Best #hcsmca Toronto meetup yet
Feb 15, 2012 we celebrated our 4th #hcsmca Toronto meetup. And what a night it was. Over 100 people attended to hear 5 entertaining and thought-provoking talks Pecha Kucha-style from #hcsmca community members and a keynote talk by Alex Jadad.
Naturally, we narrated the evening with Twitter feed. Here’s the transcript. I started off the evening with a mini story about #hcsmca which I’ll sum up with this slide of our growth. Look how far we’ve come in 16 months.
Then we jumped right into the presentations. Here is the work of Alissa Sadler (@alissasadler) , Naheed Dosani (@NaheedD), Stephen Pomedli (@Pomedli), Catherine Richards (@CfCOntLTCHomes), Rob Fraser (@rdjfraser), Kathy Kastner (@KathyKastner) and Alex Jadad (@ajadad). Click the titles of each presentation to read more about the authors and see the transcripts.
A very special thanks to Yaser Alyounes and the Meetup Planning Committee for organizing and executing this fantastic event.
Help capture the event and add your thoughts and impressions from the evening.
Alissa Sadler: The Power to Push
Colleen Young 
Great summary of Social Media Week’s #hcsmca event in T.O., Colleen! Thanks for sharing our presentations with the #hcsmca community and the world!:)
Catherine
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This was such a fantastic event! Well worth the trip from Belleville to participate, that’s for sure. Thanks again to everyone involved and congrats on a job well done!
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And well worth the trip from Vancouver! It was so great to finally meet everyone in real life :)
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You continue to demonstrate why you are the Grande Dame of Community Managers and community building. Kudos to Colleen and the rest of the organizing committee.
As I have stated in other forums, I was unimpressed by Alex Jadad’s presentation. Don’t get me wrong, I thought that he was highly entertaining and offering some different perspectives on health that are worth considering (I also picked up some ideas for future PowerPoint slide decks). However, I found his attitude towards other healthcare professionals with respect to IT were patronizing and dismissive. While his view that many healthcare professionals don’t get social media (or, many other forms of IT for that matter) might have played well to the audience, I found them to be righteous and inflammatory. On top of it, they were largely devoid of any practical advice.
I believe in the power of social media (and other forms of health IT) and I believe that social media will be integrated into the delivery of health services. To get there, though, means that our SM community needs understand the better how healthcare professionals work and we must demonstrate the value of social media. We need to embrace the healthcare professionals and help them take the next steps, not agitate their patients to push for social media as Alex Jadad seems to suggest.
Mike
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Thank you for the compliment Mike. I’m really glad you were able to join us from Ottawa.
While Alex’s style may not have sat well with you, it seems that you were able to draw out a call to action that aligns with a torch you have been holding for some time now. While working from the “bottom up” as Alex suggests often characterizes the potential of social media – Arab Spring being the most notable – bringing leaders into the fold is important too. No one advocates and practises this better than you. I’ve seen you bring CEOs to blogging and celebrate physician social media ambassadors, for example you established the B Social competition, which helped Dr. Dempsey and @QuintePediatric further their social media strategies.
So I say, let’s do both. As a community, let’s enable and encourage patients and providers to adopt open communication. Let’s continue to celebrate our shining examples. The CMA’s Future Practice November edition did a great job of this. We continue to do so in our presentations, etc, etc.
Healthcare professionals of all disciplines are active participants in the #hcsmca community. Unfortunately 1pm ET often coincides with clinic times. Hence we have our monthly evening chats the last week of the month at 9pm ET.
There may have only been 7 physicians at Wednesdays meetup, but that’s 6 more than the last meetup. To help make it easier to know who is the #hcsmca community, I started making lists – https://twitter.com/#!/hcsmca/lists It is a work in progress. I also want to make lists by province and city to help people connect locally.
Currently I’m recruiting for a volunteer to help to complete and maintain the lists. Please pass on the word.
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I took a few pictures here I took, including the one from the stage.
Great seeing everyone, fantastic to see the community grow!
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