This is my first blog post as a healthcare professional so, as Miranda would say, bear with.
On Monday (29/2/16) I travelled north to attend the first We Get Together -#WGT16 (I actually made a weekend of it and took the opportunity to visit some friends beforehand). I won’t deny that I felt a little nervous about walking in to a roomful of strangers alone; even though I follow and communicate with many of the delegates on Twitter. I spent quite a lot of the day looking around the room to see if I could match Twitter avatars to real faces. There was also a bit of surreptitious glancing at name badges for recognisable Twitter handles (we were all doing it).
The day kicked off with a fabulous silent movie outlining the journey #WGT16 had taken to come to fruition (I’d add a link here but I’m not sure how to do this yet). Like all well rooted trees, the concept of bringing members of the We communities together started with a seed of an idea (a tweeted one).
The day offered plenty of opportunities to get to know one another and to discuss the benefits, perils and barriers of using social medial in health care. Social media guru Helen Bevan introduced the concept of curating information online so that digital intake is more like sipping from a wine glass than drinking from a fire hydrant at full force. I think Annie Cooper also planted a seed in my head for using Pinterest as one method of curating information (the treasure trove was a great example).
I also really enjoyed listening to @markOneInFour talk about the NHS, in particular around his trust of healthcare professionals to use social media wisely and for the greater good.
Discussions were varied but there was a lot focus on the variation of local policy for social media use and some debate on Twitter’s ability to transcend traditional hierarchy (which carried on online afterwards).
It’s an understatement to say how well everyone who took part in the organisation of the event did! Things appeared to run smoothly; credit to the resourceful and organised tweeting MDT. There was also plenty of cake to go round (and no, I didn’t enter an M&S sponge into the competition as my own!).
True to form I managed to get a couple of selfies with Teresa Chinn and Roy Lilley – I know Rev David Southall would approve of this haul! It was great to chat briefly with Teresa in person and to get/give a hug. There were a lot of hugs in the room between people who were strangers in person but well connected online.
The day also had a decent following by those who could not make it to the event. We were warned not to mention trending (though trending we were!!) as it encourages robots to add tosh and nonsense to the trending hash tag. To prove a point, a picture of a ladies bottom appeared on the giant screen amongst the live #WGT16 feed; much to the amusement of those in the room.
One of my more selfish reasons for attending #WGT16 (aside from the obvious networking benefits) was to find solutions for my recent Twitter inactivity (I tweet as @toribird79 if anyone would like to follow). I have been working as a quality governance manager for almost a year now and a good proportion of my work is quite sensitive, either to patients, staff or the reputation of the Trust where I work. For these reasons I have felt stilted in what I can share about my working day on Twitter and given that my Twitter account is largely a professional one this has been quite a problem. I think I bored enough people with my story to realise that I can still be active on social media without breaking confidences and as a result I have already upped the Twitter engagement anti.
My final pledge of the day, after far too long on the back burner , was to start a blog. So, jobs a good un!
toribird79 