Recapping Social Health 2010 (Part 1)
Part 1 of 3
Yesterday was the first annual #SXSH un-conference (for legal reasons, the S-X does not stand for “south by”). Organized in two months by a small team of passionate individuals who had never met each other before in real life, the event brought together some of the leading minds in the Social Health / Health 2.0 space from around the country. As someone who is still extremely new to the healthcare industry, I can’t even begin to quantify how much I got out of this event.
Thanks again to Shwen Gwee, Dana Lewis, Reed Smith, and Tom Stitt for organizing such a phenomenal event.
I have pages and pages of notes from the event, but unfortunately I don’t have time to turn them into a full narrative, as that “other” conference is starting today. What I’ve tried to do is provide links to the resources that were discussed, for those who were unable to attend the event — mostly in outline form.
Keynote Speaker: Doug Ulman, President and CEO of Livestrong (@LIVESTRONGCEO)
Doug is a 3-time cancer survivor, non-profit and social media icon, and just a really nice, down to earth guy. He kicked off the conference, talking about his battle with three types of cancer, how he got connected with Lance Armstrong (Lance emailed him; Doug had never heard of him), and how he wished social media had been around when he was first diagnosed: “Throughout this whole experience, all I wanted to do was connect with someone who had been down the same path.”
Three reasons social media will change health care:
- Free and accessible
- Real time: can get answers to things right away; no more “I wish I would have known X six months ago”
- Patient-centered, patient driven
Cancer is 400 diseases; there will be no silver bullet. “At the end of the day, it’s people coming together and interacting, that will change this paradigm.”
Doug urged participation in clinical trials: “Only 3% of adults participate in clinical trials. If that number was 6%, we could shave years off of clinical developments.”
A patient’s point of view on HIPAA: ”This may be controversial, but…As a patient- HIPAA doesn’t matter to me at all. I’ve had cancer; I’m already discriminated against in so many ways. I already can’t get life insurance.”
Examples of how social media has impacted their work & business:
- The @LIVESTRONG Twitter page is the top referrer to the Livestrong website; ditto for grassroots advocacy page, LivestrongAction
- In one of the worst economic years we’ve seen in our lifetimes, Livestrong raised 17% more in 2009 than in 2008 (2009 was the first full year of having an active social media presence)
Highlight from Q&A
Q: “When you first started with Twitter/Facebook, did you have strategy or did you just jump right in?”
A: Someone on Doug’s team signed him up for Twitter. When Lance asked what it was: “I don’t know what it is, but they put it on my Blackberry…. There was no strategy, at all.” But “there is incredible authenticity. With Lance, there are times when he posts things, when I’m like, ‘Did he really just post that?’ But it’s real.”
Speaker: Jenn Texada, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (@jenntex)
Jenn runs social media for M. D. Anderson, and social media listening is a 24/7 activity for her. She shared some great success stories, and a was also gracious enough to show some situations where things were trickier.
Getting things up and running was tough; lots of ‘nightmare scenarios’ where explored. (“What happens when…”) It took going down to the finance, customer service, etc., departments and telling them, “OK, we have these new channels. And this is a good thing.”
The Mayo Clinic’s work in social media paved the way for Jenn to sell in her own program.
Great success story from Facebook: A man posts, “Just diagnosed with cancer, can’t talk to family and friends. Want to curl up in a ball and cry.” MD Anderson immediately shares a resource and a number he can call to talk to someone, and other patients chime in to offer support. (See the actual post: http://www.facebook.com/MDAnderson?v=feed&story_fbid=348390749910&ref=mf )
Jenn’s advice to those trying to get a social media initiative off the ground at their own company: Find the people internally who really understand communications (and hopefully really understand social media).
Speaker: Greg Matthews, Humana (@chimoose)
Greg Matthews is Director of Consumer Innovations at Humana. After spending a career helping to build and operate businesses, Greg is now focused on using social media to create different kinds of interactions with consumers – with the goal of supporting a social revolution in health. Most recently he launched the health industry’s first twitter search tool, myTPSreport.com , and designed and launched CrumpleItUp.com , where he blogs regularly.
Greg’s task at Humana, and the question that led them into social media: “How can we, Humana, build a deeper level of commitment with our consumers as an insurance company?”
Key insight (possibly one of the best insights of the whole day): When thinking about all the times when an insurance company actually comes into contact with its members, Humana (via Greg) realized, “we are part of a sickness industry” (as opposed to a health industry)
One of the questions became: “How can we engage with healthy [health-minded] communities?”
- Build our own community? “Trying to move us away from that sort of thinking”
- Asked permission to participate in Twit2Fit
- Had already been members, personally, for 6 months
- Embedded a professional marathoner in this amateur fitness community
- Training logs, tweet chats, etc
- Engagement in this community went up 300%
“One of the things that people don’t think about, when they think about social, is that gaming is a social activity.”
- Created a social game built on web-enabled pedometers for kids
- Kids got together at recess to do exercise to get their step count up (!)
