Using Collaboration, Rich Media and the Social Infrastructure to Save my pet Sugar Glider

It’s been over a month since I got home from a family Christmas in British Columbia. Within minutes of being here, I knew something was terribly wrong: my little man Mars, a Sugar Glider, was critically sick and needed emergency care.

While his fate is still uncertain, his care and recovery up to this point can be credited to the power of user-generated content and the social infrastructure that supports it.  Oh yeah – and a super fantastic vet, Dr. Mitelman at Kingston Animal Hospital in Toronto.

Meet Mars.

Nine years ago, I faced a similar situation when my first sugar glider became ill. At that time, there was no YouTube, Facebook, Yelp (or even the concept of Word-of-Mouth) nor such prevalent use of Rich media like videos or pictures - Flickr.com did not exist. Despite the medical care, this little sugar glider died in my hands within a few days.

Today, the wealth of online resources, networks, and user-generated content combined with using rich media (photos and videos) may just save Mars. Here’s how:

1.  ‘Word of Mouth” helped me find the right vet.

Like any parent with a sick child, you don’t want just any doctor.  Despite my very limited options – it was New Year’s eve day and we’re not dealing with a ‘normal’ kind of pet, I wanted credentials and feedback on Kingston Road Animal hospital – all of which I found on Yelp.com.  The comments from pet owners, the Word of Mouth content, validated that it was the right place to go.

2.  The social infrastructure located other Sugar Glider experts.

Mars needed emergency surgery and until the test results came back, the course of action was uncertain. He had a gaping hole in his chest – the size of a quarter – and it was deep enough that I wasn’t sure if I was looking at his ribs or spine.

Unsure of what caused this, Dr. Mitelman and I would have to wait – and given the holiday weekend, it could take longer than expected. Things were not looking good for Mars.

Undeterred, both Dr. Mitelman and I reached out through the social infrastructure to find answers and the recommendations of other Sugar glider experts. Dr. Mitelman reached out through VIN.com, a veterinarian specific hub where he could collaborate amongst the 42,000 worldwide members.

I found a Sugar Glider-specific vet site, reached out (despite not being a vet) and within minutes received a reply and great support from Val Betts, the owner and President of Sugarglidervetinfo.com. She recommended an ‘e-collar’ for Mars and pointed me to a website where I could download the directions to make one. I also found an instructional video on YouTube which was incredibly helpful.

3. the social infrastructure enabled me to share pictures and video for monitoring his recovery.

It’s January in Toronto, Canada. There’s snow. And at times, a whole lot of it. During these times of arctic-like conditions, driving is not advisable, or even a possibility. But sharing videos and pictures via YouTube and Flickr is.

Using a FlipShare camera (best purchase ever), I could film Mars, edit the footage in minutes and then directly upload to YouTube. Likewise, taking photos didn’t require National Geographic-like finesse or equipment – my Blackberry was just fine.  I could share the media with Dr. Mitelman and also with Val, who is located in Texas,

It hasn’t been easy to provide the care he needs and monitor him around the clock. He needs food, water, medicine, wound cleaning, bathing (often a combination thereof) every few hours. [I’ll spare you the details on the 2am glider enemas] . Having the support found online and the over-the-top attention from Kingston Road Animal Hospital (they call regularly to check up on him), has provided support, expertise and ongoing treatment that wasn’t possible nine years ago.

This is the first time I’ve relied on social tools and technology in my personal life – in this Veterinarian 2.0 experience. We’re not sure of the outcome yet (fingers crossed),  but social and UGC could very well be the reason why my little man Mars survives.

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Social and User Generated Content mentioned and used:

http://www.suzsugargliders.com/

http://www.gliderhealth.com/

http://www.sugargliderhelp.com/links/pages/

http://www.sugarglidervetinfo.com/default.html

A big shout-out to Dr.Mitelman and the staff at Kingston Road Animal Hospital.

http://www.beachvet.com/

By far the most compassionate, attentive and committed vet and staff I've ever experienced. I don't know too many doctors who will call in a prescription at 11pm at night for a human, let alone a pet!

What the heck is a sugar glider?

No – it’s not a rat, or even related to the rodent family. They are marsupials.

Yes, like a Kangaroo or Possum

Yes, females have pouches and give birth to Joeys.

Yes, they have a lifespan much longer than hamster - they can live up to 12-15 years.

No, they don’t go to the bathroom on me.

No, they don’t ‘fly’, they glide, hence the name Sugar ‘Glider’

I’ve had pet Sugar Gliders for over 15 years and it has certainly been the topic of interest, ridicule and amazement – bottom line, I adore these little creatures.

Death, Porn and Digital Legacy

That's right - I said it.

That nasty little word that is riddled with emotion and sometimes wrought with controversy: death. It was the focus of Adele McAlear’s session, “Death and Digital Legacy”, at the Mesh Conference today in Toronto. I’ll be honest; when she dropped the ‘p’ word, stating that everyone needs a “porn buddy”, that's when her session came to life. In that dreaded post-lunch time slot, no one was dozing - she had everyone’s undivided attention.

Porn buddy? Really?

