As usual, free coffee, biscuits, and parking around the Council House itself.
6-7:30pm Civic Suite
December the 3rd in Room 1
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Please let us know in the comments if you can make it!
Thanks to David Viner, Gavin Wray, Paul Hadley, and Kate Hughes for volunteering to be the surgeons.
We had Cllrs Bell, Reeve, and Hawkins at this SMS, and all were deeply engrossed in conversation with their surgeons.
We have Cllr David Bell now on Facebook, and learning the ropes from Gavin Wray, and Cllr Ken Hawkins now on Twitter as @councillorken.
I’m going to start sending out a few more emails prior to the December SMS to see if we can get a few more faces along next time 
It’s a short 4 minute video about social media usage by MPs and quite interesting. It also features someone I know, Alastair Smith from Newcastle City Castle, who has done a hell of a lot to increase the usage of social media for councils, and as such Newcastle CC’s Twitter account has one of the highest followings of any UK Council.
I am sure many of our Councillors feel the same way, so are these surgeries going to change their perceptions?
I hope so!
I’m sitting with Cllrs Allport and Rebeiro talking about Wordpress, and how easy it is to post articles, and comment!
I can see Kate, and Gavin helping 3 other Cllrs, but I bet I’m the only one posting an article about it 
What started as an idea, and a single blog entry on this site, has now started to gain momentum. My CEO (Mark Rogers at Solihull MBC) has given this his blessing on an internal blog.
I was slightly embarrassed about the email I sent Mark being posted on the blog, but what the hell, it gave me the opportunity to ask if anyone else in the council has experience of blogging and social media tools, and if so, would they like to help with the SMS we’ll be running.
What happens now?
Well, I have a bloggers meet on Monday the 13th, and a Birmingham SMS on Wednesday the 15th, so I will be chatting to a few more people about making this all happen. The initial Solihull SMS will probably be a weekday evening at our Civic Suite, but this is to be confirmed.
Keep checking back, and do feel free to comment!
