Hospitals Getting Social and how the Supreme Court Changed Video

Two weeks ago, I attended the Massachusett’s Hospital Association’s event-the New Wild, Wild West- Social networking for Hospitals. Some brief comments and reflections on the day….

The room was packed- terrific job of the MHA marketing the event and spreading awareness about this through the Boston area.

A good overall presentation by two people from TMP Worldwide-Alissa Story and Lori Charest, about social media. A quick word of friendly (and constructive, I hope) advice for Alissa and Lori. If you are going to talk about Twitter, please make sure that you, a) have a twitter account and b) don’t protect your updates.

My favorite part of the presentation was listening to two lawyers talk about the legal ramifications of the use of social media. The best nugget of information was not hospital related, but profound nonetheless..

Did you know that the Supreme Court in 1984 barely ruled in favor of Sony’s Betamax VCR in a case against Universal City Studios?  Big deal. What did this mean?

Well for one, it allowed people to record videos at home and watch them at home. It took the power of media creation and distribution out of the big studios’ hands and began to start handing it over to other businesses, like, say, Blockbuster, your local video store, and now in today’s world, companies like Netflix, Hulu.com and more.

Fascinating to think that this almost didn’t happen. Would we still be going to the movies in droves? Probably not, but it stirred up the video world back in 1984 and perhaps it’s probably why we consume so much video online now. (In one week in January 2009, 97 million Americans viewed a clip online, as many as tuned into any major network….)

The day finished up with some terrific presentations of hospitals in the field who are walking the talk in Social Media. One of them was Lowell General Hospital (disclosure- they are a client) and Beth Israel Deaconess here in Boston. Rhonda Mann, their Dir. of Marketing and Communications gave some fine examples of what they’re doing in her brilliant deadpan voice and presentation- (you should hear her speak). I won’t go into detail here, but let their “Healthy  is” campaign speak for itself here.