The Birth of Brrism

Brrism – It’s Brrizzle for "Social Media"

Is Bristol Britain’s premier digital city? After all, its home to a cluster of new media industries, part of Silicon Gorge and has recently been named as one of Britain’s Science Cities.

It’s always been a surprise that, given this level of switched-on activity, there’s not been a forum for social media types in the city.

This is changing with Brrism, which is Brrizzle for Bristol Social Media.


We’re aiming Brrism at:

• Bloggers / social media geeks
• Website publishers / managers
• Journalists / Writers
• Artists / musicians
• Photographers / videographers
• Activists / social entrepreneurs
• Businesses/marketers
• Academics/researchers/writers

The first event is in Bristol on Wednesday evening, 19th August.

Sign up on twtvite, EventBrite or facebook. The Event is FREE. Yes, FREEEEEEE.

Meetings organisation will follow the ethos that social media tools themselves follow – a mixture of the pre-planned-predictability coupled with the ability to self-organise on the fly.

The Pre-planned predictability:

• The third Wednesday of the month
• At the Pervasive Media Studio
• 6:30 for a 7PM start
• Finish at 9 followed by drinks at the Watershed
• A meeting theme which will be in the form of a 10-20 minute presentation/web-based-show-and-tell
• A brief self-organisation period (i.e. how will the rest of the meeting be run)
• An hour long “open space”
• The venue has Wi-Fi and so live tweeting, video casting, etc is positively encouraged. (Meeting hashtag = #brrism)
• Wrap-up/wash-up session at the end
• Drinks at the Watershed afterwards
• Meeting resources on delicious

Self-organisation on the fly:

• We’ll decide what groups to split into (and what the groups will discuss) on the night. NB you are free to self organise! If you want a group that doesn’t discuss the meeting theme at all then that’s OK too.
• Law of Two Feet states that you can leave any group and join another whenever you like (please be civil about it and remember that “social” is a big part of “social media”)
• You can bring your own food and drink but please respect the Pervasive Media Studio – let’s not abuse their trust in us.
• Next month’s meeting (theme, organisation, etc) can be discussed via twitter using hashtag #nextbrrism

The key point of all this is sharing is to have energising discussions, learn from each other and to have fun!

The first theme for the first meeting will be “The Starfish and the Spider” and you can get a feel for the book by its Wikipedia article. I don’t want to pre-empt the discussions (I really am keen to allow the group to set its own direction on the night) but I am hoping it could spawn some interesting conversations on how Brrism itself should be run.

Thanks for reading. My name is Michael Corbett and you can follow me on Twitter, be my friend on facebook or simply meet me at the Pervasive Media Studio. I’m looking forward to meeting you. You can also follow Brrism on Twitter.

Many thanks to the Pervasive Media Studio (@pmstudiouk) and Ed Mitchell (@edmittance) without whom this first meeting would not be able to take place.