The Virtual Meeting Coach

A Report From the Field

This fall, I piloted a 4-week, face-to-face, hands-on Cloud Computing course for seniors and aging Baby Boomers who aren’t yet ready to call ourselves “Seniors”

I call the course, “Up, Up and Away,” and I promise to take people who are frustrated with their desktop computing experiences from hair-pulling to happy smiles and thicker wallets in just four weeks using a cheap mobile computer and Cloud apps. The first folks who signed up were my neighbors in the Mountain Meadows Community in Ashland, Oregon. In four weeks, participants made faster strides than even I had anticipated!

I took their performance as affirmation of three things:

1) The course design is sound and provides a useful scaffold for people who want to create a whole new relationship to computing to do so in just 4 weeks
2) Seniors can and do learn new tricks a whole lot faster than people might give them credit for
3) Mobile computers and Web 2.0 Cloud apps are going to change all of our lives – not just the lives of young people!

The photos above were made on Friday the 13th when a big crowd turned out for the Mountain Meadows‘ November “Friday Forum” to hear me talk about the way I look at new opportunities for seniors who willing to invest in cheap laptops or netbooks and learn to use free Cloud apps. New online ways to engage in lifetime learning, telehealth options, telemedicine options, meaningful online community participation, inexpensive (or free) connection to family members and other caregivers – wherever they are! And so much more… My deepest thanks to Cindy Earle and Hunter Hill for the photos!

I’m just crazy about my neighbors at Mountain Meadows! They’re all so smart! And they’ve moved into this community to manage their lives in new ways while they “Age in Place.” Coming to live among them has been a life-changing experience for me, personally. As a group, they’re deeply committed both to their own lifetime learning and to maintaining healthy, active relationships with the people they care about – here and across the globe! So, over the next 6 months or more, I’m going to be taking groups of 12 of them “up in the Cloud,” using “Up, Up and Away” as the vehicle. If the first group’s success was any indication of what’s to come for Mountain Meadows, this community will soon be setting a national standard for active, senior communities using the internet, social media, and virtual meeting technologies to optimize resources for “Aging in Place.”

I’m excited about “Up, Up and Away!”! And I’m looking for opportunities to offer it locally while I also finish a train-the-trainer program so that people who would like to can offer it in your areas.

I very much want to share my introductory talk, “Computer Frustrate Me – Why Should I Care About Them?” with churches, clubs, professional groups and at professional conferences several times a month during December, January and February and on into 2010. But I don’t know how to do this without investing lots of time or money on marketing.

Got any ideas?

I really wish I had three bodies so I could finish all the things I’ve started lately. I don’t have three bodies. If I even had two bodies, I would send one of them to the E-Patient Connections Conference the third week of this month in Philadelphia.

Why? I’m getting more excited everyday at the innovative uses of virtual meeting tools unrolling daily in the telehealth and telemedicine arenas! The possibilities for patients and doctors to get together whenever and wherever and however works best for both parties are multiplying exponentially – with or without government healthcare reform!

I’ve been talking with innovators daily and canning some interviews you can expect to start enjoying here by the end of this week.

Until then, take a look at this vid and tell me if it doesn’t give you hope, too…

Connectedness by Ayesha Hilton

Cutting the Chord (Click here for video.)

When you’re sick, you’re sick. And for many people being sick brings with it a powerful desire to be in close touch with your doctor until you feel well.

If YOU don’t have that desire – or maybe especially because you don’t – your family members are likely to have it twice as bad FOR YOU.

Well, mobile medical technologies are poised to make a much stronger link between you and your healthcare providers lot more possible than you might ever have imagined. Wireless healthcare devices and systems can make it downright simple for you to be monitored in all kinds of ways from well outside the walls of doctor’s offices and hospitals.

In case you missed it, this tight, meaty conversation  took place on August 28, 2009, on CNBC, between Hewlett Packard’s Executive VP of the Personal Systems Group, Todd Bradley, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, and Dr. Eric Topol, Scripps Health Chief Academic Officer. The focus is wireless healthcare and mobile medicine initiatives that the big boys have been readying for market even while the economy has been languishing.

So, how would you like to be feeling better connected to your healthcare team? And in what ways?

Dreaming is about to be believing… Take a look:  Cutting the Chord (Click here for video.)