Yesterday was a big step in the process of an artificial pancreas.  You may have your opinions of an artificial pancreas, and that it’s not a cure.  You’re right, it is not a cure, but if it makes your life as a diabetic better, than I am all for it.  This thing is long, so if you don’t like to read long documents, than just wait a few days for the experts to go through it.  The JDRF will be releasing some expert notes and reviews of this draft in the next few weeks. JDRF CEO and President Jeffrey Brewer is quoted as saying: “Our initial review of the draft AP guidance...

So today is November 1, 2011. It is a day of many special things. There are some birthday’s to be celebrated today, that is taking up some of my time in reading blogs and writing posts, today is the beginning of Diabetes Awareness month, and it is also the first Type 1 Day (T1D). I received an e-mail from JDRF a few weeks ago talking about T1D, but I still was not exactly sure what it was going to be all about and what the campaign was going to be to help spread awareness. All I knew is that it was a day to spread the differences between Type 1 and Type 2. I think that it is great...

I have been mentioning lately that my local chapters of the ADA and JDRF have not been very responsive to me. I have been sending emails and tweeting to them trying to get their attention. My local JDRF chapter is usually pretty good with responding to me but not much gets done because things have to be approved by the area manager and it seems to stop there every time. It makes me mad because I know that Jeffrey Brewer is receptive to the ideas that I and others share because I have spoken with him directly about it. This is one of the obstacles of taking the online world offline. I would...

Next month I will be visiting and touring the Diabetes Research Institute for the first time.  I have been wanting to do this for so damn long, but haven’t had much of an opportunity to do so until now.  My parents are coming down to visit next month so I thought that it would be a perfect opportunity to finally take the tour and take my parents along with me.  They will enjoy it a lot.  Amanda will also be going to. I can’t wait to take pictures and videos and report back on everything that I see in there.  I have heard nothing but awesome things about this tour and I am so...

Last week during DSMA a question was asked about how we can do more to create more offline efforts and offline communications.  My biggest efforts for the offline world are communicating with JDRF and ADA local chapters and trying to get them to communicate together and work together for a larger goal of getting people with diabetes the information that they need.  One piece of that information being access to the DOC.  How do we go about this?  It sounds all fun and dandy to have the JDRF tell every single person they talk to about the DOC, but how do we do it?   Unfortunately,...

My second part of my summary for the Roche Social Media Summit 2011 is going to be about the JDRF.  My history with the JDRF is long and in a good standing relationship.  I have volunteered a lot of my time with the local JDRF chapter and have donated a fair amount of money.  When I was doing consulting as a full time gig, I was donating 10% of all of my contract service fees to JDRF and anywhere from 20-50% of my affiliate commissions to JDRF.  I still do the same, I just don’t do as much contract work as I once did last year.  Recently, I had started to wonder if I was donating...