The Subtle Influence

Social Media/Healthcare Ideagoras Conference Keynote

The video for the keynote I gave via Skype at the Ideagoras conference is up on Vimeo! I got up at 3 am to deliver this 20 minute keynote to a crowd of ~100, I even had a translator that I didn't know about. 

Some points that I talk about in my keynote:

1.  I want community and connection after finding out information about a condition that I am diagnosed with. These conversations are happening in communities/patients, they are going to occur with or without the brands involvement. If nothing else, a pharma brand could listen to the feedback that is generated. Brands are held in the minds of the people.
2.  ACOR, Medgle.com, Medhelp.org as organizations that provide information in the healthcare space.
3. A community is a garden, not a faucet, you can't turn it on and off- it's more planting seeds and watching it grow.

Thank you Ángel González for setting up this opportunity to share my experience with healthcare and social media.

Old interview from March 2009 with Chubby Brain.

http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/2009/03/interview-with-chia-hwu-community-manager-at-23andme/

A little excerpt where I talk about Community Management:

Tell us a bit about yourself, your background... and what your job of community manager entails?

I primarily interface with members and people curious about the company. I primarily do that through social media – things like Twitter and Facebook and sometimes even LinkedIn. Also, other genealogy/genetic forums. There is actually a group of people very interested in learning about their deep genealogy which our service helps with. And they do their own research so I interface with those people as well.

We also have our forums on our site where people can come on and where people can look at what other people who are part of the service are talking about. For example, there are people who’ve started an adoption thread. A lot of people on the site are adopted and wanted to find out more about themselves. So this is one way for them to find out about their predispositions especially since they don’t have a family history.

On the Web Front interview with Chia Hwu and Alex Khomenko of 23andMe

From On The Web Front, episode 16:

In this week’s long overdue episode we are joined by Chia and Alex from 23andMe.com. We chat with Alex and Chia about their startup experiences at 23andMe and at their previous employers. In addition we talk about:

• The 23andMe Research Revolution which allows a discounted $99 rate for your own genetic testing and health traits
• Chia’s role as community manager and how tools like Twitter and Facebook can be used to engage your customer and grow your business
• And why any startup should have good air conditioning

http://www.onthewebfront.com/2009/08/otwf-16-23-and-us/

Check out the other great podcasts that Mike, Gabby, Robert and Stephen do on a semi-regular basis.

Interview with Chia at the Online Community Report

Thanks to Bill Johnston of ForumOne and his Online Community Report for giving me the opportunity to talk about my experiences with the unique 23andMe community.

Excerpt from the interview:
Q: Chia, you have a very unique community, in the sense that your community has the ability explore issues relating to a person's DNA. Can you talk about the strategy behind the 23andMe community?

23andMe has a very unique community that is based on having your genetic data. We currently only allow members who have been genotyped or have an Ancestry account post to the forums and the level of discourse is extremely high. We are very lucky to have such engaged, passionate and well-educated users who want to talk about their genetic results and share their data with each other. If you are interested in seeing what types of discussions are happening, create a free account and you can read through the threads.

Our community creates a place for people to engage with each other, it's pretty interesting to see how the interactions happen and how people connect, sometimes through their data and sometimes just in conversation.

I talk more about the unique community and the challenges of managing one- link to the full post here:

http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/archives/536-Online-Community-Expert-Interview-Chia-Hwu,-23andMe.html