Today marks my first official day as an employee of Stanford University. I even have a job title: Social Media Producer, Medicine X.

Exciting, right?

About a month after I moved to California, I started driving to Stanford to help out with Dr. Larry Chu’s Engage and Empower Me course that he was teaching. There’s a whole playlist on YouTube if you want to catch up on those. While it was great to connect and sometimes reconnect with people I’ve met through my patient advocacy efforts, admittedly this commute was fueled by the desire to stay visible. As the newest member of the ePatient Advisory Board, I wanted to ensure that Dr. Chu made the right decision to bring me on board, and helping with his other efforts seemed like the best way to convey that message.

As my role with that class, and his subsequent Design for Health classes became a more regular and reliable component, Dr. Chu asked if I would like an official title and additional responsibilities to go with my existing tasks for this year’s conference.

All part of my master plan.

Now I’m a part-time employee of Stanford (my work with the American Diabetes Association has not changed), and I’ll be working behind the scenes to help produce the weekly MedX Live Google Hangouts, which air every Tuesday.

I’ve been sharing past classes and broadcasts because I believe in Medicine X, and I think there are worthwhile conversation starters that come from these Hangouts and classes. Moving forward, I will continue to share the videos that I find relevant to the types of conversations I want to instigate from this blog. In the interest of transparency and honesty, you have the right to know that I’m being compensated for my time and effort, but my decision to share Medicine X content here continues to be my own decision.

Cool? Cool.