Building a Community for Biomeds | HTM Insider, Kevin Lynskey
Oct 17, 2023
Kevin Lynskey Episode
Wed, Oct 04, 2023 9:16AM • 23:12
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
discord, biomed, channel, htm, kevin, manuals, community, podcast, folks, grow, absolutely, find, link, communication, app, people, communicate, play, sterilizer, active
SPEAKERS
Chyrill Sandrini, Kevin Lynskey
Chyrill Sandrini 00:15
Welcome back to another episode of HTM Insider. I’m Chyrill with MultiMedical Systems, and I’m excited to have you back in tune with HTM Insider, because today, you know, I have a guest on. And one of the reasons I started with this idea of making this podcast and supported by MMS is the communication and how is the HTM technicians getting to know one another getting to share information? Um, how are we communicating? You know, how can we do it better in the industry? Well, today, we have a new way for you to communicate. So without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to my good friend, Kevin. And Kevin, why don’t you introduce yourself to our listeners?
Kevin Lynskey 01:01
Hi. Yes, thank you Chyrill. Thank you very much for having me on the podcast today. My name is Kevin Lynskey. And I’ve been in the biomed field for close to 19 years now, originally from the Midwest, Columbus, Ohio area. And I spent the last nine years in sunny Southern California doing some work out here. And yeah, today we have come to talk to you about our little Discord server that’s growing and want to teach you guys all about it. Some of the features you can use, as well as you know, some some tips and tricks and how this might be a big thing to help with communication, collaboration, meet your colleagues and just build connections within the HTM industry. I think it could be an awesome tool for us.
Chyrill Sandrini 01:47
And I gotta be honest, Kevin, the first time you said discord to me. I know what the definition is. But I had to google it to make sure it was still the same definition. And I was a little curious, you know, and I had to go on myself, I didn’t realize that there was a platform. So let’s just talk about what is discord for, you know, some people like my generation might not be as hip as you, Kevin.
Kevin Lynskey 02:13
Absolutely. And I get that. And that’s one of the things that as we try to get folks of a different generation to adopt technology such as this, you know, it is another app, another thing you have to install on your phone. However, it is very handy. So Discord started as a means of communication for folks playing video games. So I’m a child of the 80s grew up with Nintendo, Sega Genesis, always played video games. And, you know, I was still rather young when I started to have children and my boys are 18 and 13. Now, so, you know, I play video games with them. And, you know, you go from the crappy Xbox mic to, you know, getting on PCs and very robust computers, Discord was developed to sort of have that lossless communication, you know, without delay, that you can have sort of a party chat, if you will. And it’s really grown from there. And a lot of people still think of Discord as “Oh, that’s for video game chat, video game communication,” or things like that. But really, a lot of industries have adopted discord to build communities. So including your YouTube streamers, or folks that stream on Twitch and play video games for a living, build their communities on Discord, but also, you know, professional communities, stock traders have discord communities, and during the pandemic, when, you know, we’re all sitting around at home, you know, us managers or regional managers things, we don’t want to go into the hospitals, but we want to still have a strategy for communicating with our teams. I sort of thought of this as an opportunity to, you know, hey, let’s build a community with a discord. There’s all kinds of possibilities we can have to make this thing work. So yeah, that’s that’s kind of the background and how it started.
Chyrill Sandrini 04:03
Yeah, very cool. So I gotta, I gotta tell you that I went on. First, I did it on my PC. And then I realized it was actually an app. So I now have the app, logged in, signed up. And right away, I was able to see conversation. So and there’s a lot of hashtags and things that you can look for. So let’s talk about signing up first, do you just go to Discord and how do you know which app you’re looking for? And how do you know how to log on to the HTM industry app?
Kevin Lynskey 04:38
So absolutely, the easiest way to get into the discord is to get an invite. And there’s an invite right on my LinkedIn page. And then, you know, obviously we can post a link to the invite as part of this podcast as well for anyone interested, but you do have to have that invite. When you have the invite, you can click on it on your Apple, iOS, Android, Phone, Windows, et cetera, it’ll take you right to the app store to download discord. And it will automatically enter you into the beam and discord from there. Once you sign up, it is completely free. It’s a non intrusive application on your phone. And as we’ll dig into in a little bit, you can fully customize the notifications to be notified on certain things and not some other things. So for those folks who downloaded it, maybe took a look at it, and they’re like, Oh, well, it’s digging too much. We can show you exactly how to set that up this up so that you’re getting content that’s applicable to what you want to see. And on top of that, just to let everyone know, as well, one more way that you can find the link. So the biomed community as well has a Reddit page. And a lot of the computer geeks out there will know what Reddit is. The Reddit page, or the Reddit community, I’m sorry, has probably 2000-3000 members. I am a moderator on that page. But it’s a lot, you know, basically that’s a website or a forum. And we can do a lot less with the content there. But there is a link on the Reddit page if you’ve seen that for payments to get to the discord as well.
