Social Networking’s Finest Hour? « Blog

Social Networking’s Finest Hour?

June 5th, 2009

Nick Glasgow

I admit it. My social media skills are severely lacking. Unlike most others here at CTP, I don’t have a Facebook page. Or a MySpace page. I’ve never even Tweeted. I shake my head when I look over my wife’s shoulder at her Facebook page and see that one of her friends “has nothing to do today.” Who writes this stuff? Who reads it?

But yesterday, I learned of a moving example of how social media can be used in a powerful, positive way. A way that just might save someone’s life.

A 28-year-old employee of EMC who works in California, Nick Glasgow, was diagnosed with Leukemia in March. He’s been through three rounds of chemotherapy but has yet to go into remission. His best, and perhaps only hope, is to find a bone marrow donor. But because he is part Asian and part Caucasian, the odds of finding a donor are long. At one point Nick’s doctors told him there was a “zero chance” a donor would be found. But Nick’s long odds may have changed, at least a bit.

Three weeks ago today the HR department at EMC received an email from a friend and fellow EMC employee of Nick’s on the west coast, asking if there was any way they could send an email about Nick out to the company’s 40,000 employees. As you might expect, the management folks at EMC are rather protective of the “EMC All” address, and normally reserve it only for messages from the CEO or other important company-wide messages. Well, Nick’s condition was urgent and his story so compelling that the decision was made quickly to share this plea throughout the company and to encourage employees to spread the word beyond EMC. The EMC HR and communications departments have been flooded with thousands of responses, as have donor organizations like the Asian American Donor Program and the National Marrow Donor Program. Some were simply messages of care and concern, others were personal recollections of a friend or family member who had gone through what Nick is going through; most were simply to ask “What can I do?” (This is where you come in, and I’ll get to that in a minute.)

Within days Cisco, another big global technology company that is also a business partner of EMC, had shared the story with their more than 60,000 employees worldwide, and began setting up a donor drive at company headquarters. The same thing began happening at companies like Dell and Salesforce.com — and even at EMC rivals IBM, HP and NetApp. Two days after the original email about Nick, EMC opened its annual EMC World trade show in Orlando, hosting thousands of customers and business partners from all over the world. So many in attendance wanted to help, the local bone marrow donor program set up a drive at the show. The print and online stories that have followed are numerous. Steve Duplessie, one of the technology industry’s best-known bloggers, called it “potentially social networking’s finest hour.”

Over the past three weeks, since Nick’s story was shared with EMC and millions more around the world, thousands of people have signed up as potential donors for Nick or for any other patient who may need a life-saving bone marrow transplant. You can find EMC’s blog about Nick with plenty of information about his progress and how to register to become a donor at markfredrickson.wordpress.com. EMC has been hosting drives at various company locations in Massachusetts and beyond, but you can also go to bethematch.org or marrow.org and enter your zip code to find a drive near you. There are two in Boston within the next 10 days – June 11 at Mass General and June 15 at Tufts Medical Center.

If you are not registered as a donor, I ask you to consider doing so. It takes 10 minutes or less, and involves some paperwork and a simple cotton swab inside your mouth. You can do it for Nick. You can do it for someone no longer with us who may have had an unsuccessful search for a donor. Or you can do it for someone who may someday ask for the same kind of help Nick Glasgow is asking for today. And please, spread the word. Thanks.