As we march towards the final HCLDR Tweetchat on October 31st 2023, we are taking the opportunity to use these final chats to look back and reflect on what this community has achieved together.
I thought this week we could share stories about the connections we have made through HCLDR. Join our chat on Tuesday September 26th at 8:30pm ET (for your local time click here).
One of the goals we had for this community when we first started, was to bring people together who had a shared passion for improving healthcare. We used Twitter to facilitate those connections, but it was always our hope that those connections would be more than virtual.
Because of my role as Marketer and as a member of healthcare media, I get to go to a lot of healthcare conferences. Ever since HCLDR started in 2012, I have been lucky to meet over a hundred of members of this wonderful community. Sometimes these were planned meetups and other times it was chance encounters while walking the halls.
I can tell you honestly that I came away from every one of those encounters energized and grateful. Those IRL meetings have been the best part of being at conferences.
Is there a time that you met a fellow member of the HCLDR community in-person?
One of the meetings I will never forget is the first time I met Joe Babaian in-person. We had been co-hosting the HCLDR tweetchats for a number of years and yet we had never met face-to-face. We had many conversations over the phone (gasp!), but it wasn’t until I was able to come down to a conference in Texas that Joe and I were able to meet. When we did, it was like seeing an old college friend.
I would never have met Joe had it not been for HCLDR. We weren’t on the same conference circuits and our jobs were different enough that we would not likely have crossed paths. It was only through Twitter (X) and HCLDR that we met and forged a friendship.
For me this is an example of the power of social media…and more specifically, the kind of connection we hoped to facilitate through HCLDR.
There are far too many people to mention in this blog post, but here are a few connections that were only possible through HCLDR:
- Meeting Patricia Anderson @pfatech and having lunch together
- Becoming part of the #pinksocks community and meeting Nick Adkins @nickisnpdx at the very first HIMSS conference where he started giving those socks away
- Giving Rasu Shrestha @RasuShrestha a hug after so many years of conversing via Twitter
- Having a coffee with Dr. Gail Beck @GailYentaBeck in Ottawa and spending almost 2 hours just talking
- Meeting Geri Lynn Baumblatt @GeriLynn at a meetup in Chicago. Our friendship that has continued over the years and has led to several collaborations
- Having the opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Matthew Katz @subatomicdoc on research that was later published
- Having breakfast with Amy Ma @Ctzen_Improver in Montreal
- Plus so many more…
To help guide our discussion here are some questions we can discuss on the tweetchat:
- Q1 What connections or collaborations have you made through HCLDR or other social media communities?
- Q2 Are the connections made through social media communities any different that ones you have made through other channels?
- Q3 Is there someone you would love to meet IRL from HCLDR or another online community that you haven’t yet?
- Q4 What are some ways we might facilitate meetups or virtual gatherings of the community in the future?
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