They say that everyone has at least 6 degrees of separation from anyone else in the world, you’ve probably done it before, from you to Sandra Bullock or George Clooney.

But how about doing it on a smaller scale and not knowing where you’re going to end up? As journalists, it is essential to make contacts, only this doesn’t necessarily have to be done at industry events or just through work any more, it can be done through social networking sites such as Twitter.

On Friday seven of us Online Journalism students braved snowy conditions and met up in the Coffee Lounge, on Navigation Street in Birmingham City Centre, where we waited for our lecturer, Paul Bradshaw, to set our challenge.

The challenge, was all about building social capital, taking form in a treasure hunt, as outlined on Paul’s Online Journalism Blog. The theme for this was the project that the class are working on: Birmingham Recycled.

We were soon hooked up to the website Posterous for us to use for on the go blogging through our mobiles/laptops – my weapon of choice was my new iPhone, which I’m already addicted to, and given our first targets.

My fellow team member, Vicky Elmore and I were given Michael Grimes aka Citizen Sheep who pointed us in the direction of Birmingham Friends of the Earth. Vicky and I headed off towards Digbeth, using the map on my phone. We soon reached it and got talking to Mark, who was telling us about the campaigns that they have running at the moment such as 20′s Plenty and details of their campaign meetings, which we have been invited to on a Monday evening so we can find out more.

Mark then gave us a list of contacts that we could find useful and we decided to head for the first one on the list: Envision UK, as they were based a little further down the road at the Custard Factory.

Having never heard of them before, it was interesting to hear that Envision do, which was exactly what they say on the t-shirt, helping young people make a difference in their local community, whether it is from street crime to something we were more interested in – climate change.

I took some audio from our chats with them: Talking with Andrew Ridge, the Programme Manager for Birmingham, Part One of our chat with Darshna Solanki, the Grad Performance coordinator and Part Two.

I found what they work on very interesting, particularly as it highlights these issues to young people and prompts them to find out ways of helping or changing things related to them, such as putting solar panels on school roofs.

Our time was cut short at three degrees of social capital, but I am sure that if we had more time then we could have gone to most of the contacts on the list given to us by Birmingham Friends of the Earth and possibly obtaining more as a result of it.

I found it a very useful exercise, one that I really enjoyed, as it got us talking to actual people rather than just sitting in front of a computer screen. I also think that we found out more doing it in a more personal way.

As to whether I’d do it again, I probably would, seeing as we had good success from it first time around.

And of course, why stop at 6 degrees when there could be so many more!