Professional Courtesy: Happy Birthday to Us! by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine


Happy Birthday to Us


by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine
March 1999 was a significant time in our history for many reasons. The one and only Legoland outside of Europe opened in California, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 10,000 mark for the first time and the concept for Dentaltown.com was hatched. Our country was in the midst of the dot-com boom that seemed it would never end, and a dentist in Phoenix, Arizona, was finishing his MBA degree at Arizona State University when he had the idea to stake a claim for the dental profession online. Of course, that dentist is Dr. Howard Farran and 15 years later he continues to lead the company that brought dentists together online from every corner of our planet.

Today, we are proud to say that we have members from 206 different countries; essentially everywhere you would find a dentist, you can find a Townie. Our membership grows at an astonishing rate of 45 members per day.1 Townies contribute to the conversation online at the average rate of 1,740 posts per day. There is no doubt that this is the place for members of the dental profession to meet and interact online. While mainstream forms of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ allow us to share some information, Dentaltown.com is a true hub for the profession because we have a robust library of online CE courses, a vast dental classified section and a growing selection of dental blogs to complement our massive message boards.

Of course the magazine you are holding in your hand or reading on a digital device provides an additional pathway to our fellow dental professionals. While some of the content from our website is shared in the pages of our magazine, the vast majority of the magazine is brand new content each and every month. The magazine provides new, useful content for your practice and serves to spark new conversations online.

Next month we will celebrate the 12th annual Townie Meeting in Las Vegas. This annual event brings our virtual world to life as Townies from all over converge on Las Vegas for a weekend of education, entertainment and camaraderie. If you have not experienced this event in the past, put it on your list of things to do. We have many returning attendees.

As we enjoy the passing of another year, I hope you will take this moment to examine how you celebrate the passing of time in your practice. Do you do something special on the anniversary of your practice opening for business or the day you purchased the practice from another dentist? Do you celebrate the anniversaries of your team members? In my practice, we do both. Our anniversary is an easy one to remember because we opened on tax day: April 15, 2002. Each year we do something for the patients who come in that day as well as our team. It is customary to order lunch when one of our team is celebrating an anniversary and we do the same for the practice anniversary. Use this special celebration to reflect on accomplishments and look forward to continued success. If you need to blow out a candle to seal the deal, then by all means, order a cake too! If you want to wish us happy birthday, add it to the comments after this article. If you want to follow me online, try Twitter: @ddsTom.

References
  1. Based on data from the last six months.
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