November 28, 2008 by Voicebox
In this video, shared by Stuart Parker of We Share Stuff, Michael Grimes of The Citizenship Foundation and Jon Hickman of Birmingham City University discuss the difference in the role of digital mentor and social media consultant:
Digital Mentor vs Social Media Consultant from We Share Stuff on Vimeo.
2 Responses to “Digital mentors and a social media consultants”
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Voicebox is the online presence of a bid spear-headed by UK online centres, and others to tender for the Digital Mentor project from Communities and Local Government.
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lol well I thought it was quite simple at first….
Social Media Consultant = Geek who can explain how to use social media
Digital Mentor = non geek who uses technology (reasonably) well in a community setting and is able to inspire others to do so too
Digital Mentor can learn from Social media Consultant more cool stuff than they currently know, but Digital Mentor is more likely to inspire more people who are digitally excluded to give it a go because they are ‘real’.
But half way through your chat I found myself getting confused too - it is a bit of a fuzzy distinction. Having said that I think its important not to get caught up with definitions that really don’t mean too much. The best model for me is still to have ‘community people’ supported by ‘geeks’ to work together towards inspiring people to start using web stuff.
The whole digital mentor thing isn’t really out there at the moment. I tried to explain to Jon but thought Michael could do it better! and I just operated the flip
so getting the message across is a big thing for me. Not only the official direction of the role, which is gearing up to be a more community voice thing, but what I think is a more wide ranging role which supports community, education and other sectors for that matter.