There are hundreds of pages on the internet about the benefits of social media in healthcare, the fantastic Patient Opinion site, lets people share their stories of their illness and how they coped with it, to sharing opinions on healthcare services they have used. Some opinions are good and some are bad. The main thing is once they are online and in the public domain they can be used to benefit many more people.

Anyways, what about animals? How can you use social media to help with the healthcare of your pets?

You could get them a Facebook page, or even their own webpage (I have to hold my hands up and say I have done this), but this won’t really help with the healthcare. You can join one of the many forums, 27 million results on Google where you can share and ask for advice. Or there are some more practical things you can do.

So how do you use social media to help with the healthcare of your pets? Bare with me I’m getting there..

Borris is nearly 11 years old and has been looked after by Pat since he was born. He goes every year for his anual check up and inoculations as well as other visits as required. Now we like to see Borris as this nice calm happy dog.

Sunbathing

When in fact he can turn in to a screaming banshie if he happens to see another animal he takes a dislike to. So as you can imagine trips to the vets can be a whole lot of fun. So now we are finally at the bit I enticed you in to this post with.

How can you use social media tools to help with the healthcare of your pets?

This week Borris has developed a cough, quite a nasty one, he doesn’t cough all the time and you can gurantee that when we take him to see Pat the vet, he won’t be coughing. So I made a short video on my flip this morning stuck it on YouTube and mailed the link to Pat.

Borris has got this cough, that comes and goes, have a look at this
and tell me what you think.

He doesn’t cough all the time, it can be days apart but sometimes it goes on for an
hour or more. I got it videoed for you because you know as well as I do he’ll be
so mental and wired if we come to see you it won’t happen.

Let me know if I need to come in with him and see you.

Now all we need to do is wait for a response from Pat to say if there is anything to worry about and do we need to go and see him.

This is NOT A SUBSTITUTE to actually going and seeing your vet but if you have a vet who

• Knows your Pet
• Is digitally connected
• you have a good relationship with

Then it is a good way to use social tools to help you and your vet.

The chances are I would not get an appointment this morning for Borris and Borris may not need to actually go and see Pat as he was there for an operation recently. If he does need to go Pat will tell us to go to surgery tonight and we are no worse off.

The Good

I asked Twitter for examples of good council websites and got:

http://www.camden.gov.uk/

Beta 1.0 makes good use of pop up menus so you are not clicking through endless links to get to the information you want and a really nice menu of quick links for Pay Apply Book Locate & Request.

http://www.westminster.gov.uk/

Has a fantastic interactive map of services locations & transport on the front page.

http://www.gateshead.gov.uk/

Nice layout big images and a tabbed menu that allows lots of information to be easily accessible.

http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/

Next-door neighbor to Gateshead and again a very good site, the first one I have seen that has a very clear Accessibility link on the front page. I particularly liked this http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/core.nsf/a/worldrecordmattresses story, normally this would be reserved for the local paper, but the council have bought in to the idea and are promoting it.

http://www.lichfielddc.gov.uk

Nicely laid out site again and has the best accessibility options of all of the above. From a very plain link at the top of the home page you are taken to a settings page where you can alter the site to suit your individual needs. I also like the Fickr stream on the front page, this gives people a sense of belonging when they see their own images on the council website.

http://www.redbridge.gov.uk/

Another excellent site, what is really nice about this is the fact that you can add content to the site.

Using the Fix My Street site and the data, what about using push notifications to GPS enabled smart phones to update the site to whether problems have been fixed or not? There must be dozens of people who use FMS once then never return, for whatever reason so therefore there must be a percentage of problems sitting in the not fixed category that we could help with using the magic of crowd sourcing.

If I had an app that would send me details of un resolved problems within a given radius of my location I would be more than happy to update FMS with a fixed, not fixed response and maybe a picture.

If they could build it in to FourSquare or Gowalla so you could get badges or something that would grab the attention of a whole host of potential new users.

So when you see this new app come out, just remember it was my idea

I’m helping to run the Stoke-on-Trent Social Media Surgeries and a couple of people have asked me, what are they and will they get anything out of them, so in answer to those two questions..

What is a Social Media Surgery?

