I am writing this blog in my bed at about 12 o'clock in the middle of the day in a hotel room at the Celtic Manor Resort in Wales.
Apparently, happiness is blogging in your underpants, as the book said or maybe in your bed in the middle of the day. Still, I've decided to come back to my room for a quick power nap before the rest of the entertainment unfolds at the Bupa Dental Conference.
Just before I was knocking off for work for what was supposed to be my time off (See Sab 2025 part 2), I was offered the opportunity to come to speak at the Bupa Dental Conference by Straumann as they were looking for help to fill a speaker slot (Always seemed to get booked because I'm cheap and available).
We have been working with Bupa on one or two little things, potential projects that could take off for us, which are helpful, and so I thought it would be a good idea to come meet some guys, say hi, do a little lecture to the dental conference and this is quite a conference.
Tomorrow (Saturday), I'm expected to be speaking to approximately 1000 people in a beautiful lecture theatre at the International Conference Centre here in Celtic Manor.
Today, we had a 'closed media visionary panel' where I sat with seven other people around the table. The whole discussion was recorded and listed by FMC, together with photographs, video, etc. This included the general manager (MD) of Bupa, the commercial director, the clinical director, and some 'visionaries'.
It was about the future of dentistry, technology and dentistry, and how patients would pay for the future of dentistry and all sorts. Actually, it was an extraordinarily fascinating discussion with people from different areas of expertise, industry consultants, overseas practitioners who set up extraordinary clinics and then people who have set up Salivary diagnostic companies, which are now starting to take over the world in the United States.
They showed me directions of dentistry that I would never have thought of.
This afternoon (after the power nap and maybe something to eat, maybe blog posts and maybe a little stretching), we'll be doing the same thing only on the stage in the main room.
So, we'll be having a discussion together in front of the audience to moderated questions about the future of dentistry.
Is this work?
It's way, way beyond providing a consultation for a patient at The Campbell Clinic or even providing a lecture to the Year One or Two or Three groups; it's about consulting to the industry, it's about giving your views of 31 years of dentistry, It's about the lessons you learned from building a practice.
It's one about reflecting and then two about looking forward, the type of things I love and am really interested in.
In the middle of this January, though, it's not being off work, it's entirely being at work, but the things that you learn from conversations and discussions like this are (if you have the space and time to look at them and implement them) quite extraordinary.
I've seen things here today that will come up in this blog over the next weeks and months, directional changes potentially that we can take products that we might want to integrate, and ways in which dentistry is changing forever.
The saddest part about this whole thing, though, is that it's only changing for some, maybe the top 30%, the bottom 70% it's not changing at all unless it's going backwards.
It is a double-edged sword, always food for thought, but still an extraordinary place to be.
Blog Post Number - 4057