Next Web 2.0 Surgery and Second Wednesday event: Wednes 14th July

To build a stronger marketplace for Nottingham’s digital sector, for buyers and professionals, we’ve decided to link together Web 2.0 Surgery with the long-standing Second Wednesday event for Nottingham’s web professionals.

We’ve also got a brand new venue for the summer: Broadway Media Centre (Mezze Lounge, 1st Floor).
After the event you can take advantage of their Orange Wednesday 2-for-1 film offers and great film and food spcial offers too.

Web 2.0 Surgery is a free drop-in event where independent businesses, freelance professionals and community groups can get advice from web experts on developing their website or ways to use free social media networks to grow their organisation. The project has helped a start-up business to sell online, a charity to use social networks for free promotion and a performance group to use live web video streaming to engage with audiences.

Second Wednesday is a long-running network for Nottingham’s web and digital professionals which regularly attracts web developers, online marketing experts and designers for an informal talk followed by drinks and networking. Previous speakers have shared their expertise on search engine optimisation, digital strategy and personal branding.

The event takes place:

Wednesday 14th July
Mezze Lounge (1st floor), Broadway Cinema
14-18 Broad Street, Nottingham, NG1 3AL See Map

Web 2.0 Surgery runs from 5-7pm. Drop-in at any time to speak to an expert.

Second Wednesday’s talk and discussion starts at 7pm, followed by drinks on Broadway’s terrace.
Both events are free to attend, no booking required.

This month’s guest speaker talk is:

Future events will take place on the second Wednesday of each month at Broadway cinema:

Wednesday 11^th August, 5-9pm (5-7pm for Web 2.0 Surgery)
Wednesday 8^th September 5-9pm (5-7pm for Web 2.0 Surgery)

Come together: Joint Web 2.0 Surgery and Second Wednesday event, 9th June, 5-9pm at Broadway

New venue: Broadway Media Centre, Broad Street, Nottingham

Hello, this is Susi O’Neill, I’ve now taken over managing the Web 2.0 Surgery from Martin Wright.  A big thanks to Martin for his tremendous work founding and managing the surgeries over the last year.

To build a stronger marketplace for Nottingham’s digital sector, for buyers and professionals, we’ve decided to link together Web 2.0 Surgery with the long-standing Second Wednesday event for Nottingham’s web professionals.

We’ve also got a brand new venue for the summer: Broadway Media Centre (Mezze Lounge, 1st Floor).
After the event you can take advantage of their Orange Wednesday 2-for-1 film offers and great film and food spcial offers too.

Web 2.0 Surgery, which in June celebrates its first birthday, is a free drop-in event where independent businesses, freelance professionals and community groups can get advice from web experts on developing their website or ways to use free social media networks to grow their organisation.  The project has helped a start-up business to sell online, a charity to use social networks for free promotion and a performance group to use live web video streaming to engage with audiences.

Second Wednesday is a long-running network for Nottingham’s web and digital professionals which regularly attracts web developers, online marketing experts and designers for an informal talk followed by drinks and networking.  Previous speakers have shared their expertise on search engine optimisation, digital strategy and personal branding.

The two groups are now coming together as a forum to connect the city’s digital sector and to enable businesses seeking web services to meet web and marketing professionals in an informal setting.
Second Wednesday organiser Nick Heyward, from FCS Websites, said: “Linking together Second Wednesday and Web 2.0 Surgery is a great opportunity to develop Nottingham’s marketplace for web services and to help businesses and community group benefit from the £40 billion online spend in the global digital economy.”

The first joint event takes place:

Wednesday 9^th June
Mezze Lounge, Broadway Cinema
14-18 Broad Street, Nottingham, NG1 3AL  See Map

Web 2.0 Surgery runs from 5-7pm.  Drop-in at any time to speak to an expert.

Second Wednesday’s talk and discussion starts at 7pm, followed by drinks on Broadway’s terrace.
Both events are free to attend, no booking required.

This month’s speaker is Derek O’Brien on “Getting Down & Dirty with HTML5 and CSS3″, with a presentation on the latest trends in coding.

Future events will take place on the second Wednesday of each month at Broadway cinema:

Wednesday 14^th July, 5-9pm
Wednesday 11^th August, 5-9pm
Wednesday 8^th September 5-9pm

Time For A Change

Change

The last 11 Web 2.0 Surgery events have been organised by Martin Wright. Due to other time commitments he no longer has time to organise the event.

Idea

Web 2.0 Surgery was created to be:

“an informal event where you can get answers on internet related topics from a group of experts. This event is aimed at small and medium sized companies and organisations, as well as individuals, who use the Internet to operate their business but have questions on how to effectively use the wealth of Web 2.0 tools and services available.”

New Start

We would like the event to flourish in the hands of others and are actively seeking someone to take the event to the next level. If you are interested, please contact us at: contact [at] web20surgery.com

Thanks to all the experts and attendees who have taken part so far.

Next Events

The next two Web 2.0 Surgery events will have a theme.

Charity Focus – Thursday 18th March 2010

Do you work for charitable organisation? Do you have an outdated website? Are you able to update your website content without contacting your website designer? Are you reaching out to your supports with Twitter and Facebook? Could reduce your expenses by usingWeb 2.0 services?

Ecommerce Focus – Thursday 15th April 2010

Do you have an Ebay site which you are out-growing? Are you struggling to set up an online store? Is your ecommerce site not producing the sales you think it should?

