Last night I popped along to the 11th Manchester Social Media Cafe – for those of you who’ve not yet attended, the Social Media Cafe is an open forum where people share ideas and work.

Next month marks the 12 month anniversary, and the organisers opened up the floor to decide what should become of the format to those who attend.

The round table sessions were insightful, for a start, few held the same view of what social media cafe was. Many objected to its recent home at the BBC, claiming it attracted the ‘wrong crowd’ and others felt that much of what was said was simply preaching to the converted.

From my own point of view, i do love the exploritary nature of the sessions, but with so much knowledge, skill and intelligence in the room, i can’t help but feel frustrated with the the current ‘show and tell’ format.

In fact, the round table session on the future of the cafe encouraged greater debate, and better understanding of the view points of others, than i’ve seen at the SMC in a longtime.

My opinion is that the SMC would benefit from holding more discussion groups offering people the opportunity to create debate about challenges and problems they are facing and tackle some of the questions that we’re all asked (Is there a role for SEO in social media?!).

Maybe then Manchester will have the chance to carve out its own reputation as a thought leader in social media and the SMC can fulfill its potential.

The 1st anniversary of the SMC is at the Band on the Wall in November so  – if you’re interested, pop along.