The New Prostate Cancer InfoLink social network

[Guest guest]

You might be interested in this

information from another group.

According to Dr. Krongrad ...

The social network (at

http://prostatecancerinfolink.ning.com/)

is an

experiment and an adjunct to the main effort going

on at http://prostatecancerinfolink.net

The idea is

to permit organic growth -- invite your pals -- and

grouping by subject. See the Caribbean thread

we

started last week (in the Caribbean group); or

the

dialogue with C on the home page.

You can start all kinds of groups. For example, we

have developed a small Caribbean network that

brought in the former director of the Florida Cancer

Data System and NCI administrator (Ed Trapido), a

Cayman Island church organizer (

Peguero), a

nurse from the Turks & Caicos (Bianca), an

anesthesiologist from the Turks & Caicos (Upendra

Jayasena), an oncologist ( Glode from the

University of Colorado), a CaP organizer (Darryl). I

love seeing the bridges go up.

The idea is to permit self-organization. This is a

very different model from listserves,

which seems mainly

populated by patients. In the InfoLink social

network, you might find one day a group of

pharmaceutical industry members. You don't have to

bother interacting with them, but you might get

curious about how Lupron gets from NJ to Jamaica. Or

you might find a group one day of wives and want to

drop in and ask something or send your wife. You

have a choice of broadcasting comments and

interactions only to members of a specific group. So

if you want to know about thalidomide, you may ask

in a chemo group and not broadcast to a group

focused on political activism. and so on.

Think of the social network as a series of self-

organizing fish bowls. There may be many fish or few

fish in anyh bowl. One type of fish or many types of

fish per bowl. You have a choice to interact or not.

And you can construct your own fish bowl and watch

as other fish jump in. You are limited only by your

imagination: prostate cancer under 40; Sydney

political activists;

Street gay couples;

children of men with prostate cancer, Lucy Mutuku's

Nairobi Network

....

All these groups are linked to the main site with

articles, blog, and Ask sections. You are welcome to

use this to start up interest groups with our

support and encouragement.