Thank you all for the incredible amount of great feedback for an adults with type 1 track at Children WIth Diabetes, Friends for Life 2011. I am so grateful to be a part of this community. There are so many amazing people with so many amazing ideas. Thank you.
The amount of feedback demonstrates that there is a clear need for some adult type 1 material, and I think CWD has a really special opportunity here to leverage their existing conferences to pull us into the fold and become the conference all of us grown-ups want to attend too.
Some people expressed some negative feelings towards the name “Children With Diabetes”. I guess my brain automatically translates that to “Type 1”. I’m an optimist.
Realistically, the name is not going to change, and I’m perfectly fine with that. It would be silly of us adults (with type 1) to let something like that get in the way of creating something really special. I can see the marketing difficulties, and that it doesn’t capture everything that CWD has grown up to be. Until a cure or vaccination is found, we’ll always need CWD to stay focused on the children. That doesn’t mean the adults can’t ride on their coattails though.
I’ve got a million things I want to blog about, but will be short on time until next week. We’re heading out of town early tomorrow morning for a family reunion on my wife’s side. She’s got a bunch of family down in the East Moline, IL / quad cities area, and I love visiting with them.
I’ll certainly blog if I can, but am going to focus on family first. In the meantime, we’ll be communicating with Jeff & Laura from CWD and seeing what we can pull off for 2011!