Chyrill Sandrini 06:11
Yeah, well absolutely add the link to this episode and podcast. So if you guys are listening, and you’re going after that CE credit, or just want to find the link easily, you can either go to our website or go to tech nation where it’ll be hosted. And if you watch to get that CE credit, and then you’ll also find the link. So Kevin, let’s go into if you’re an expert in a field, how could you be of assistance? For instance, I know a lot about endoscopy, right? Can people ping me for questions? Or do I have to be always listening? How does that work?
Kevin Lynskey 06:48
Absolutely. So the discord was built with many different channels. So for example, I’ll just read them off for you. So there’s there’s a biomed channel, diagnostic imaging channel, cybersecurity channel, Life Science Channel, regulatory service manuals, you name it, we probably have a channel for it. So for someone that has a question on one of those particular fields, you know, right now, the Discord has 592 members. So if you go in and ask a question, hopefully, at least what I’m hoping happens is that someone that’s part of the community that’s willing to be helpful and friendly, picks up that question and says, “Hey, I know exactly what you’re working with, or exactly what you’re going through, I can help you with this.” And they can either answer the question via text, or let’s say, your your, your colleague is working across town in front of a sterilizer, and they can’t figure it out. One thing you can do is you can enter into one of the live chat rooms, and get on an audio call together. And it’s sort of a party line, you can directly audio, call them right through the app. Or you can even go live and stand in front of the device. And somebody can say, hey, you know, look at this valve, or look at this hose or something like that, be able to help you to troubleshoot. So what my hope is, is that obviously, we grow from 590 team members to, you know, 1000s of members across the world, we are picking up about 58 members weekly. And then on top of that, you know, not only just log in and check it out, but leave the app running on your phone. Use some of the lessons today to customize those notifications. So let’s say I want to in the biomed channel, I want to be notified every time somebody posts something so I can be helpful and go answer you could turn on only that notification. So you know the big ask today is obviously everyone check it out. You know, don’t be afraid to learn a new technology. But install it, play around with it. Go in and ask a question. But most importantly, go in and answer your question. That’s how we build a community.
Chyrill Sandrini 08:46
Absolutely. So you know, this is my first time on Discord. I’ve got my cell phone here. Super. Um, you want to try to call me? Yeah, let’s do it. Okay, do I have to have the app open?
Kevin Lynskey 08:59
You do not have to have an app open. Okay. Well, why not notify you? But if your screens up, it’ll, it’ll show me calling you.
Chyrill Sandrini 09:05
Okay, I’m ready. Okay, Kevin. So I’m so intrigued about how we can communicate live on this, like not using our cell phones. I don’t know. It’s just like, so crazy to me. So I’ve got this app. And somehow you’re going to communicate with me standby listeners. We hope this works. I am technically challenged. Let’s just put that out there. So Kevin, are you going to call me talk to me? How’s this gonna work?
Kevin Lynskey 09:36
Yeah, so what we’re gonna do right now, we’re actually going to look at the channel list once you’re in the app, and then we’re going to scroll down and we’re going to find a voice channel. So we have a couple of voice channels established.
Chyrill Sandrini 09:46
Okay. General and then the letters “AFK”
Kevin Lynskey 09:51
correct. So we’re going to join general so click on that, okay. And hit join voice And I shouldn’t be able to talk to you. And we should hear an echo here of some sort. Can you hear me? Yes, I hear you. All right, there we go.
Chyrill Sandrini 10:08
How cool is that?
Kevin Lynskey 10:11
So if you tap on it again, you can hit the red X to hang up. And you will leave that was channel.
Chyrill Sandrini 10:18
So if I’m a biomed, across the hospital, and I want to reach back to the shop, or to my buddy, because I’m working in a solo shop across the United States that I know that he knows how to fix the sterilizer. We can communicate that way and walk through it and find an answer.
Kevin Lynskey 10:39
Absolutely. Absolutely. At the touch of a button, you can connect with experts. So you have a ventilator pal across the across the country, and you’re in the middle of nowhere, but you have a Wi Fi signal. You could go alive and show them what you’re dealing with text chat, whatever you need, at the touch of a button.
Chyrill Sandrini 10:56
So I’ll use a Wi Fi signal. That’s important. I think you don’t need cell service. Correct? Because that’s kind of difficult sometimes in a shop and some of the places in the hospital right?
Kevin Lynskey 11:06
Absolutely. They usually shove us in the basement. So exactly.