A social media surgery is an informal gathering of people, some of whom (the surgeons) have various skills and experience in social media platforms and are willing to share this knowledge the other part of the gathering are people who have less skills and experience and want to learn more. We put them all in a room together with some tea & cake and WiFi and let them talk to each other.

Everyone is welcome and you can ask any questions without feeling like you are stupid. The surgeons are there to help you in whatever way they can. If you want to know all about Twitter then come and ask, you won’t be laughed at or shunned because you don’t know, you can have it explained to you in a simple non technical way. The same goes for many of the other platforms like WordPress or Ning, Audio Boo, Posterous & Flickr. If you have a question about any of these and more then a Social Media Surgery is the place for you.

What will you get out of it?

Some knowledge, some new skills, some new contacts and a lot more, maybe even some cake!  At a SMS there are broadly three types of people.

The surgeons, people who have volunteered their time and skills on the night.

The knowledge seekers, these are the people who want to ask questions & learn, we don’t like to call them patients because they are not ill, they just want to learn.

The visitors, these are people who just call in because they know someone who is there, or want to see what is going on without actually wanting anything.

Everyone is welcome to come along for as much or as little time as they want, all that we ask is that if the surgery is busy, you play fair and don’t spend too long with any of the surgeons and stop them from working with other people. You can always sit with them again when it is less busy.

We are going to be running regular Social Media Surgeries in Stoke-on-Trent over the coming months, you can check the Stoke-on-Trent Social Media Surgeries site for more details and also check out the Social Media Surgery site for more information about SMS in general and when and where other SMS are happening.

The FCO expects staff in all functions and grades to use a range of digital media-including the social web-to publish, carry out research and engage with peers, partners and the public. Our centralised digital team can advise staff on use of the social web…..

Yes it is a bit of a side step around the actual question but maybe more councils should take heed of this statement and start allowing staff to make use of what can be valuable platforms for engaging with their end users. They should especially take note of:

Our centralised digital team can advise staff on use of the social web

So you don’t end up with situations like the Ashley Howells incident.

Read the full statement on They Work For You.

Please desist from appending ‘number’ after PIN.

It is wrong.

Seriously it is wrong, very wrong.

The best solution I have come up with is re hashing the hyperlinks to make the installed Skype client perform a function like:

skype:michaeljrawlins?call this will launch Skype if it is installed and start a call to me

skype:michaeljrawlins?chat this will launch Skype and open the chat window with me as the recipient

skype:michaeljrawlins?voicemail this will launch Skype and put you through to my voicemail, be warned if you have Skype running it is quick, there is no dialing it just starts playing my outgoing message to you!

All you need to do to create the link is select the text you want to turn in to a link select the link button on WordPress it is the little chain logo, then when the insert link window opens delete out the http:// which is usually there and type in skype:<username>?call or chat of voicemail (don’t put your username in <> obviously) and that is it.

I don’t know if there are any more short cuts on Skype, but these cover the three main functions, speak, chat and voicemail. If you do know of any more feel free to share them in the comments.

Oh and I have salted the links so I don’t get loads of spam calls, chats or voicemails

I am going to be playing with the both quite a lot over the next few weeks so I have done the decent thing, I have created a new Twitter account just for my location tweets. I know how intensely irritating it can be to see 10s of tweets from people as they check in at various places.

If you have any remote interest in looking at my location service based tweets you can do by following Mike_RawlinsOTR usual inane tweets will remain on my normal account. Follow my new account if you wish, don’t tweet me there as I won’t be checking it and I won’t answer you.

So sorry, there you go.

Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking and all that, I think that the session on Grassroots Journalism went quite well. As I said in my previous post I was sitting on the panel with big names so my bit would be nicely glossed over by people talking far more sense that I do.

Dave Higgerson, threw out some ideas of how Trinity Mirror might want to work with hyperlocal sites in Birmingham as Jon Slattery reports on his blog.

I’m not going to bore you with all the details of who said what and when etc.

No why would I do any of that when I can show you the video?

Grab some popcorn, draw up a chair..

I have reduced the size a bit to make it fit in to my theme, go here if you want see it full size.

There is a review of the session over at Local news at grassroots on  journalism.co.uk.

These are the slides I used in my presentation.