The context is an old school, pre-internet reference: if something (god forbid) were to happen to you – such as death or debilitation – that you had a buddy who would take care of your porn stash before your parents found it. Hence, porn buddy.

Fast-forward to this digital era characterized with social media and the pervasive distribution of user-generated content. The concept of your porn stash has evolved and is now online, shared, linked, and exponentially growing with each subsequent Tweet, Status update, Wall post and photo upload. There’s the usual suspects - your website and various social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blog sites, etc. What about Paypal, eBay, Flikr, Picasso, Google, Yahoo, MSN, YouTube, and the magnitude of others….? What happens to these accounts and the associated stash of content if something happens to you? Do you have a designated porn buddy tasked with taking care of your online presence?

I don’t know anyone who tracks his or her various accounts and passwords, let alone in one consolidated place. Or who even tells someone about it all. Adele makes a good point: if a death occurs, who is the designated digital porn buddy – what she calls a ‘Digital Executor’ – who will take care of the content, assets, artifacts and accounts?

I am far from an online e-lebrity nor have a significant following on Twitter, but some of you do. I don’t have an eBay store or generate revenue using PayPal – you might. I also don’t have the next Pulitzer Prize winning manuscript, World of Warcraft Hack or other content that would be deemed invaluable to some. You might. So who is your digital executor, what are your final wishes for these digital assets/accounts and where do you document and store this information?

Take this a step further into the workplace. Many corporations set up Slideshare, Scribd, Facebook, Twitter and the countless online accounts where employees register using their corporate email address. Let’s not be dramatic and say these employees die; simply that they’re no longer with the company. Who is the porn - ahem - I mean Digital Executor when he/she is no longer with the company? Where is this account information? What happens to the related content assets and artifacts when they leave? Who even knows the extent of all the accounts that employees have associated with their corporate email address? Just because you’ve turned off their network access and disabled their email account doesn’t mean that these social sites terminated them as well. And while we hope that people exercise good judgment and don’t go off on some social slander campaign using a corporate ID account – as the old adage says, hope is not a strategy.

What does this strategy even look like? A corporate social media and blogging policy is a good start - does yours include more than the obligatory guidelines covering etiquette and not dropping the eff-bomb? If it doesn't - it should. Does it state that corporate domain accounts need to be discontinued once the employee leaves the company? Does an employee need to log or register the accounts that are based on a corporate ID?

Policies are nice in theory but the devil is in the details: how can a company track this? Who is responsible for auditing and monitoring any of this and the magnitude of content generated from it? What does enforcement entail? Can it be enforced? Who is the corporate digital executor once they are gone?

Thanks Adele for discussing death, porn and digital legacy. It certainly provoked me into thinking beyond our personal need for a Digital Executor and questioning how the corporate world will approach this. I'm not proclaiming to have answers and for those of you reading this - I’m interested to hear your thoughts and how you plan to personally - or from a business perspective - address these questions.


Sources:
Adele McAlear: http://www.adelemcalear.com
Mesh Conference: http://www.meshconference.com/

Social Networking: Bringing Back Old School

Little did I know as I crushed my thumb in the wooden slats of the garage door (who knew it could move so fast!? ) that this moment would shift my perspective on Social networking.

I’m a knowledge worker (a fancy term for someone who works on a computer all day) and I rely on my computer and Blackberry to do my job. With my right hand firmly immobilized in a brace, I faced a significant limitation: the keyboard was impossible. How was I going to type, or have any semblance of productivity, with one hand?

As my email inbox climbed steadily, instant messages popped up and TweetDeck taunted me with endless Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates, I wondered when had we become so dependent – addicted -to these social programs that were meant to be enablers, not the ‘fix’?

I was socially cut-off and this intervention was staged by a most unusual suspect - my keyboard. I didn’t realize the power this seemingly innocuous input device had over us knowledge workers: it is our lifeline. What options did I have without it? It was an epiphany moment of Jerry Maguire proportions when an instant message suddenly appeared. It came from the person in the office next door.

I took a deep breath.
I got up and walked over to the office next to me.
That’s when the unthinkable happened.

We talked.
.....As in face-to-face.
It was just like instant messaging: in real-time.
We collaborated and communicated without a 140-character limitation.
The best part: it didn’t require a keyboard. It was ‘old school’ social networking.

I have to ask: is social networking making us socially lazy? Have we lost perspective of what “social” is - human-to-human interaction? Are we becoming less social as we increasingly – and so readily, adopt social tools that replace human-to-human interaction? I’m not saying that social media and networking don’t have their place and benefits, but it appears we’ve lost our way when we instant message the person at workstation 10 feet away. What about those war and peace emails with the thread of painstakingly detailed replies? How many of these could have more efficiently and effectively handled in person, or over the phone?

Social computing is just that – it is computing. People are not computers. And computers are not social. People are social. And while the almighty keyboard is our conduit that links these two worlds, let’s not forget that the keyboard is a just an input device and enabler.

And while it took crushing my thumb in a garage door to realize the painfully obvious, sometimes we all need a little reminder to keep it real...and to bring it back old school style.