Discuss your ecommerce site or ecommerce aspirations. Learn from others who have had the same questions as you.

Join us from 5.30pm at Antenna, Beck St, Nottingham NG1 1EQ (map)

February Event

The event had good attendance with many more experts than businesses. We had round table discussion and the following topics came up:

• Buy With Confidence is a directory of traders vetted by Trading Standards. Nottingham is one of the few places to be included in the scheme. For £65 you can be listed on the site which can provide you with leads.
• There is high demand for PHP programmers and Flash Developers at the moment but no easy way to find them. Although we had both at the event – Jon Newby of Jooby Design is a flash developer.
• Is there a resource listing all Nottingham freelance creatives? Should there be one?
• New expert Kris Leech of Interkonect was able to assist Implanta Design with CMS advice and Golfshake with systems admin advice.
• Free training available from eBusiness Insights if your company employs between 10-49 staff.

Web 2.0 Knowledge and Articles

We have posted some great articles by our Web 2.0 Surgery experts over the past few months.

• PPC Advertising – Conversion Tracking with Google Adwords by Edward Lewis
• Social Media Shortens The Gap Of Opportunity by Susi O’Neill
• 6 Easy Steps to Brand Building with Twitter by Alexia Leachman
• Developing your personal brand online by Alexia Leachman
• Time to get SaaS-y? – Considering Software as a Service by Ryan O’Sullivan
• 5 Startup Steps to Finding & Working with Freelancers by Nick Barker
• Ada Lovelace Day by Helen Whitehead
• SEO Planning And Strategy – The Right Way! by David Coveney

Let us know what topics you would like to see covered in the coming months.

Insight to Google

At a Google event hosted by Nottingham City Council on Tuesday 28th July 2009, experts from Google demonstrated how easy it is to set up a web site in 30 minutes.

The tools they used to achieve this were all FREE:

Google Sites
Google Maps
Google Local Business Centre – listings for Google Maps
Google Calendar
Google Insight – search times by date and category
Google Analytics – track and monitor links and visitors to your site

Is there a catch? No. They provide all the tools so that you provide them information which they know how to index so that their search is the best available. They also hope that you’ll set up an Adwords account to promote your brand new website.

It is perhaps Google Insight which provided the biggest eye opener of the night by providing access to realms of data which would be off limits to most.

Presentation was rounded off with a great talk by Ruddington based dustbag.co.uk.

Surgery Roundup – 30th July

At the Web 2.0 Surgery on Thursday 30th July 2009, the experts in attendance were:

• James Bryant – Video Production and Video Marketing

• Susi O’Neill – Developing multimedia web content (text, audio and video), blogging and online copywriting, cross-platform production and developing online audiences

• Edward Lewis – Online Marketing, SEO, PPC

Among the conversations were:

• Graham Milton from Fluxedo Shirts talking SEO – keyword targetting and PPC – account setup and maintenance with Edward Lewis.
• Kori Stennett from Alpha Graphics discussing the benefits of video with James Bryant.

Karl Craig-West from Networking Clubs bought the pizza!

We hope that you’ll be able to join us at the next event.

Nottingham Google Event

Nottingham City Council in partnership with Google is inviting you to attend a seminar on how to reach new customers and speed up the slowdown using digital solutions. This is part of Google’s new Local Government initiative aimed at connecting communities.

The seminar will showcase some of the free tools you can use to get your business online and drive traffic to your site.  It will also feature case studies and live demonstrations of how to use digital tools to get up to date views on the behaviour of your customers and competitors, adapt your online store front and get more marketing bang for you buck.

There will be an opportunity for networking after the presentations.

The event is being held at The Council House, Nottingham on Tuesday 28th July 2009 from 5.30pm – 7.30pm. Sign up here.

Experts List

The Web 2.0 Experts confirmed so far for the next three events are as follows:

Thursday 30th July 2009

James Bryant – Video Production and Video Marketing
Susi O’Neill – Developing multimedia web content (text, audio and video), blogging and online copywriting, cross-platform production and developing online audiences.
Susan Hallam – Internet marketing strategist and tactician,  Search engine optimisation geek, Social media marketing consultant
Lucy Herraras-Griffiths – Graphic design
Edward Lewis – Online Marketing, SEO, PPC

Thursday 20th August 2009

James Bryant – Video Production and Video Marketing
Susi O’Neill – Developing multimedia web content (text, audio and video), blogging and online copywriting, cross-platform production and developing online audiences.
Caron-Jane Lyon – Web 2 & Social Media orientation, Mobile & Live Social Media tools, Virtual World – Second Life.
Joyce Gemmell – Digital project planning, marketing, networking and web design
Edward Lewis – Online Marketing, SEO, PPC

Thursday 17th September 2009

James Bryant – Video Production and Video Marketing
Susi O’Neill – Developing multimedia web content (text, audio and video), blogging and online copywriting, cross-platform production and developing online audiences.
Caron-Jane Lyon – Web 2 & Social Media orientation, Mobile & Live Social Media tools, Virtual World – Second Life.
Joyce Gemmell – Digital project planning, marketing, networking and web design
Edward Lewis – Online Marketing, SEO, PPC
Stu Owens – E-Commerce development, Online Marketing strategy, SEO, PPC & Email marketing

Bring your Web 2.0 questions for our Web 2.0 experts.