Friendship, companionship, support, these are real things that have not gone away.
Personal interaction is valuable; it is one of the most valuable things because it comes with trust.
In an article I read this week, it was interesting to see that all the major dating apps are haemorrhaging subscribers (Tinder has lost 600,000 subscribers).
There is a rise, in fact, quite an extraordinary rise in the organisation of ‘singles meetups’. Places where people can go who are seeking to find a partner, where they can meet people face to face, look them in the face and talk to them.
It is understood that building trust between people electronically is challenging and difficult, and easy to abuse.
It's why networks of trust are so valuable (and so difficult to create).
For 3 years, I've been the editor in chief of the ITI's (International Team for Implantology) Online Academy.
This is a platform for online education and plant dentistry that has had an extraordinary amount of investment over the past 15 or more years, and is available to around 100,000 dental professionals globally.
I can tell you from firsthand experience how difficult it is to reach people through an online platform, which finds it challenging to provide personal interaction and trust.
The ITI as an organisation, though, also has an extraordinary amount of face-to-face contact throughout the world, through its national congresses, study clubs, education weeks, and global events. This is the hybrid model that works, because people gain trust in the ITI and the ITI's members and colleagues through personal interaction, which they can then reinforce through online education.
This is the thing that people seem not to understand about digital interaction and digital education.
There is limited trust when people just sign up to a core CPD course on any platform and consume it.
This is the ultimate race to the bottom. What you're looking for is the shortest and cheapest course to fulfil the obligation you have with no loyalty and trust.
When we decided to begin to set up the Campbell Academy Clubhouse two years ago, we understood several things.
Number one - it was absolutely not enough to set something up which just exists as an online presence and ask people to turn up and pay the money and learn in their own room when no one else was there.
Number 2 - it had to be completely interactive, where people were able to suggest content or material that they required, and then to have this delivered quickly and promptly to the rest of the group.
Number 3 - it had to be hugely interactive, where people could ask questions (safely) and where people could seek knowledge, but they did not feel they were lesser than anyone else.
Number 4 - it had to have face-to-face elements and a full community effect, so that we could all meet each other, trust each other, and just get better for the benefit of us, for our teams, and for our patients.
If we went any way to achieving that, it would be really successful (whatever successful means).
Something like this takes an extraordinary amount of time, and so part of the plan, 2 years ago when we set up, was to realise that it would take 5 years to be in any way effective.
Building networks and networks of trust is never instantaneous; the time horizon is miles away.
Blog Post Number - 4519
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