Can you remember where you were when President Kennedy was shot? Or, how about John Lennon?
I will remember where I was yesterday... indelibly. As events go it was 'differen't'... perhaps eclectic might be better. If you're old enough to know what a Whist Drive is. It looked a bit like that!
The venue; the refrigerated hall of Salford University. Small tables, each with a paper table cloth and a little jar of fresh flowers. All that was missing was the Vicar calling out the Bingo numbers. We had tea and home-made cake.
Retro, gentile... but the beginnings of a revolution!
A more attuned eye will have seen beyond the tea urn and the orange juice. The observant would have seen iPads, tablets, selfi-sticks, My-Fi's, Kindles and just about every other piece of electronic kit it is possible to cram in a handbag or brief case.
This was the future, now. This, the engine room of the new NHS. The Twitteratti were in town. The Snap-Chatters, the Pinteresters, the WhatsAppers had descended for an communico-fest.
There is a huge community of NHS workers who are in regular touch with each other. They have become a movement. They were having a jamboree.
The nurses started it with a Twitter group that become 'We-Nurses', since then other professions have joined with their own 'We' communities. Every day, thousands of messages are exchanged. This is the first time they had come face to face.
The Queen of social media Helen Bevan presented data, quotes and science. Social media... main stream.
There is a new lexicon;
- Old power for New.
- Currency becomes what is current.
- 'Held by a few' becomes 'made by many'.
- The old power is pushed down, in the new world it becomes pulled in.
- Commanded gives way to shared.
- Closed is open
... and transactions melt into relationships.
Web development... old hat. Facebook is for your mum and Linked-In for managers marooned in jobs they wish they could move-on from. Quora has the answers to your questions.... goodbye Google?
Scheduling, listing, profiling, time-line, content... the new imperatives.
Com's departments, who think the job is done with a weekly Tweet, will have a rude awakening when they see what can be achieved with Hootsuite and Buffer.
As fingers danced over key boards and selfies became de rigueur it was obvious; any Trust without a Twitter following of 5,000, just isn't in the game. Any Hospital that doesn't invite comments, complaints and compliments using a #hashtag, is in the gas lamp generation.
Check-in with QR codes, car park payments on smart phones, appointments by text, results via WhatsApp, Face Time at the bedside... the stuff the real world takes for granted and the NHS thinks is black magic.
The real shift, in the use of social media, will come when the hacked-off middle classes vent their frustration on the paper swamp that is still the NHS and insist on interoperability, access and the secure safety it brings.
The NHS could be ready. In the seventies building of Salford Uni sat the new creators, ready to define a new architecture for the 21st century.
There are still hospital communications departments, employing thousands of staff, for whom they don't have the text address for each and every one and cannot communicate with them simultaneously.
There are still boards who think a newsletter, on a web-site, is cutting edge. Chief executives who think a weekly round-robin email will do.
There are finance departments who think numbers and a 'narrative for the board', is enough and then wonder; why don't staff buy-in to efficiency and cost savings programs.
The NHS seems to have a determination to do things the hard way; lifting when we could be levering, pushing when we should be leaning. Social media isn't a novelty, it is main stream. It is not a hobby, it is part of the professional business repertoire.
The skills and knowledge on display at the fabulous 'We-Get-Together' sends out a serious message. My fear is, it might have to be faxed to the board room.
