Barry Musikant
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THOUGHT THAT it would be a good idea to tell you about my experiences at
DentalTown.com, the website of the magazine DentalTown, the brainchild
of Dr. Howard Farran. DentalTown.com is the most comprehensive and
easy-to-use dental website I have ever seen. It covers just about
every subject of interest and doesn’t cost a penny. Joining and becoming
an active participant are both easy. When I joined, two years ago,
DentalTown.com had about 9,000 members. Currently, it has more than
20,000 members. There must be a reason why so many people are joining.
DentalTown.com’s most outstanding feature is an
array of message boards on which you can interact with other dentists.
If you wish, you can start a new subject to learn the views of others.
I believe that the grassroots nature of these message boards is the basis
of this site’s success. A true community is being formed in cyberspace
for the benefit of all. As the slogan of the site puts it, “With
DentalTown.com . . . no dentist will ever have to practice solo again.”
The cyberspace dental community starts and ends with the participants,
so it is no better or worse than the integrity of the dentists who participate.
I have found it well worth my time.
In addition to message boards, DentalTown.com includes
an extensive area of the site for case presentations in any discipline
that is likely to interest you. If you have a scanner, you can upload
cases in a matter of a few minutes and then have other dentists discuss
the particulars of your presentation.
DentalTown held the first meeting for participating
dentists this past February in Las Vegas. I was among the more than
800 dentists who attended the three-day meeting. Although most of
us had never met any of the other participants, we did not feel like strangers
because of all the previous contacts we had had through the various message
boards.
Many of the dentists active in DentalTown.com are
involved with other organizations and interests. Many include in
their messages a link to an active website of their own. Just by
clicking the link, you can go to the par-ticipant’s site, permitting you
to travel freely not only within the DentalTown website, but laterally
to many other sites with useful information of their own. For example,
recently I was reading a post on DentalTown.com from an endodontist who
is involved with Roots, a web site devoted to endodontics. I clicked
the link that he had included and was there in a moment.
For a guy like me, DentalTown.com has become addictive.
At this stage of my career I love to teach, and the constantly growing
membership in DentalTown.com gives me a larger and larger audience that
I can talk to. The advantages of SafeSiders® and EZ-Fill®
obturation are not always immediately obvious to dentists. Most of
them have been swayed by a combination of ineffective endodontic training
in dental school and the intensive mass marketing of rotary NiTi systems.
Two years ago, when I first started corresponding on DentalTown.com about
the alternatives to rotary NiTi, thermoplastic obturation, and vertical
condensation, I was met either with significant skepticism or—worse—with
non-responsiveness. But repetition and the honing of these alternative
presentations have increased the awareness and the acceptance of the SafeSiders
and EZ-Fill.
Short of spending a fortune on mass marketing (we
cannot compete with Dentsply) I cannot think of a better way to get these
new ideas across than a genuine grass-roots movement, such as the DentalTown.com
message boards, where the acceptance of new equipment and techniques will
be only as good as the validity of the arguments we make for them.
Dentists sometimes tell me in DentalTown.com forums that they are looking
forward to lectures that I am going to give in their areas, further increasing
the sense of community. The relationship with a large number of dentists
through DentalTown.com is ongoing and growing. The challenge of answering
questions accurately and honestly makes any participant grow professionally.
So, I would suggest that whether you are a casual
reader of posts or an active dentist with information that you want to
disseminate you should become involved in DentalTown.com.
April-May 2003
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The
cyberspace dental community starts and ends with the participants, so it
is no better or worse than the integrity of the dentists who participate.
I have found it well worth my time.
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