Just to make it quite clear, I am not a journalist nor do I have any desire to be one.

I’m doing a short presentation on why I do what I do with Pits n Pots then  sitting on a panel where we re going to discuss Grass Roots Social Media. I’m sitting with:

• Will Perrin,
• Robin Hamman,
• David Higgerson &
• Martin Moore

No pressure then!

I have had a quick look on teh interwebs at what everyone else does and they all seem a lot more organised and write a lot more than I do. They are the kind of people who you would want to sit on a panel to discuss Grass Roots Social Media, they are respected for what they do and write, then there is me.

I feel a bit insignificant next to these people who are writing great texts all about social media. I’m feeling like I have been invited as the token ‘man on the street’ who is trying to do grass roots social media.

Then I started thinking why do I feel like that? Surely I should feel privileged to be asked to go to an event like this, let alone speak at it and be on a panel that can discuss this ‘Grass Roots Social Media’ thing with some authority.

I am by nature and geography of birth (I’m a Mancunian) eternally cynical about most things in life and have been acutely aware of people blowing smoke up peoples nether regions for many years. I tend to take most things with a pinch of salt and think ‘we’ll see’, then if something comes from it great, if it doesn’t then I’m not disappointed.

Over the last 12 months I have been very lucky and have been to quite a few conferences and events about social media. At almost every event I have been to people whom I have read about online and respect professionally as well as people I have not had the opportunity to read more about, have come and found me because they want to meet someone who ‘does Pits n Pots’.

To me ‘doing Pits n Pots’ is just something I do. Tony thought there was a need for discussion about the local politics in Stoke-on-Trent back in 2008 and set up the first version of the site. As he famously says ‘all you need to set up a blog is a bottle of red wine and a bit of time’. I started commenting on the site almost from day one, then when Tony ran in to a couple of problems, I offered to help. On the 1 December 2008 we moved to our own domain and Tony and I were thrown together in some Laurel &  Hardy type partnership. A partnership where we have never had a crossed word or disagreed on what we are doing or where we should be going (unless Tony is driving).

The site has had its ups & downs, granted we have been lucky and had more ups than downs, but we are both acutely aware, that that can change at the click of the publish button. I am immensely proud of what we have managed to achieve so far and the people we have managed to interview. Outside of stoke-on-Trent we have a good name and people seem to respect what we are doing, in the City, until very recently we were given the cold shoulder or just paid lip service to. Relations with the council have got better, we have in the past been critical of them and what they have and haven’t done. We have never sensationalised anything and we try not to criticise  the city unduly, we are both proud of the city we live in and want to see it improve and get better. Not everything in the garden is rosy we know that and the City Council know it as well, we like to think we are balanced in our views.

Other media organisations in the city are interested in what we are doing and how we are doing it. Our relationships with them are, shall we say, on nodding terms. Every now and then we have a little flare up and there is some posturing from one quater or another, then it all goes quiet and we carry on doing what we are doing with a wry smile, because if people are reacting to our presence then we must be annoying them or putting them under some pressure, which is only a good thing.

So why do I feel insignificant? Well now I have spent a few minutes writing this down, I don’t. Writing this has also made me think a bit more about the Grass Roots of it all.

I don’t see Pits n Pots as being anything great, I just do it. As I have said I am immensely proud of what we do, but the important bit is, ‘I just do it’.

I don’t need to think about it, because I am passionate about the city I live in and I want see it get better and more prosperous. To do this we need to make sure that people are aware of what the council are doing, we need to hold the power we give them to account.

As soon as something starts becoming a chore then it doesn’t get done.

If you are going to do something grass roots do something you are passionate about and that you can just do, don’t try and emulate anyone, don’t think I am going to write the best content about F1, because no matter how passionate you are, unless you are living with the teams on pit lane you can’t just do it.

Be honest with yourself, is it something you ‘really’ care about? If it is great, if it isn’t and you are just thinking I’ll start writing about Toy Town City Council because you have seen Pits n Pots do it, then you will more than likely fail.

It’s not a game, it is one hell of a lot of fun, but it isn’t a game. It is hard work and be very clear about the risks you are taking every time you press the publish button.

Would I change what I do?

Nah, never, it is too much fun.