- Kids were exercising with families at home to get their step count up (!!!)
- Called “Horsepower Challenge” – horsepowergame.com
Along the way, Greg demoed a very cool Twitter/geo-mapping dashboard they developed — try it yourself at http://www.mytpsreport.com/
Greg’s #1 target for 2010: communities of care
- Ex: CureTogether.com
- 6-7K members
- Over 400 conditions represented
- All about helping people to find people in a similar situation and figure out how to work through this thing that’s happening to me
- “There is tremendous power in this model… I don’t yet know how a health insurance company can play here, but I want to support it, I want to be a part of it”
Q&A Highlights:
Q: “How did you pull this all off at Humana?”
A: “A little bit of stealth, and a quick win.”
Q: “Does social gaming as vehicle for behavior change translate to adults? Is Nike+ the model?” (Kids examples include Humana’s Horsepower Challenge, and the recently launched glucose meter for Nintendo DS)
A: There are a lot of sensors out there that can provide personal data related to health. Nike & iPod is a great example. What’s missing is the experience that ties the raw data, the social aspects, and the tracking of behavior change together in one place. “I think the market is there.”
More to come: the second set of speakers in the afternoon — Fabio Gratton, Marc Monseau, and David Hale — as well as the breakout sessions I attended.
To SXSWi, and Beyond
As we speak, I’m at 30,000 feet, on my way to Austin, TX for South by Southwest Interactive. Although this is an annual pilgrimage for thousands of people who work, live, eat, sleep, and breathe interactive, it’s actually my first time attending the conference. I’m prepared to be completely overwhelmed and exhausted, but any tips for maximizing the experience are greatly appreciated.
It should be an exceptional event. There are so many unbelievable speakers and panels lined up; unfortunately, many are in concurrent time slots, and I’m already frustrated that I won’t be able to see them all.
I’m particularly excited about an event I discovered merely a week ago: SXSH (Social Health 2010: Sharing. Exchanging. Social Health.) Taking place the day before SXSWi kicks off, SXSH promises to be an incredible opportunity to connect with and learn from some of the country’s top Health 2.0 leaders. The “un-conference” kicks off with a keynote from Doug Ulman, President and CEO of LIVESTRONG, and it’s all uphill from there.
If you’re going to be at SXSW and we’ve never met, please reach out to me on Twitter at @scheuguy — I’d love to connect.
Guest Post on the Gist Blog: Users “In Their Own Words”
I’m a little behind on getting this up here, but I recently had a guest post on the Gist blog. If you haven’t heard of Gist, it’s an exceptionally promising up and coming service for maintaining and growing your professional relationships. One could also describe it as Mint.com for your contacts, if Mint.com told you what tomorrow’s specials are at your favorite restaurant, and when your tailor is going to be on vacation.
If you’re interested, check out my guest post: In their own words: user Jamie Scheu says “Gist proved its value to me … within 24 hours”, and sign up for Gist already.
Augmented Reality: Bringing You New Reasons to Dislike People Before You Meet Them
“Technology,” warns Don Draper, “is a glittering lure.”
Applications for augmented reality are appearing everywhere: you can fight zombies, find the closest subway station, and measure a virtual flat-rate box on your kitchen counter before you head to the Post office. One of the slickest examples I’ve seen (not yet on the market) uses a robust facial recognition technology developed by Polar Rose to pull social information in real time just by looking at someone’s face. It’s called AugmentedID, and power networkers everywhere are drooling.
While many of us are caught up in the allure of augmented reality’s potential, few have played out the consequences of the rapid availability of this technology. Jamais Cascio decided to do just that in an article in this month’s The Atlantic, and conceived of a dystopian nightmare of real-life popups and social filtering (automatically removing people with differing political views from your field of vision, for instance).
We’re not that far off. He writes,
Although AR now relies on handheld devices, electronics makers like Sony are working on systems that you wear like sunglasses, making augmented vision more immersive. Here’s where the first familiar online phenomenon shows up: spam. Nearly every communication method we invent eventually conveys unwanted commercial messages. AR systems will be used for spam too, whether via graffiti-like tags, ads that pop up when you look too long at a shop, or even abstract symbols stuck to a wall or worn on a shirt that, when viewed through an AR system, turn into 3-D animations. (emphasis added — I would remove “nearly”)
Sounds cool — as long as there are only a few innovators doing it, and the executions actually add value. But it’s not hard to imagine this media opportunity spiraling rapidly out of control, as every logo ever printed becomes a point of “engagement” overnight.
The interpersonal implications are even more interesting. Cascio picks politics as an ideological differentiator to illustrate the drawbacks to instantly knowing everything about any individual you meet.
After California’s Prop 8 ban on gay marriage passed, opponents of the measure dug up public records of donors supporting the ban, and linked that data to an online map. Suddenly, you could find out which of your neighbors (or the businesses you frequent) were so opposed to gay marriage that they donated to the cause. Now imagine that instead of a map, those records were combined with an AR system able to identify faces.
