Earlier today I was asked what my 'aha moment' was when it came to professionally embracing social media.  It is a great question and it forced me to put a few thoughts down on paper - it turns out the sound bites that I have used for the past two years seem to have so much more weight when laid out on the screen for all to see, so I thought I would share.

Here is how I answered the question:

"For years I have been asking health care providers two questions: what do you like best about national conferences and medical meetings in general? And, where do you turn when you have a question in practice? The most popular answers to the first question are: the hallway conversations, peer feedback, and networking. The most popular answers to the latter question are: ask a colleague or call a peer. The common theme is that, whether they realize it or not, health care providers rely heavily on social learning. With the myriad of social media channels available, it seems that health care providers will eventually recognize the learning value in these technologies - the question is, can we afford to wait for serendipity...I think not."

I have shared my philosophy on the CME profession and social media before, but these ideas seems to be gaining a little momentum in the past few weeks (I will share my thoughts from the 2011 Alliance for CME Annual Meeting in a future post) - for now it is just great to know that some in the CME profession are not only embracing the possibiliies of social media, but are sticking their necks out and actually trying to integrate social media into their education...2011 is going to be very, very interesting.

Back to the question at hand - it is a great one to ask anyone who has recently changed their behavior (therefore a great tool for deconstructing CME), so I ask the same of each of you: why have you chosen to engage in social media, what was your 'aha moment'?