy.

So what do we all do about it?

Earlier this year we teamed up with Public Sector Forums to stage an event in Birmingham called Facebook for the Public Sector. It was rather magnificent. In the morning there were half a dozen speakers talking about best case practice and lessons they’d learned. In the afternoon, there was an unconference element organised by localgovcamp veteran Andy Mabbett with sessions on a range of topics from making better use of pages, timelines and generating likes.

Public Sector Forums are updating the event and staging it in Scotland on Thursday June 21 and I’m just a bit looking forward to this. More on the event here.

Scotland has started to do some brilliant innovation in public sector comms for a while now. Not least the Scotland-wide Twitter event that showed what local government does every day.

It’ll also be good to see how Central Scotland Police use Facebook.

It’ll also be excellent to have South Lanarkshire Council’s and LGComms Future Leader programme member Carolyne Mitchell - @cal444 on Twitter - as a social reporter.

I’ll be speaking on the broad ‘why and how’ of using Facebook and also looking at the rather good possibilities timeline has to offer.

Also speaking are:

• Andrew Walker, head of communications, Central Scotland Police, on his force’s Facebook use.
• Darren Caveney, head of communications, Walsall Council and Comms2point0 co-creator on getting senior buy-in.
• Helen Reynolds, communications officer at Monmouthshire Council on how opening up Facebook in an organisation can lead to good things.
• Ally Hook, eCommunications editor at Coventry City Council on how she built one of the largest Facebook pages in the country.
• Ben Proctor, of the likeaword consultancy, on Facebook for emergency planning.

It would be excellent to see you there.

Facebook for the Public Sector Scotland is staged on Thursday June 21 at IET Glasgow: Teacher Building, 14 St. Enoch Square, Glasgow G1 4DB. More information here.

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Comments

[Ella]

This post seems to be causing some problems as the meta data attached features the word free, whereas the event the post is about is very far rom free.

e.g. Facebook extracts this from your post: free online comms resource - comms2point0 - a brilliant Facebook event in scotland
twoheads.squarespace.com
By Dan Slee Facebook is an amazing communications channel that has transformed the internet. ...

I've seen it posted a couple of times -luckily by folk who can't go, so won't be disappointed that they can't afford it

[Darren Caveney]

Hi Ella

Everything we share on this website - posts, case studies, downloads, links etc, etc - is all free, We very clearly state on the site that this is the case, we publish it all under a creative commons licence (so it is free to share elsewhere) and our twitter bio also states that comms2point0 is a free 'online' resource.

The event you refer to is separate and completely optional for folk to choose to attend or not. The feedback from the first one we ran was incredibly positive which has prompted us to try a second. It isn't possible for us to offer events of this sort for free. Hiring venues, funding lunch and refreshments etc costs a not inconsiderable sum so until we are able to secure significant external sponsorship there is a cost to attend.

Having looked very closely at what similar events elsewhere charge (£300 - £400 a day is not uncommon) this one at £95 is really good value in our view. But as I say it is optional of course and we have never promoted the event as free to attend.

Hope this clears up any confusion.

Thanks

Darren