You don’t want to see anybody who has donated to the Palin 2012 campaign? Gone, their faces covered up by black circles. You want to know who exactly gave money to the 2014 ban on SUVs? Easy—they now have green arrows pointing at their heads.
You want to block out any indication of viewpoints other than your own? Done.
This will not be a world conducive to political moderation, nor one where differing perspectives get along comfortably. It won’t take a majority of people using these filters to poison public discourse; imagine this summer’s town-hall screamers on constant alert, wherever they go. Yet this world will be the unintended consequence of otherwise desirable developments—spam filters, facial recognition, augmented reality—that many of us will find useful.
Now, I don’t necessarily buy that political partisanship will lead the augmented reality revolution. But here’s a far more likely scenario: augmented reality dating. Intelius recently rolled out an iPhone app called “datecheck” (video walthrough here) that performs an instant background check on anyone, reporting on details from criminal records to personal interests to estimated net worth. Imagine if this information was available in real time, based simply on facial recognition (e.g. someone you hadn’t met yet). The economist in me calls this access to near-perfect information “efficiency.” The realist in me calls this situation “everyone dies alone.” My favorite economist (and favorite professor), Steven Landsburg, would be torn.
Comedian Demetri Martin has a bit about bumper stickers that’s always resonated with me. He looks at the bright side of these eyesores:
A lot of people don’t like bumper stickers. I don’t mind them. To me they’re a short-cut to saying: “Hey, let’s never be friends.”
What happens when we’re followed around by virtual bumper stickers — not of our own choosing — at all times? Will we find new areas of commonality, or new reasons to discriminate? I worry about the latter scenario. Based only on your profile information, Facebook already thinks you’re fat; what will augmented reality present that’s any different? Some have argued that “what unites us is greater than what divides us.” But I bet you could find at least one ideologically incompatible perspective with every friend you have — after all, if your social network consists of ideological clones, what the hell do you all find to talk about?
I haven’t decided how I feel about this. I’m excited by the technology, but alarmed by the implications.
What do you think about augmented reality — good or evil?
The Future of Entertainment: Talk to Your Television
Just when you think you’ve seen everything… This is truly remarkable.
(Hat tip: @eschenck)
Social Media for B2B
(Note: This is a reprint of a post I wrote over on the Hill Holliday blog.)
Enquiro Research recently reported that 93.1% of business technology purchasing decisions are researched online. Not surprisingly, the use of search (and predominantly Google) comprises a significant share of the online research performed.
More interestingly, however, is the fact these same business buyers are startlingly active on social platforms. Forrester recently published the results of a survey of the online behaviors of business technology buyers, which found that they more socially engaged online than the average adult consumer.
Almost all respondents maintained at least a passive level engagement with social media: 91% of buyers in the business-to-business sector reported reading blogs, consuming user-generated video, or listening to podcasts. But social participation among B2B buyers runs much deeper — nearly half (43%) reported actively creating content on social platforms themselves. This figure is nearly double the average among all US online adults.
Social media is staged to play an ever-increasing role in actual purchase influence among business buyers. Groundswell co-author Josh Bernoff sums up the situation in a recent blog post: “What does this mean for you? If you’re a B2B marketer and you’re not using social technologies in your marketing, it means you’re late.”
Eye Tracking In Practice (Squidoo)
I stumbled onto this video via an old blog post from Seth Godin. If you have the time and the patience to really focus, it’s a fascinating look into how eye tracking works. Not something most of us come across every day.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
I like to think I’ve learned a lot of things from my dad (probably not as many as I should — but I’ll save that discussion for my memoirs). Amidst these many life lessons, one in particular — heralding from the field of carpentry — comes to mind often: “measure twice, cut once.” This expression is most commonly invoked in the vicinity of 2×4s and tables saws, but the philosophy can be applied to many different disciplines.
Take for instance, the discipline of creating branded microsites (incidentally, my current favorite is that for the Pomegranate Phone). If I had to break the process of building a microsite down into three steps, they would be:
- Pick a clever, relevant, unregistered .com domain.
- Build your microsite.
- There is no Step 3.
Of course there is a great deal more that goes into Step 2, which is no doubt why Step 1 is such an underrated part of the process. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for the following travesty of branded microsite creation:
http://www.thefirstworldwidewebsitewerenothinghappens.com/
Let it load. Explore it as much as you desire. Then look more closely at the domain. And the “contact” email address at the bottom. And then ask yourself… how could this site possibly have launched with the word “where” spelled wrong in three places on the site (including the domain)?
I considered suggesting that this domain had been purchased by some intern at Kit Kat’s (or more likely, Hershey’s) digital agency of record, but that would be an outrageous insult to interns everywhere. What’s even more funny/tragic is that the correctly-spelled domain is being squatted.
I’m flummoxed. Anyone care to provide any insight into this perplexing situation?
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