How did odsonfb start you ask?
“ODs on Facebook” started September in 2011 with a back-of-the-napkin concept to create a different kind of online eye care industry community. This online space would be less like a “forum” and more of a community – a place where people would create friendships, share successes, failures, and challenges and learn together.
It would include guidelines, consistently implemented that limited political posts and discouraged “haters” and other problems divisive in nature that discouraged a community “feel”. It would be a space where people could share clinical content, practice management content and have a little fun, but not at anyone else’s expense.
I invited 40 of my closest thought-leader colleague “facebook” connections and went back to the clinic to see about 3 hours of patients. When I returned to my computer the facebook notification buttons were going crazy. During that short period of time, the 40 “invitees” had morphed into 125 members. Comments were posted like “what a great idea Alan” and “we really need this” and the content started pouring in.
Consistently growing…..
To this day, we average between 30 and 50 new members a day with no sign of it slowing down anytime soon. We share tens of thousands of posts, write hundreds of thousands of comments and literally have had millions of “likes”. We’ve posted over 5,000 pictures and 3,000 videos. We’ve spawned our own thought leaders, lectures at Vision Expo and SECO, and have the greatest parties ever!!
Together we’ve influenced and continue to influence an entire industry and for that, I thank the entire community – I am truly grateful to share this community with you. Is it perfect? No, but we strive for continual improvement and back up our guidelines consistently since day one.
I created odsonfb.com as a way to feature the “best of the best” content from our community, something I couldn’t do on “ODs on Facebook” on Facebook. While designing it, the concept grew. I decided to include other features like gamification, reference tabs, video and other expert-driven content.
I purposefully left off a discussion board as we needed to do something different here; we already have our motherboard “ODs on Facebook”. I determined instead to focus on driving a great content experience.
With our community existing on facebook’s platform, I was limited in what I could achieve in terms of delivering content and the control I could exert over a website would solve that problem. We will feature writers from across the spectrum; student writers, young ODs, older ODs and industry thought leaders. Much like “ODs on Facebook” we’ll have great clinical, practice management and fun content for you to inhale. Thank you for joining us here. My goal is to drive information directly to you enhancing your professional life.
I am proud of us!
What am I proud of? I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together; through our conversation, we influence an entire industry. I’m proud of our huge population of students and young ODs. I’m proud our member make-up mirrors the industry in terms of female/male ratio. I’m proud our community appreciates and generally respects the guidelines, making this a great place to share and I’m proud of everyone who stops in to tell us about their day at work.
Tremendous thanks to Matt Geller and team for their expertise and driving the development and to Marci Moskowitz, our Managing Editor who I couldn’t have done this without. Again, a huge thank you to our community and welcome to our next chapter together! We are always considering new ideas for content so if you are interested in writing please email Marci Moskowitz at marci@odsonfb.com for more information.
