– Had a rather engaging and inspiring afternoon yesterday at the Amplified Leicester project launch. Taking place at Phoenix Square, the symposium brought together participants in a project organised by Professor Sue Thomas, that has been running with the aim of promoting ‘amplification’ through social media as a community development tool. What was great was it chimed with my own independent experience of trying to establish DemonFM as a social media community. The presentations were short but very informative, the key note speaker Andrea Saveri (via a very good Skype link) was fluent and made a lot of sense, Sue Thomas was supportive and entertaining, and while there was some dense discussion about ideas and issues at some points, the whole effect was for a very creative session.
I’ve picked up a range of issues that I am re-energised about in respect to my own research, and I don’t any longer feel so isolated and insecure about what I have been attempting to do. Indeed there are a lot of parallels to the process. The key term for me is not ‘amplification’, but instead ‘resilience’, so this has given me a whole new path to explore with the work I am trying to achieve. Over a glass of wine at the end reception I described that I’d been feeling like a little fishing boat out in the channel on my own, not really sure where I am heading or if I can sustain what I’m doing. Now I’ve spotted a harbour that I can head to, refuel and take stock, before heading back out to get the job done.
Later I’m going to sit and make sense of the notes that I’ve taken, and see if I can re-designate some of my planned studies and searches for my research. I need to open this whole thing up to a network and community of similar researchers, look for comparative models to evaluate, and most important, stop feeling so defensive about what I’m trying to achieve. If #ampleic can create so much energy with twenty four participants, what can we do with #demonfm and it’s many hundred participants?
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