Hamburg's Social Media Surgery - sofa, so good

On Wednesday, Hamburg saw its third ever Social Media Surgery. After an exhilirating start in May, a not-so-well-attended event in June, a break in July ... I was a little nervous. This zero expectations thing is harder than it sounds!

Sofas at Kultwerk during a
previous event (with Andy Mabbett)

For me, the most nerve-wracking part is when people start to arrive and I have to pair them up without really knowing much about them, who they are, and what they want. This time, I decided to arrange the sofas so that I could sit people down as they came in, we could have a chat as a group, introducing ourselves and finding out what the patients wanted, and what surgeons ('Begleiter') could offer. This really made the whole thing more chilled than our first two surgeries, when the start was a little bit hectic and I think it came across a little disorganised.



Besides, we had a room of really interesting people -

• Professor of Design,
• Journalist who writes for the Financial Times Germany and other large newspapers,
• Wikipedian who is active with Wikimedia on an international level,
• Public affairs professional who is on the board of Germany's Government 2.0 Netzwerk
• Online marketing expert
• Doctoral candidate in eParticipation and environmental issues
• Online strategist and founder of a webdesign agency
• Board member of Hamburg's Patriotische Gesellschaft, which is one of Hamburg's most well-renowned and oldest societies

- so it would have been crazy not to have a round robin.

I took another leap of faith and suggested we set up a Facebook page for the SMS as a hands-on experience, and hand control to one of the patients ('Starter') for a week. Luckily, Elke (from Kultwerk West) volunteered and she has committed to making one post a day. In return, I offered full telephone support in case she gets stuck! It's going well, and in two days we've already got 50 fans. (By the way, we learned that it is possible to set up a fan page for an organisation without having a personal Facebook account.)

Advantages of giving away the keys

The idea behind giving away control of the Facebook page, which we will do regularly from now on, is:

1. It is a little bit less intimidating for the patient, because she doesn't have to set up a page and worry about having time to manage it,
2. It avoids creating social media presences that then do not get used,
3. We do ourselves a favour by creating interesting content which will attract yet more fans to our site; perhaps we will become a source of information about Hamburg's various clubs and societies,
4. The patient can get going straight away, without having to go through the laborious process of getting stressed over texts, whether they will get told off by others in their organisation,
5. It avoids the "and now?" feeling that you often get when faced with a social media site with no fans, especially if you're doing it for the first time,
6. Less work for us!

Of course the same goes for the Twitter account, or other social media presences.

We went for a beer afterwards, and the surgeons were happy with the way it went, had some suggestions for improvement, and will come again next time.

Sofa, so good!