Online Cancer Communities and Serendipity

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I've often told friends that I believe in serendipity. One definition of serendipity is "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way." Or even better maybe, "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident." It's like saying "it's a small world." That happens to me a lot, but the world is not small unless you make the effort to actively connect with people and engage in real human conversations. And if you use the online tools available in the way they were meant to work, like Twitter, you can make real human connections by sharing what you care about with the world. Online communities provide opportunities to build authentic connections that can blossom into offline friendships, business relationships and networking. In the online cancer communities, really positive and interesting things happen to me often.

I recently made an amazing new connection that came about because of some old connections and the power of online community. It all started last week when I launched my new podcast, the Research Evangelist and posted the link on Twitter. One of the people who shared it was David Beach. I've never actually met David in person, but we've been connected online on Twitter and LinkedIn for over 5 years so we follow each other's interests. The one big thing we have in common is lung cancer. David received a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer and is active on social media advocating for lung cancer research. As a lung cancer survivor, I share his advocacy for increased funding for lung cancer research. So I wasn't surprised that David liked my podcast post, but when he shared he invited me to the Global Virtual Cancer Conference (GVCC), which was taking place the next day. And that's when things got interesting. 

I had not heard about the conference, and didn't know that David was a consultant and advisor to the company that puts on the event, GRYT Health. I was super excited to attend because I loved the mission of the conference "to unite patients, advocates, innovators, experts and healthcare change makers in a fully virtual conference accessible by anyone, anywhere."  It was created by cancer survivors and caregivers, and welcomed anyone touched by cancer to join for free, including patients and survivors, caregivers, friends and family, healthcare professionals, patient advocacy organizations and healthcare industry professionals. It was right up my alley and surely a place that would encourage serendipity because it would be another online community of people from a variety of perspectives affected by cancer. It was a wonderful event full of good people who care. And I believe when you bring together and connect really good people who care, good things happen.

Former NFL Quarterback Jim Kelly

The first thing that happened was that I saw in the agenda that Jim Kelly, Former Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback for the Buffalo Bills was a featured speaker. My wife is from western New York and a longtime Buffalo Bills fan (her dad had season tickets to the Bills for many years) so we were definitely excited to hear him speak. Jim is also a two-time oral cancer survivor so I knew his talk was going to be interesting. We watched it and wow, it was so inspiring! Jim has had many personal challenges outside of football including the loss of his son Hunter, who died in 2005 at age 8 1/2. Jim spoke about his cancer experiences, his relationship with his wife Jill, and it was a very raw, human experience listening to him speak. And the CEO of GRYT, Dave Fuehrer was interviewing him and did a remarkable job of interacting with Jim in a sincere and trusting tone. So the story just got better. I didn't realize that Dave was from Rochester, NY and not far from where my wife grew up. I was drawn to the passion that he displayed in the interview and reading about his background. He is also a two-time cancer survivor. I had to connect with him.

I reached out to Dave and his response was mutual - we had to meet. So we hopped on a zoom call last week and had an amazing "leaning in" conversation. I told him how I heard about the conference, from David Beach and his reaction was immediate - we had a mutual connection to David and both knew he was a good person, and he had brought us together. David Beach. Western New York. Jim Kelly. Serendipity. Dave shares my passion for community-building, advocacy and cancer research. I know that we were meant to meet and if I hadn't posted about my podcast, and David Beach telling me about GVCC, I may never have met Dave. And then the next piece of this small world story was when I mentioned I was doing some consulting work with my friend Alicia Staley at Medidata, another cancer survivor and super patient advocate, of course he told me he also knows Alicia well. I laughed when he sent me a photo of the two of them! When I shared it with Alicia, she was super excited that Dave and I had met. By the way, Alicia is from the same small town that my wife is from, Batavia, NY. When she was young she got prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy. And would it surprise you to know that the owner of the pharmacy and pharmacist was my father-in-law? You can't make this stuff up.

#gratitude #trust #sincerity 




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