I was unexpectedly unable to attend #brrism4 tonight - thwarted by unseen forces I was obliged to remain at home this evening.

No matter, this evening this excellent social media network group were super organised, teched up, tricked out and ready to COMMUNICATE! Oh yes mate…

Apart from the fantastic ease of sending apologies via twitter to @brrism, I have been able to get a flavour of this month’s event centred around Social Media Machinery.

There was a webcast directed by @samdownie - viewers could respond to the action on screen and send direct messages and there was a twitterminuter too, the very fast tweeter @ladyady and everyone was #hashtagging like a bunch of crazies.

So all in all I managed to keep up with much of the discussion and take part with some of it albeit a little remotely.

I felt much more a part of things than I did when I tuned in last month to the @Likeminds event in Exeter, but perhaps that’s because the whole event is much more intimate and everyone is hell bent on making it inclusive and friendly.

So here are some observations | suggestions from this week’s outsider @copymojo.

• acknowledge interaction from your remote contributers
• round up each session with a super quick ‘key points’ for the broadcast
• actively engage with your remote contributers
• publish clear hashtags before the event (on the event registration)
• comment on the action as well as quweeting it (quote/tweet see what I did there?).

Using twitter to comment on events and interact with remote delegates is a fantastic way of creating magik with social media tools and adding real value. With a bit of thought and some skilled, confident communicators roped in to comment on the action, rather than simply retweet it - everyone can join the party.

There will be other blogs about what actually happened with the daemons and the branding discussions, and I will read them all avidly.

If you live in Bristol and are interested in social media - then I warmly recommend BrriSM - it’s full of clever, engaged activists who are friendly and fun. Find them on twitter @Brrism.

And if you can’t make it - maybe you’d like to tune in to the next meeting and experience the thrill of joining in from your sofa!