Dear all,

99nicu has now been online during one year. As being the informal team leader of the 99nicu Team, I take the freedom to express our thoughts about what we have achieved so far, and our ambitions for the future.

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The Past

Internet is the technology for communication and dialogue, and I got the idea in 2005 that staff in neonatal medicine should also gain from those possibilities. I had been a member of a computer forum for several years and had experienced the great potential in the networks created in Internet communities.

Colleagues and I processed our ideas and visions and in May 2006, we launched 99nicu.org with the ambition to create a friendly, busy and helpful Internet community for professionals in neonatal medicine.

The Present

During this first year online, I think we have reached our first goal, to attract members. Almost 100 members have registered every month. Today, 99nicu has more than 1100 members from all over the world! From the web statistics, we can also see a steadily increasing number of visitors. In April 2007 we reached a new all-time high, with >1500 unique visitors.

However, we are still waiting for our community to “take off”, and to see more activity in the forums. We (i.e. the 99nicu Team) can provide the platform, but all of us (i.e. all members) create the contents. The future of 99nicu lies in your hands!

One may argue that our marketing has been quite poor. I can only agree on such criticism. However, marketing costs money and we have had unexpected difficulties to attract advertising firms. We can only hope this will improve in the future. 99nicu needs to utilize the dog behaviour of man, so commonly used in marketing - if someone throws a bone, man will try to catch it*. In the near future, 99nicu will throw some small bones too…

The Potential

I believe 99nicu has a great potential! We just need to get used to this form of communication (the User Manual…) and to realize that we cannot just sit and wait for something to happen. The Neonatal World can improve and unite, and we make it happen, together!

Don’t have respect for the technology! Share your questions, knowledge, opinions and experience in the forums.

What do you expect from 99nicu in the future? What can we improve? What features do you want us to develop further? Your feedback is of great value!

Wishing you all the best and see you around!

*I am throwing a stone in the glass house here, but I think that we in the health care sector are keen to run for bones, just consider how the technology and drug companies do their marketing.

I think you have done an amazing job. Get ready, your membership will definitely keep expanding.

Congratulations, and Best Wishes for future success!

Thanks for encouraging words!

We will do our best to do some better marketing, to get this ship of the ground. The bundle-of-books competition is only our first campaign!