Chyrill Sandrini 11:09
Next to the morgue. Okay, so I want you to share your screen because I’m new, right? So I want to walk the new people through what it looks like how to access it, you know, and kind of give us all the info Kevin?
Kevin Lynskey 11:29
Absolutely. Okay, so here, you should be able to see the discord screen. This is the PC desktop version.
Chyrill Sandrini 11:34
Okay. All right, perfect. I did that today, too. Very good. All right, that’s going on.
Kevin Lynskey 11:42
Absolutely. It’s my bring this down here. Alright, so when you log into this, you’re gonna see your channel list on the left hand side, so if you’re a part of different channels, so say you do play some video games with your with your kids or, or some other friends. You can have different channels for different interests over here. So depending on how active you are in Discord, you might have a bunch of things here. But the be mat one, obviously, if you hover over it, it says be mad. And it’s got a little small picture of an EKG, which distinguishes us as a biomed server. But once you’re in, you can see all the different channels. So again, as I mentioned earlier, you know, water coolers just for a general fun stuff. Cool thing that was done today is the bearded biomed himself, chase started a fantasy football league looking to play fantasy football, jump in. So he started that today. The biomed channel is probably the most active channel that’s just for general biomed chat. You have your diagnostic imaging, cybersecurity life science, regulatory, one really good one that’s pretty active as manual requests. You know, if you have biome, eyes all over the country, everyone has their own cache of service manuals, whether online or on a drive somewhere. Let’s say you can’t find one. There’s lots and lots of requests in here. I’m very active in here because I have a ton of stuff for my career. So I will share stuff. And one important story. Actually, I recently started a new role and a new position about six weeks ago. And it turns out that one of the technicians that now works for me is active in the discord. And I’ve been sharing manuals with him for about a year. Oh, very cool. We didn’t know each other. So it was kind of funny to catch up with someone in the flesh that was part of the server. So an important one for you shrill the media page is for you know, folks that want to advertise their channels, their podcasts, you see, Justin is here very active with his better biomed stuff. So always please jump in here, throw your links up. Patient Safety and then we jumped down to career stuff. Jobs looking for work, career advice, certifications side hustles. We will there’s a lot of people on here that like to do resume review. I’ve done it myself quite a few times that people have a resume they like I’m not quite sure, upload your resume or send it in a direct message to somebody. There’s folks here that we’ll take a look at and give you some tips. You’ll see on there if you come in and look there’s a lot of interview tips, different stuff like that. And then under
Chyrill Sandrini 14:30
some you’re telling me you’re getting in one spot you’re getting, hey, I need to fix my ventilator. Can you help me? I’m getting manuals, I’m getting fantasy football. Somebody’s looking at my resume. I can find a job. I can be social. I can meet other people in the industry on this one spot.
Kevin Lynskey 14:48
Yep, absolutely. You know, we don’t want to forget about the nerds in the room. So we do have a gaming channel. There’s obviously a lot of folks that play games and use discord for that And then last but not least, you know what server would be a good server without a memes channel. And there are very a lot of very good biomed memes out there that are kind of funny. So those are shared here, too. So, you know, basically, what we’re trying to do is take the the funnest parts of the local association meetings, you know, you’re a part of CMIA Sherill, I’m very active in the Orange County one. Sometimes the meetings are a lot of fun, sometimes they’re not just depends on the type of meeting, but we’re trying to take the best parts of that, which is the communication, the sense of belonging, and the networking and kind of put it all in one place. And I think the possibilities are really endless with what we could do with this, as long as we could continue to grow and more people adopted, and most importantly, more people use it.
Chyrill Sandrini 15:48
You know, I think it’s excellent, Kevin. You know, it’s just like the podcast, using that as a platform, the YouTube channels with Justin, with so many others that have joined the virtual world of sharing information, the HTM industry, I just feel it elevates us. Because once we get to talk to one another, we find some of the things that are similar, and we’re not isolated, we’re not in silos. We’re all in this together patient care and patient safety. Right?
