Every week at the moment, or so it seems, on a Monday when I plan the blogs for the coming week, it seems like extraordinary things are happening.
This week is no different, except this week feels a little bit more extraordinary than other weeks that we've had, amongst fantastic weeks.
The reason that this week is so extraordinary relates to what's happening particularly within the academy, and the fact that a pipe dream from a year ago has become a fast-approaching reality.
Approximately 18 months ago, Tom, Stuart and I travelled to Dundee to explore the possibility of providing Campbell Academy courses at another venue.
I then investigated Belfast too, at my friends David and Brendan Nelson's practice, and so last year we planned to start producing a suite of Campbell Academy courses in Belfast for Northern Ireland, based out of Dundee for Scotland, and that has gathered pace more than we could ever have imagined.
One of the dreams we had about a year ago was to provide simultaneous live skills courses in 3 locations at the same time.
To give some context to this, our life skills courses were the first courses that we ever produced as The Campbell Academy, including the anterior aesthetic live skills course, teaching practitioners the difference between straightforward implants and advanced and complex anteriors with live surgery.
We also provide an IFAL (Immediate Full Arch Loading) live skills course, and a CBCT masterclass with live skills CBCT, but the one that we're providing this week is the one that I wrote while attending another course in Switzerland many years ago.
What happened was I wanted to reinforce my sinus augmentation experience that I'd initially gained in Austria, and I travelled to attend a course at the University of Berne provided by Danny Buser.
While I was on this course, I concepted out what a course would look like for us, and we began to deliver that course approximately 10 years ago.
It is safe to say that it has been enormously successful and, in fact, is one of our most successful surgery courses, and so we decided to use this as a pilot prototype course for the delivery of 3 courses simultaneously in 3 different countries.
What happens from my perspective (and there are many perspectives from this course) is that at 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon I travel to Belfast to see and stay with my friends David and Brendan Nelson.
On Wednesday and Thursday, I will present the first two days of the sinus grafting course to a cohort at the Marlborough Clinic in Belfast, while simultaneously my friend and colleague Colin Burns and Craig Wales will provide the same material in Dundee, while Beatriz Sanchez and Andy Legg provide it in Nottingham.
On Thursday evening, I will fly to Leeds, and my friend and colleague Alex Jones will fly to Belfast, and on Friday, Beatriz Sanchez will provide the live surgery of a sinus grafting procedure for a patient, which will happen in the clinic in Nottingham, be beamed upstairs to the academy course as we usually do, and then also out to Belfast and Dundee simultaneously.
Beatriz will provide the surgery; Dom will host the surgery in Nottingham. Colin Burns will host a surgery in Dundee, and Alex Jones will host a surgery in Belfast.
At the same time, Chris Barrow and I will present a day to the Extreme Business Group in Leeds, and simultaneously, The Campbell Academy will be providing live surgery in 3 countries plus business education in Yorkshire.
There is much to bring together here, many moving parts, much technology, much dancing, much synchronicity, but as it looks on the Monday afternoon, it's been amazing.
All I always wanted to do in triathlon was get to the ‘start line’.
Well, tomorrow afternoon I'll get to the start line of this, and then next week, hopefully we'll be onto something else extraordinary.
Watch this space and watch the socials to see how it goes; it could be challenging, and it could be wonderful.
Isn’t that exciting?
Blog Post Number - 4662
Back in the day, when I got diagnosed with my thyroid disease and I was trying to go and ride the Haute Route 5-day event in the Pyrenees, Alex supported me through that when no one could see. In the lead-up, he even pushed me up a hill.
He wrote a blog after that, which I've kept, and I'll never publish because I don't have guest bloggers here - sorry.
But I remember it, and I remember it well, and so what he said at the end of that was chapeau, and that is what cyclists say to each other out of respect, and when they are impressed.
So, chapeau, Alex.
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