The Springtime Rundown

You know, someone really should remind me to write more often, then these wouldn't be so long. So, since I'm doing this on Mother's Day, and while Melinda is indulging in a nap, let's get to it!

Community is Everything

There are over 17,000 members of the CGM in the Cloud Facebook group. Seventeen. Thousand. I grew up in a town that was barely half that size. Seventeen thousand people all fighting the good fight to make T1 suck less for themselves, for a friend, for their spouse, or their child. It's an amazing community, but it's even more amazing when you get the chance to share a smile with some of the members and share a beer with some more. One of the best places to do that is at a Children with Diabetes Conference.

Children with Diabetes Friends for Life, Falls Church

In April, we had the fortune of attending one of my favorite Type 1 related events, a Children with Diabetes conference. This time we were in Falls Church, Virginia just outside of DC. After a lively evening welcome reception, the weekend was full of great information from the Bionic Pancreas team, Open APS discussions with Rachel Sandlain, an incredible  panel discussion with representatives from across the spectrum, and of course, a Nightscout workshop to answer questions and get people up and running. Wes wrote a couple of great write-ups, you should check them out on the CGM in the Cloud group: Day 1, and Day 2. Also, be sure to check out the great videos from the event. We experimented with both Periscope from Twitter and Facebook broadcasting. I think you'll see a LOT more Facebook video in the future!

Children with Diabetes Friends for Life, Orlando

This summer, the Foundation will also be running a booth and workshop at the larger CWD Friends for Life conference in Orlando, Florida. We'll have all the usual suspects, including members of our INCREDIBLE tech support staff on hand, and we'll be giving away some great prizes and swag for folks stopping by. Perhaps more importantly, we'll also be kicking off the Patient Centered Outcome and Research Institute project with Dr. Joyce Lee on Tuesday afternoon. This is your chance to be part of an incredible project, and I hope you'll take the opportunity to influence this team's research. And of course, we'll be looking to overtake last year's record for the most Pebble watches in one picture during this event! Register here. Do it today, the hotels fill fast!

Enabling Brilliance

We created the Foundation with a core goal of supporting open source projects that are related to T1. One way we can do that is delivering resources to people that need them, and I'm happy to announce two new ways we hope we can help the broader community:

Nightscout Foundation Scholarship 

Scholarship Applications are OPEN. Please visit the Resources-Scholarship page here on the blog to get yourself or your student in the application process. The requirements are spelled out on that page, and we hope that you'll find the application simple and easy. If you have feedback, please let our Scholarship Chair, Gail deVore, know. You can drop her a line at gail@ this domain. 

Community Resources

Buy maybe you don't NEED a scholarship? You need a programming class? Or a soldering iron? Access to an Apple Developer license? A stack of virtual machines so you can test out your amazing new pumping algorithm? Pizza and beer for an xDrip build party? We want to enable your brilliance! Jump to the Resource Request page and let us know how we can help. 

We Need Your Help

Of course, all of these things cost money. We're finally getting the systems in place to deliver more resources out to the community, and we want to do more. The entirety of the Nightscout Foundation is volunteers and donations. If you can help out, please let us know. You can email me, james@ this domain, or donate here. 

As always, thanks for getting to the bottom, and thanks for being part of the incredible Nightscout Community!

JW

Seriously? Leap Day?

Wow. It's been too long, so let's take a few minutes to run through some changes and updates at the Foundation. 

Always Say Thank You First

We have to say thank you a thousand times over to two departing Board members. Ben West and Jason Calabrese have left the Board, but are still very much involved with the Foundation and the Nightscout community.

Ben's tireless work in creating tools to bring data to life and to deliver them to the public in a safe manner will never be equaled. He has worked on Nightscout and the OpenAPS project for free for over two years, and personally, he talked me through getting my own system up and running those 20-plus months ago. Ben was the first member of the team that I met in person, and from the minute he sat down at the bar with me in San Francisco, his passion and devotion to all things open and diabetes and technology was unmistakable. It was his passion that sucked me in, and it will be hard to ever repay all Ben has given to this community so freely.

Jason was the second member of the team that I met in person. I remember going home from that dinner thankful that I had met someone as frustrated with the state of diabetes technology as me, but smarter than me, so he could actually do something about it. If you don't know, what you think of as Nightscout: the beautiful display, the charts, the alarms, the pills, the CarePortal, much of that came from Jason. As a fellow parent, he was feeling all the same pains as me, and he was able to do something about it. Jason's excitement for the next release was always palpable, as he would smile such a broad grin about the things he was going to share with the rest of the community. 

These two men have given me and my family so much of our lives back, and they have done it so freely, in the name of openness and making life with diabetes better. They are leaving the Board, but they are not going far, and I think you'll still hear lots from them. I'm proud to consider them friends, but I also consider them heroes. 

Thank you both, from the bottom of my heart. I will always be in your debt.

Mark Your Calendars Now

We hope you will join us this year at one of the events and conferences where the Nightscout Foundation will be present. Right now, we're on the agenda at these Children with Diabetes conferences:

• Friends for Life Falls Church 2016 at the Fairview Park Marriott, Falls Church, Virginia (April 8-10, 2016)
• Friends for Life Orlando 2016 International Conference at at the Marriott World Center Resort in Orlando, Florida (July 5-10, 2016)
• Friends for Life Anaheim 2016 at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California (September 16-18, 2016)

Smile and Tweet Your Way to Supporting the Foundation

The NIghtscout Foundation is a 501(c)3 non profit. We run on caffeine, love, and donations. Did you know you can support the Nightscout Foundation by buying a shower head? A DVD? A new filter for your regrigerator? Simply visit smile.amazon.com and set your charity of choice to the Nightscout Foundation, and every time you go shopping on Amazon and start at smile.amazon.com, a portion of your purchase will support this group. This month, we received over $300 from Amazon from people just like you, doing the shopping they normally do.

We also were fortunate enough to be included TODAY in a test project from Twitter and Stripe that allows for non profits to reach out to donors directly through Twitter and link followers directly to a donation site. If you're not following along, you can keep up with us @nightscoutproj and @nightscoutfound. 

Supporting the Next Generation of Hackers, DIYers and Citizen Scientists

It's almost graduation time. No, really! It is! And that means that many students and parents are starting to play the application game and the finance game. We want to help. This month, applications will become available for the Nightscout Foundation Community Scholarship. For more information, please visit the new Scholarship page on this site.

It's Been Too Long

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not great at updates! We need some help! If you are interested in working with the Foundation on our social media outlets, of every flavor, please let me know. We're looking for someone to help with Twitter, Facebook, MailChimp, and of course, reminding me and the rest of the Board to occasionally get something on the blog page here. If you have a passion for Nightscout and social media, let's talk! Email me, james@ this domain. 

Thank you to all, for all you do for the community.

JW