Kevin Lynskey 16:19
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I know, you know, there’s probably a good crop of our OEM partners that, you know, might not like what we’re doing, but you know, right to repair rightly so as a hot topic. And I feel like, you know, during the pandemic, you had a lot of folks out there that were sort of on their own. And you know, as well as I do, that the FDA relaxed, a lot of things Joint Commission relaxed, a lot of things. But still, you had a lot of biomass out there, too, that didn’t have somewhere to turn for help, or didn’t have somewhere to turn to find a manual. And, you know, although I fix it in some of these places, did a wonderful job of keeping up with that, you know, what’s better than then being able to connect with someone that works for that OEM, or someone that has experience working on that very thing that you just worked on? So, you know, I feel like we’re all you know, the community is all bigger than each and every one of us. And if we want to continue to grow up, we want to bring that to new generations. I think things like this are stuff we have to we have to look at, we have to adopt,
Chyrill Sandrini 17:18
and what a great opportunity for the leaders and the seasoned veteran htm. People out there to be a mentor, right? Absolutely. Right. Mentorship is huge. And we’ve got to grow this industry. Gosh, if you could turn young people on to this, maybe even the high school level looking at jobs, it might demystify what the HTM wouldn’t be met is? Yep,
Kevin Lynskey 17:45
absolutely. As I mentioned, I have an 18 year old. Everyone is on Discord. They all have it. They all play video games, or they all are part of other communities, whether it be for shoes, or, you know, their favorite fast food joint. There’s so many different things. But you’re right, you know, we need to start attacking younger generations. I’m a biomed by accident. But I’m glad I found this career path. I love it. I love the healthcare. I love the communication, I love being a part of something bigger. And I feel like if you could really bring this to a younger generation, and let them to understand, you know, there’s schools such as in Southern California, here SC it 18 months after high school, I could have a certificate, I could be working for a good company getting experience and I can be making good money. Not enough people know about that.
Chyrill Sandrini 18:39
Right? So yep, there’s a lot of great schools across this country. And I think this is a place for them to even advertise and put their information up, you know that we’re accepting new students? Yeah, I
Kevin Lynskey 18:53
was gonna say absolutely. One of the things I wanted to mention in areas where we want to grow this is, you know, the fact that you can go live, and you can host a live channel with a bunch of different people in it. So you know, you’re talking about live demos, from OEMs, or vendors. Maybe someone could do, they could run through a pm on a device and do some training here, or an OEM or vendor can showcase a new product. You could schedule something out, Hey, we’re going to go live on Discord and do this. I really think that there’s a lot of opportunity for folks to get involved not just the biomass and be able to do things educationally and socially on here. So
Chyrill Sandrini 19:35
why don’t I applaud you for taking the time and the effort to get this started? I know how that is personally. And I know you want to build it and hope that will come you know the Field of Dreams. This is the HTM field that dreams is being able to communicate with one another and share ideas outside of a conference setting because not everybody gets to go to a conference. That’s right. So I’m so excited about this. I’m ready to you know, do my average tar and get more involved, maybe you could add hashtag endoscopy and I could be an expert on there for you. There you go surgical services, that’s my space. And then you gotta leave us with something Kevin today you gotta leave with with your Wow, every, every time we in an episode, we have a word or words of wisdom so that our listeners can really relate to what the podcast was about today. So what do you have for us, Kevin,
Kevin Lynskey 20:26
I would say that the number one thing I would say is community. We have to continue to build this community. I mentioned to you earlier that I was listening to one of your podcasts, with both Brian Hawkins and the bearded biomed. Chase. That was a very good podcast. But one of the things Chase highlighted on is just the sense of community, and that there are a lot of people out there doing what they can to really grow this community and showcase the different things that that biomed is and what we do. I mean, look, he’s he’s written a children’s book, that was amazing. So there’s a lot of folks out there doing doing many things. So I think we can all you know, get out there, build that sense of community, Join your local biomed societies, show up, have some fun, you know, break some bread, share some knowledge, if you don’t have a biomed society. Start one. There’s plenty of companies out there, like mine and yours that will probably sponsor that and make sure that that gets off the ground. So I would say the word for me is community
Chyrill Sandrini 21:32
100% I just worked with Alabama and got Alabama up and going. And it was such a pleasure. It was so heartwarming to go to that first meeting, you know, see people getting together. So yes, Join your local biomed associations. Check out discord, we’ll leave the link with you. We’ll post it everywhere we can on social media, so it’ll be easy to find, and you’re probably more hip and cooler than me. So you’re already know about discord.
Kevin Lynskey 21:59
I do want to shout out my mods. So Justin, Jacob and affectionately known as “One Cubic Yard of Garlic Bread.” He’s one of my mods. And also, I just wanted to point out that the ladies at Tech nation I have I have a bone to pick with them because they started that 40 under 40. Just a few years too late in my opinion. So maybe next year they could do a 50 over 40 Yeah, I like that, me and you on the on the cover, Chyrill.
Chyrill Sandrini 22:30
That’s right, you know. Thank you all for joining us on this episode of HTM Insider is just always such a thrill to hear from you and how much you enjoy the podcast and you’re listening. We really appreciate you following us. As you know, you can find us on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, tech nation for your CE credits. And we’re all over social media. So if you need the link to discord you can reach out to Kevin or myself on LinkedIn or by email, and we’ll be happy to send it to you Kevin. Thanks again for coming on. We really appreciate your time today.