The positivity

You know there is one challenge I have not mentioned through this tubules  project and beyond....and it is an important and really worthwhile one to consider. it is called POSITIVITY

When I used to ask people to post on the tubules forum or the articles in the old site, many were scared. They used to think, I will be shot to pieces. Really ? Is that how education is carried ? Or by positive encouragement and question diplomatically while sharing one's knowledge too ?

One of the challenges of the tubules has always been this very positivity.

In dentistry, we all have opinions, views and ideas. They may differ from others. And the greatest challenge for me is how we positively encourage education

No whinging about crap the world is (there is enough of that about) . No whinging. Just positively continuining to ask so we all learn from each other, so we all share what we know and so we connect at a level where we inspire each other

Share learn and connect positively

POSITIVITY is a challenge that we must aim to maintain daily

There is a genius inside all of us

So last time I told you all about the challenges, the pricing, the costs and how to keep dentinaltubules.com version 2 running

We called it the Genius and we said that the site is all about sharing, learning and connecting.

The truth is there is a genius - inside all of us. We are all educators and students. Infact we all have pearls of knowledge we can share.

Infact if we all shared our knowledge, we would all learn together .... share, learn and connect - hence the motto of dentinaltubules.com

One day as I sat down, I realised that the dentinaltubules site was all about all of us revealing the little genius inside us....and so today I ask you to watch the genius video below that we created before the launch of version 2. Many may have seen it but never understood what the genius meant ?

AND

let's see how many of those geniuses you can name

The genius...the challenge

So "The Genius" dentinaltubules version 2 arrived in January 2013. As explained, the old site was getting clunky - the development of the web and technology meant that it needed an upgraded. Actually my decision to upgrade was made in April 2012.

However it was months of planning, months of saving, months of writing plans.... More importantly, as we developed a new site - I suddenly felt that actually this was the opportunity to really grow dentinaltubules into a whole new animal.

 If we were really "sharing" to "learn" and really "connect" - we had to provide more and more avenues for this. Infact the growth of internet technology meant that there were so so so many new opportunities. So we introduced more than just articles .

Dentinaltubules version 2 "The Genius" was going to have webinars, video lectures, videos, audiocasts, unlimited CPD and infact the ability for members to develop their own profile and manage their own CPD.

So challenge 1 - involved spending hours of time looking into how we can incorporate all this into the site, what software to use and all the details related to that. It was hours of phone calls, emails, research and more.

Immediately this led onto Challenge 2. The software costs were phenomenal - something the dental community are yet to appreciate. and the cost of developing the genius rose to 3 x higher. Suddenly we were facing possible blackout and I released all my personal savings, personal cash, loans and everything I had into the new tubules project.

To ensure that "the genius" came to life, I spared no penny.

Today it is alive. The challenge of running it on a daily basis - ensuring that there is a happy mix between sponsorship and the profession's contribution - remains. The profession are slowly realising that they do need to contribute to any resources created for them

Challenge 3 remains regarding the pricing.

The truth is that I was spending hours and hours of my spare time for years, staying up half the night etc. to run tubules 1. All this overwork was going to make me go insane. Today I still have the passion, but I know my energies are low. I knew that finally after investing so much of my personal resources and time, the only way for the entire tubules project to grow was through it being able to fund itself and for me to remain freer to grow.

In addition, I felt that perhaps we needed revenue to renumerate and compensate contributors for their time. It was only fair that if we introduced revenue they shared in it too.

 The competitive pricing we introduced has remained but many still find it expensive. Yet we continue to encourage people to sign to premium - not because we want profit but because we want the fund, the resources, the team , the contributors and more to make the tubules project bigger, better, bolder and one of the best dental online education websites in the world

