#LikeMinds: Global Thinking, Local Action

A week after Like Minds 2010 and I'm finally getting round to adding my tuppence worth to the avalanche of comments and reflections since - better late than never I hope.

Probably Devon Air Ambulance's most used strapline is 'real people saving real lives'. The real people here does not refer just to the paramedics and pilots who make life-saving flights almost every day of the year. Rather, it refers to all of the thousands of people who make our life-saving service possible: the donors large and small who give direct financial support; the patients who share their stories to inspire others to give; the volunteers who give up their time to sort goods in the charity shops or look after our thousands of collection boxes out and about in the county; the many local businesses who sponsor events, involve their staff in fundraising antics or make gifts in kind of goods and services; the community shops and post offices who promote our lottery, and so many others.

In Jon Akwue's opening keynote he cited inspirational examples of how online communities and initiatives have directly saved lives - how do you even begin to calculate the ROI on that I wonder? In a less obvious but no less important way, I believe our burgeoning online community of supporters, friends, followers and fans are also saving lives.

Social media enables us to reach out to people we weren't connecting with before. Young people, working people, professional people and just plain busy people. People who don't always make it to our stall at the local fayre or who don't get out to community talks in the evening because of child-care commitments. We have engaged new volunteers, people promoting events or raising sponsorship for challenges, bold and bizarre. Most encouragingly, especially through Facebook, we have made contact with lots more patients and/or their families who were unaware that, because of patient confidentiality, we did not automatically know who they were and so could not contact them. Their stories are invaluable and many become great advocates.

As an organisation, Devon Air Ambulance has been using Facebook and Twitter for just under a year. The majority of our existing supporters will never follow or befriend us here, most being firmly offline folks, but we are encouraged and enthused by the fact that we are making new contacts every day with these other real people who can also now help us to save real lives across the county. We have some great fundraising ideas lined up which have been inspired by and will use Twitter to engage new interest groups but without excluding our offline supporters. The best of both worlds.

The key theme for Like Minds 2010 was People to People. It sounds simple and on one level I thought, well that is just what we have always done, as outlined above. But through social media we are beginning to see how we can take 'real people saving real lives' to a new dimension. We have new advocates coming on board daily.

We've crowd-sourced all sorts of things from furniture to a caricaturist. We've promoted fundraising events and shared the patient stories which at the end of the day illustrate why Devon needs its air ambulances and why it is so important that they remain 'owned by and for the people of Devon'. When someone leaves negative feedback for example about the appropriateness of a particular mission for example, we say nothing because our many advocates respond without prompting. One of the things I love about it most is it gives us another way to say thank you.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience - and it truly was an experience, marked by laughter and, remarkably, tears (a first for any conference I've ever been to thanks to Matt Young's incredibly moving presentation about Heart radio's charity appeal). It was an amazing mix of multi sector, global and local thinking and action.

I suspect everyone left with at least a nugget of learning or a kernel of a new idea, from internationally renowned social media 'guru' to local startup entrepreneur. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to spend a little more time with a handful of people over lunch. If nothing else, we made real life connections with people we'd got to know via an avatar. Personally, putting real faces to the avatars and @names was an absolute treat (will do an #FF post next week as too many to highlight here) but I came away with a myriad of ideas I can't wait to implement over coming months.

You know what? It was also fun, which is always a good thing. So final word goes to Scott Gould and Drew Ellis for not only dreaming up then delivering Like Minds and John Harvey for cleverly backing the event and helping put Exeter on the map.