Do you use social media for your business or as your business? Then you need to know that those creative bods at Bristol Media, an industry-led organisation that facilitates collaboration and growth within the region, announced that it plans to bring global conference Social Media Week (SMW) to Bristol from 14-18 November 2016.
The SMW conference aims to curate and share the best ideas, innovations and insights into how social media and technology are changing business, society and culture around the world, and the organisers are looking for people in and around Bristol and Bath to get involved.
“Bristol will be the first city in the UK outside of London to host a Social Media Week”
It’s a great event to come to the region, especially as Bristol will be the first city in the UK outside of London to host a SMW. It will also be one of the first cities in the world to host an SMWi, which is a newly launched initiative, aimed at smaller cities that want to organise a more flexible programme of activity tailored to the needs of their location.
Realise the full potential of social media
SMWi Bristol plans to provide an events platform to showcase the technology and social media expertise of the South West of England. SMWi Bristol will bring together key players that contribute to that knowledge and also seek to facilitate collaboration with businesses and enterprises that have yet to fully realise the potential of social media.
It will be aimed at everyone who has a passion for emerging technology, mobile and social media.
“Bristol is gaining traction as one of the UK’s most important creative and media hubs”
The SMWi Bristol events programme, which is yet to be finalised, will include a CEO roundtable and thought-leadership master classes, as well as events focused on covering the social media basics.
A number of events will be targeted specifically at strong sectors within the Bristol business community including startups, third sector, food and drink, alternative energy and hi tech.
“Bristol is gaining traction as one of the UK’s most important creative and media hubs. It has an aggressive goal to become the most connected creative community in the UK. We believe SMWi Bristol will support these objectives as well as encourage cross-industry collaboration and provide the opportunity for global exposure for our city,’ comments Lis Anderson, board director, Bristol Media.
“We are thrilled to be expanding the SMW footprint in the UK by bringing SMWi to the wonderful city of Bristol,” says Toby Daniels, CEO, Crowdcentric.
With an exciting programme of events planned (and more events to come), and local sponsorship and partnership opportunities available, SMWi Bristol should prove to be a successful initiative for Bristol and its surrounds. We’ll keep you posted with more news on how you can get involved nearer the time of the conference.
To find out more or to express an interest in being involved visit socialmediaweek.org/smwi, and to start a conversation online use: @Bristol_Media #SWMiBristol.

Shona Wright
Shona covers all things editorial at TechSPARK. She publishes news articles, interviews and features about our fantastic tech and digital ecosystem, working with startups and scaleups to spread the word about the cool things they're up to.
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