I climbed my first 14er over the weekend. We reached the summit of Mt. Belford (14,197) at 2:05 PM Saturday afternoon. You can read the full report here.

 
My friend Alan Arnette continues to make progress on his goal to climb the 7 summits and raise $1 million dollars for Alzheimer’s research.

The Alzheimer’s Association is fully engaged in the project and will be helping with the logistics of the US fund-raising events. Next, Outside Magazine Online will follow the climbs thus increasing the project’s visibility and the opportunity for raising awareness and donations. Also, we have an agreement with a major guiding company to manage the logistics of all 7 climbs. The details will be announced as soon as the final piece falls into place – which is securing the remaining financial sponsorship.

I think the majority of this blog’s readers are health care marketing and communications professionals. If you’re looking to raise awareness about Alzheimer’s or related projects you couldn’t find a better partner than Alan. He’s an incredible climber and person as well as being incredibly motivated to find a cure for a disease which continues to impact his family. Please take a look at his project, consider some level of sponsorship if you can, and share it with your friends and colleagues.

 

 
You can also follow Alan on Twitter.

This is an old photo – reprocessed for a publisher who inquired about including it in a magazine. I have more aircraft photos on Flickr.

 
That’s a screenshot of my 3600×1800 dual widescreen desktop after upgrading to Linux Mint 7 (Gloria) x64 Edition. It’s fast, elegant, painless so far, and a fresh install (including installing some extra software and the usual tweaks) took less than an hour. You can see a nice writeup that includes videos of the new features on the Linux Mint site.

Last week’s social media workshop was, at least from my perspective, quite successful. Reed Smith and the crew the Texas Hospital Association pulled together an excellent group of presenters that gave the group just the right mix of theory and practical advice. Those who follow me on Twitter know I’m pretty hard on the exploding “social media guru” population, most of them are hacks frankly, but my fellow presenters and panelists knew their stuff. You should be following them on Twitter:

Dave Evans – @evansdave
Jennifer Texada – @JennTex
Cynthia Baker – @CynthiaBaker
Mike Chapman – @MikeChapman
Jon Lebkowsky – @jonl
Shawn Zehnder Lee – @shawnz
Richard John Groos and Robert F. Corrigan, Jr. of @Fulbright

It was particularly encouraging to see that for many hospitals the discussion has shifted from questioning the usefulness of the tools to determining how best deploy them. Many people showed up with Twitter accounts – both personal and organizational, they tweeted during the presentations, they used hastags, they uploaded photos to Twitpic. True, none of that would be unusual at many conferences but we do not see enough of it in health care. There were some folks who were still off the grid but they were there, and learning something, so that’s a start. I hope all of the attendees left with the realization that the perceived legal and process challenges can be addressed and that with a little bit of planning and creativity social media tools can transform their communications.

Updates:
The Austin-American Statesman has a short article on the subject.
Aaron Hughling has a writeup on presentations by Jennifer Texada and Jon Lebkowsky.

I’m in Austin at the request of the Texas Hospital Association for Where Social Media and Health Care Meet – Harnessing New Media Tools. If you can’t attend you can still follow along on Twitter via the #thasm hastag. Just hit search.twitter.com for updates.

The photo was taken with my new Nokia e75. It’s awesome and I’ll have more to say about it later.

Matt Gillman (CaptMatty)
Deputy Director, Integrated Media

Wil Vargas (AeroVargas)
Assistant Director, Internet Technology

Bernie Khoo (Bkhoo)

Other attendees included:

Dr. Steven Tucker (DrStevenTucker)
An American oncologist practicing in Singapore

Serena Stockwell (OncologyTimes)
Editor-in-Chief, Oncology Times

Eric Rosenthal (etrosenthal)

David Sampson (djsampson)
Director, Med/Sci Communications at the American Cancer Society – PR for two medical journals (CA and CANCER)

Martin Fenner (mfenner)
Clinical fellow in oncology, working in a university hospital

Journal for the National Cancer Institute (JNCI_Now)

Oncology Congress (OC2009SanFran)

Edward Aten (EdwardAten)

and a few others. If I missed you and you’d like to be added to the list let me know.

The really interesting part of the whole event, outside of this great mix of social media and healthcare personalities, was the involvement of key ASCO leadership. Two of the physicians responsible for leading ASCO’s Integrated Technology Committee attended the event:

L. Michael Glode FACP,MD
Chair-Elect
Bio

Daniel D. Karp MD (DanKjazzMD)
Chair
Bio

Drs. Glode and Karp really set the tone for the event. Roughly twenty chairs were assembled in a large circle, we each introduced ourselves, and Dr. Glode began to explain the (very briefly) the evolution of ASCO’s Internet presence, the significant risks involved in talking about research and treatment models, and their current exploration of Twitter. In talking about Twitter both Dr. Karp and Dr. Glode expressed the sort of healthy skepticism about the benefits of social media that I think are typical of many healthcare leaders at the moment. The fact that ASCO communications can shake Wall Street or impact oncology treatment worldwide significantly complicates matters. However, the consensus from the group was that risk shouldn’t silence the organization. My response on this issue never varies. Organizations should plan for risk, develop editorial strategies to address it, get internal buy-in, and involve decision makers in the workflow, but they should never let others define their position by staying out of the game.

The ASCO team also asked the group to contribute new ideas.  Again, the feedback was passionate and productive. I won’t go into what ASCO might do with Twitter this year, and at next year’s meeting in Chicago, but if they move forward with some of the group’s innovative suggestions I believe it will profoundly change the way medical professionals view the platform. Keep an eye on them.

If you haven’t heard enough of my ramblings about health care social media already you might want to join us in Austin on June 18th for three Texas Hospital Association sponsored panel discussions that I will be participating in:

10:45-Noon
Social Media Best Practices Panel
Moderator: Shawn Zehnder Lea Vice President for Strategic Communications, Mississippi Hospital Association (shawnz)
Panelist: Dave Evans Principal, Social Web Strategies (evansdave)
Panelist: John Little Program Manager, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Get a bird’s-eye view of how hospitals around the country are leveraging social media. Panelists will share public relations success stories, patient testimonials, case studies and best practices. You’ll also learn how to overcome common roadblocks.

2:45 – 3:15 p.m.
Panel Discussion: Legal and HIPAA Implications
Robert F. Corrigan, Jr. Partner, Fulbright & Jaworski LLP
Richard John Groos Partner, Fulbright & Jaworski LLP
John Little Program Manager, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Jennifer Texada Digital and New Media Program Manager, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Panelists continue the discussion over legal and HIPAA implication addressed in the previous session, sharing scenarios and case study examples to help you anticipate and avoid pitfalls.

3:30 – 4:15 p.m.
Expert Panel Discussion
Moderator: Shawn Zehnder Lea Vice President for Strategic Communications, Mississippi Hospital Association (shawnz)
This panel will bring together all the content experts from the day to offer attendees a forum for open discussion and opportunity to ask questions.

There are a lot of other great panels and panelists, such as my friend and colleague Jennifer Texada, there that day. I highly recommend it for healthcare professionals who are looking to launch or fine tune social media programs. It will be great fun – unless the lawyers turn on me.

Taken this afternoon. It’s made of metal and covers a door on a bar along Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston.