In honour (honor) of American Thanksgiving tomorrow, here are my top ten things I am grateful to Twitter for:
- Enabling me to meet people online, and then offline, whom I never would have connected with otherwise. Through Twitter I’ve “met” people who share the same interests and often the same values about subjects close to my heart like health care, combatting the stigma around mental illness and addictions, and social justice generally.
- Giving me tips about places to go in my hometown like where to eat lunch, or where to find a really good dry cleaner (thanks @bargold, haven’t yet tried Dove at Wilson and Bathurst, but will get around to one of these days.)
- Keeping me informed. When something happens in the world I now do two things: check my favourite news outlets and probably first, search on Twitter.
- Expressing myself more succinctly (enough said).
- Turning me onto Healthcamp – a 2.0 phenomenon, where patients, docs, nurses, health care administrators and anyone else who has a stake in healthcare (and who doesn’t?) meet up together, and have a spontaneous dialogue about issues of concern from all perspectives.
- Receiving invitations to fun parties and cool meetups (one of my faves this year: CAMH Unmasked. Thanks @karensnider.)
- Helping me to stay in touch with old friends and colleagues.
- Finding me sources to talk to for the freelance articles I write. (Thanks @moritherapy for the help with the mental health and blogging article.)
- Helping my business clients better connect with their customers and clients.
- Keeping me company in my business and off-hours (nothing like watching TV and studying people’s comments through hashtags for my favourite shows).
Happy Tweetsgiving everyone!