The passive way to meet people can be the best

Apr 11, 2012

At TEDMED today, I waited after the late-morning session to have the chance to say a quick thanks to Francis Collins, NIH director (as I mentioned in an earlier post, Collins was kind to me a while back), and so I was late to the lunch. I filled a plate, chatted with Ivan Oransky about his very enjoyable talk (about baseball, prefixes and more), and then, considering whether I should join a conversation somewhere, instead found an empty table.

I sat down. Ate the delicious Indian cuisine. Took a few notes in my ScienceOnline2010 Field Notes notebook.

Then Donna Cryer (@DCpatient) walked over, saying, “No on should sit alone at TEDMED.” She sat down, and immediately we were talking about shared connections and ideas for facilitating conversations among patient communities. Donna has a great story — “Liver transplant and IBD patient accelerating patient engagement and collaborations in health technology, policy, and systems improvement” — and I’m looking forward to catching up with her again, soon.

Looking for another empty table …

Anton Zuiker ☄