We are winding down on the reviews of the Roche Social Media Summit, then it’s back to the boring Life of a Diabetic blog posts. This leads me into a discussion that I had with Scott King at the summit party on Thursday night. He asked where I came up with the name The Life of a Diabetic. I explained that I wanted to write a blog to show people what a normal life with diabetes is like. It is just like your life except I have a few extra things to do. The Life of a Diabetic is not a very exciting life. This was just one conversation among many that I had at the summit. That’s where the title comes into play for this post, Relationship building with the DOC.
I had spoken to most of the attendees on Twitter before but had only met a few. This was not just a time to learn and speak to companies about social media, but for us diabetics to get to know each other better. What I was the most amazed with is that everybody was pretty much exactly what I thought they would be. For some reason though, I didn’t know Scott Johnson was so damn tall, now all this basketball playing makes sense. It’s also great to see and hear Kerri’s funny ass personality in person rather via tweets and posts.
It is events like this that bring people together with a common cause and that’s when things can get scary for the people and things on the other side of the cause because ideas start happening, plans start coming together, action starts taking place. You are also building friendships with these people. I will now have memories for the rest of my life from hanging out on the rooftop Hard Rock bar, or watching George kick some serious karaoke ass, and watching Bernard rock out on the guitar of some Guitar Hero.
Building relationships with members of the DOC is an extremely important factor in the movement to get more funding for a cure or advocacy or anything else that we are trying to accomplish as a group. I feel more confident calling these people my friends and not just “some people I communicate with on twitter.” I’m excited to schedule some meetups with people because I love to travel and I want to come see some of ya’ll more frequently than just once a year. Midwest and West Coast, I’m mainly talking to you!
How have you been able to take the relationships that you started online and take them offline and continue to build them. I will be writing another post shortly about the idea of taking the “O” out of DOC and making us just a diabetes community and not just online. I think we are close to it and some of us have done this already.
Until then, I’d like to hear your diabetes relationship stories.
Chris: It was absolutely wonderful meeting you, my friend, and sharing a game of table tennis (I shall now refer to you as Ping Pong Champ Forrest Gump). And seeing so many of the incredible people who are so inspirational. Yes, it’s great to take the online friendships to the In Real Life level and see everyone speaking their mind live in person. Thanks for doing what you do and being who you are in this community, sharing your Life of a Diabetic.
Wow I wish I had your positive attitude. Most days are ok but sometimes not so much. Maybe its because I was recently diagnosed during a particularly hard time in my life but its good to know that I could have your attitude towards it in the future.
Lauren,
First, thank you for the comment, I greatly appreciate it. You can have the same positive attitude that I have. If you put your mind to it, and only focus on the positives, but also know the negatives, it can be done. Putting yourself in a false hope of security by just pushing out all the bad things will not help the situation either. Just always put a positive spin on something. If somebody drives by when its pouring outside and they splash water and mud all over you….. good, you just bought a new detergent you’ve been wanting to try out, now you can! May not be the best analogy but you know what I mean. Once again, thank you.
Well one positive, My pump, Medtronic Revel, is coming in on Friday 🙂
Congrats on that, I’m jealous!