How about a little insider’s history?
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was actively involved in organized dentistry and had accepted an appointment to serve on the Communications Council of our illustrious AGD. The council was later reorganized, and I found myself one of three dentist members of the Technology Council.
My knowledge of technology at the time was slightly more advanced than my parents’. I could turn my computer on. I could reboot it for any and all problems. And I could use “the Google.”
Our committee chairman was a brilliant dentist from New York who was so full of ideas that his ideas had ideas. His Friday afternoon phone calls to the AGD IT director in Chicago were legendary. Lemme tell ya, IT guys love it when dentists call in with 27 things the organization can do just before they leave work. But Stephen Akseizer, DDS, MAGD, was passionate, detail-oriented, and blunt. I came to love the guy.
The third member was this young-ish, energetic Gators fan from some place in Florida I can’t pronounce. He was much more technologically advanced than I because he knew what blogging was. He knew what the term meant, at least. I’m not so sure he knew what blogging actually involved from the time and idea standpoint, though.
Anyway, John Gammichia had this idea of a blog as a way to make the AGD more relevant to younger dentists. He figured that since he was young (at the time) and could write about the challenges particular to the young dentist, it would be a way to promote the AGD to an oft-overlooked segment of the dental world.
I mainly remember him causing lots of hand-wringing among the professional AGD staff. I remember eagerly looking for his posts and getting a kick out of his personal honesty about his practice or staff or kids or movies or whatever. In those early days, I would post a comment just to see if we could get some traffic. I think now we call what I did trolling. He would write about his staff, and the posts sometimes would draw mixed responses. The AGD staff would worry about whether something was appropriate or not. I was always of the opinion that “hey, it’s a BLOG! What do ya expect? We wanted an honest perspective, and we got it!”
Somehow, I got off the blog mailing list and haven’t seen any posts for a long time. Accepting this gig has prompted me to go back and check out what others have written. I’ve got to say, I’m very impressed! And humbled! This Andy Alas guy writes like I think. Terry Box is talking about burnout in a way that I can relate to. Larry Stanleigh had a good one about hiring staff. Plus, he’s got all those letters after his name!
And John Gammichia is still active! And he still writes! And he still has that funny, beautiful wife and that litter of kids!
I’m not so sure what I’ll bring to this besides the perspective of an old-ish, near-burnt-out, seen-it-and-heard-it dentist who just wants to see his patients (98 percent of whom he loves) and aggravate his grown kids and play his guitars and try to fish, etc…. I’m also looking forward to trolls trying to bait me into battle!
If you’ve made it to this point of the post, let me go ahead and say “thank you.” Thank you for offering me your time and attention. Time is becoming more and more precious, and if you’ve spent some of yours reading what I’ve written, then I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. I won’t take that lightly.
See ya next time!
Bruce M. Scarborough, DMD, FAGD
Bruce
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the blogging team and thanks for using my name in your blog. I believe this is the first time in my 40 year career I've been referenced . It's good to somebody is reading the blogs. Maybe my Google status will rise-LOL. Send me your address and I'll mail you a coiple of my custom guitar picks.No, I don't play all that well, but I did find out to have guitar picks made to use a business cards.