One year. All those minutes. All the events. All the great Nightscout Stories. All the countries, the people, the smiles, the advances and all the simply incredible things that have happened in the last year.
This day last year, Jason, Ben, Laurie, John, Tonya, Jason, Gail and I signed on the dotted line and promised to try and make something bigger than my usual quote of "seven dudes on the internet," by creating the Nightscout Foundation. When we set off, I laid out these goals for the year, and while we're close, we're not completely there. Some of these have changed from day one, but it's still worth a quick look.
12 Months
- Deliver funds to two other projects (DIYPS, Bionic Pancreas, etc.) (Incomplete)
- Submit up to 10 grant requests (Incomplete)
- Fund 10-20 Rigs for underserved demographics in T1 community (Incomplete)
- Hire one to two full time employees (Incomplete)
- Full 501(c)3 Status (Complete)
Six Months
- Prepare and submit three grant requests
- Establish relationships with Tidepool, JDRF, Dexcom, OmniPod, & Enlite, Pebble, Medtronic
- Establish and Attend three T1 related conferences as Nightscout Foundation representatives
Some of these items have essentially been abandoned: distributing pseudo-medical devices is a legal grey area I was warned away from, and the ideas of hiring employees on a total budget of less than $25,000 a year was a bit silly.
My goal for the Foundation was ALWAYS to make it possible for this group to do more than we could as individuals. Whether that's on the development side, the support side, the conference side, wherever we can act as a group to make life with T1 better, that's what I want to do. Sometimes we shoot and miss, but we always miss with heart, and we're always looking for ways to get better.
To that end, some changes are coming with the Foundation. The biggest and best one I want to let you all know about is that Weston Nordgren was added the Foundation Board of Directors about a month back, and he's already working harder than the rest of us. Weston's perfect touch with the community and honestly, as my own sanity check, is incredibly unique, and I'm proud to have him join us.
The next year will bring more changes. We're getting together as a Board next week to talk about what's next, but I want to hear your thoughts. Where do you want the Foundation to focus? What projects should we support? What can we do to make your life with T1 better? Leave a comment here, or e-mail me directly. The Foundation exists to enable what's next. Tell me what's next.
