Join the Brainstorm Started at #MedtronicDAF

A lot of wonderful and wise things happened at the Medtronic Diabetes Advocate Forum.*

Please help extend an important part of the event beyond the walls of Medtronic and beyond the borders of the USA. At #MedtronicDAF, with Scott Johnson and George Simmons, I helped lead some structured brainstorming. It would be easy enough to report out the results. That could, however, be seen as suggesting the views collected there are the only views on the topics that matter. 

We all know that ain't even close. How about sharing your thoughts?

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

For actual reports on the event see:
Kim Vlasnik at Texting My Pancreas
Catherine Price at A Sweet Life
Kerri Sparling at Six Until Me
Christel Aprigliano at The Perfect D
Sara Nicastro at Moments of Wonderful
Meri Schuhmacher at Our Diabetes Life
Jacquie at Typical type 1
Cara Richards at Every Day, Every hour, Every Minute
Chris Stocker at The Life of a Diabetic
Jessica Collins at Me and D
George Simmons at Ninjabetic


*Disclaimer: I attended as a guest of Medtronic. They paid for jet lag, oceans of caffein, a few beers, a place to stay and local transportation that made me car sick. They did not ask me to write. Nor suggest any topics if I did. They did not ask me to hold back on questions and they didn't hold back on replies to tough questions. My T1D kids are not users of their devices, we have demo-ed some, that did not seem to influence their interest in my thoughts. I try to maintain a friendly relationship with the people there. I feel their primary motivation is to serve people with diabetes through their work. This includes their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, of which I am not one. For the new proposed guidance: Medtronic has no collaboration, editorial preview or review privilege on anything I say here. And a partridge in a pear tree. 

Social Media and The Monster Under the Bed

Join me (and a bunch of other people far more interesting than me) for a special session at the upcoming Children with Diabetes’ Friends for Life conference in Orlando on social media and diabetes support. If you are planning to attend FFL this year, I'd love for you to join us for an exchange between clinical/academic experts and the diabetes online community. If you can't make it to FFL you can join a streaming of the event. DOC members (including your truly) will talk with a panel of clinical/academic experts assembled to specifically to discuss the value of peer-to-peer support and the online community.

Sign up Now!

Participating live or online can help demonstrate the value we in the DOC place on peer to peer social media. If you plan to attend in person, please RSVP by June 28 to P4DC@toniclc.com. (I hope it fills up fast, maybe and early RSVP is better than later.) If you want to join the live stream please fill out this registration. 

We’ll also field questions on Twitter via the #P4DC hash tag on the day of the session.

Here are some more details. 

Partnering for Diabetes Change (P4DC) is a coalition of people living with diabetes and industry representatives aimed at addressing unmet needs in diabetes through community and collaboration. I am honored volunteer my time to help organize P4DC efforts, including this event. I am thrilled that the people at Johnson and Johnson support the community and make things like this possible. P4DC seeks to validate the role of peer support in diabetes management, address the stigma of type diabetes, and ultimately support underserved communities.

You can be a part of the P4DC effort by participating in this live event, and by offering questions either in person or via Twitter. It is P4DC’s hope that through this session, they will be able to make a first step in showcasing the value of the DOC and the importance of social media engagement for patients.