The challenges

So here we are , you now know the ethos of why I started dentinaltubules.com In 4 years we have faced many many challenges , here are I simply list some of our challenges and how it has been a challenge at times. I believe my biggest challenge happened in January this year and continues to remain the challenge - the development of the new site. A little about that in another post. First... The largest challenge for any website is to get a community together and then continue with the momentum to keep them going. The challenge of getting nearly 14000 tubulites signed up , the challenge of getting contributors to write articles, the challenge of getting people to comment .... was not easy. This was especially difficult because the entire website was free. No one paid and no one was paid. Sponsorship just about helped it run. However in the true spirit of education, I wanted to ensure we all kept learning. Hence the challenge of staying up half the night - all night sometimes - emailing, pursuing, pushing contributors to keep contributing. It was not easy and still isn't . However this challenge brought about the true spirit of what the site was about "Share, learn and connect" - and this was the first thing we put in as the strap line for the new site We must all share - so we can all learn together - and through this process we connect . In effect dentinaltubules became educational social media. We are connecting via education. However running this massive platform on a solely sponsor basis was becoming a challenge ... and in addition, the growth of the web and technological advances meant that dentinaltubules.com had to grow...and in January 2013 we launched the "genius" - the new version 2 of dentinaltubules.com So far dentinaltubules version 2 has become the real challenge, it is fun , it is vibrant , and excellent. In the next phase , we talk about the challenges of version 2 and where I see it going....

So last time I was telling you all about the powerful tool of education. Imagine how you can bring it to the world...so my vision is to bring education to every corner of the world. How do you deliver that in the most efficient and useful way ? That is where tubules steps in. Why dentinal then ? Because my friends, for me "charity begins at home" . I started my journey of education in dentistry. I am now a specialist in perio. All that came through a profession that offered so much to me. So now it is time to offer this educational path to others around the world in dentistry. I want to use dentinaltubules as a vehicle to share, learn and connect. I want it to inspire dental people around the world, make them enthusiastic about their profession while also enhancing their learning. I would love for this vehicle to create an air of extreme positivity for younger practitioners , hygienists, therapists who feel so disenchanted at present. I really wish to make that difference... But alas since we started tubules, the challenges remain....next time I talk about some of the bigger challenges I have faced so far

Why did I start tubules ?

Today I start a new journey, a new posting. For a long time I have been working on dentinaltubules . In 3.5 years we have managed to get over 13500 members . It's been a huge effort - sleepless nights, long hours, drained energies and much more. But the questions I am often asked need answering - questions like why tubules ? What do you embody ? Why the many tweets and facebook postings ? What is tubules ? What can I get from it ? Through these series of blog posts, I will aim to answer those questions. Not only that, I am using this as my very own self searching journey - my own self and how I have become entwined with tubules. How tubules has become my passion, my purpose and my driving force of the daily existence. So let's start with why I started tubules Well let's talk about myself for a moment - in life, on a daily basis, as I fight through challenges and adversity, I always feel like I should hold a positive light, see positive items, see the silver lining in a situation and generally be hugely driven. Every moment has some inspiration and something to learn from. We must learn. My parents put a huge emphasis on education, on learning. They sacrificed their happy life to ensure that I had the best education. They supported me through it all. Today that education, that powerful tool , is helping me drive through life with energy that I would never have had. It earns me a decent living, it helps me educate others and it helps me grow as a person. Every day I still learn. Growing up in Kenya, we saw young children who could not afford a basic education. They struggled to afford 5p a day. How many people around the world struggle to get a good education ? Can you imagine how it would be to be able to deliver a level of education for them, to deliver information to them and can you imagine if we all shared what we learn and we all connected - how powerful a tool this would be ? Ladies and gentleman, tubulites, Just imagine if we could deliver education through the globally growing web and send this material to every corner of the world. Imagine the massive change we could all make ? That is where my tubules journey begins.... until next time....when I will tell you all about dentinal

The Logo

So many of you have seen our new logo . The "squibble" as so many call it.

In case you haven't here is the 3-d ident of it

So I have been saying through every post that we all should "share, learn and connect"

That's what the logo is. The 3 circles represent share ,  learn and connect.

Remember the genius video ? There is a genius inside all of us. A genius that wants to share, a genius that wants to learn and genius that wants to connect with other geniuses

So let's all share , let's all learn and let's all connect. Thats what we are about....and thats what the 3 circles of our logo represent