Over the last few weeks I have been talking to people I consider heroes within the HIV community in London. It has truly been the most humbling experience. I have cried, I have laughed and I have realised that no matter what I do to raise awareness and try and break down walls, it will never be enough. You see, a hero is ultimately someone who selflessly tries to make life better for others.

Yesterday I met with Andrew Jukes from Waterstones, Gower Street, (seen above) for the last of my "Heroes" articles. Andrew and I had not met before, but what he has been doing in the run up to World AIDS Day caught my attention and I wanted to talk to him.

The Gower Street branch of Waterstones is the academic flagship of the company, based in an area of London that is surrounded by universities and medical schools that have a global reputation for excellence. The store is staffed by some of the smartest people in their field, and is probably one of the only bookshops I have ever been in that the staff seems to go about their work with smiles on their faces.

This year they are having a series of events during the week of World AIDS Day. The store has borrowed panels from the AIDS quilt that are held in posterity by George House Trust to put on display in the window. For a store to give up a window right next to their main entrance in the lead up to Christmas is reason enough alone to consider what they are doing heroic. But I wanted to meet the man behind it and discover why it was happening.

So yesterday I went to have a coffee with Andrew Jukes.  He recognised me immediately, and we laughed at the fact that the GMFA Count Me In campaign has made me an HIV poster boy. (This is something I had never sought, as anyone who read my first piece for this site will understand) .

Andrew, a cheery, totally engaging chap, launched immediately into the whys and hows of the week ahead. I wanted to know why he had set up such a week. He told me that he had recently started to research HIV history, stuff that a gay man let alone a poz gay man should know but didn’t. The “30 years of AIDS“ story the media focussed on in 2011 made him dig for what Hollywood would call the ‘back-story’.  Inspired by what he found out he began to talk to colleagues, to find that many of them  knew only little about HIV/AIDS.

Given this and the apathy he saw in the world in general, Andrew approached store management to ask if he could organise a week of events. As you can imagine he had a lot to overcome, working in a company with over 300 stores and 4,000 staff. First was a management concern that the company already supported a dyslexia charity year-round. Andrew was persistent, saying he wasn’t asking for a corporate policy volte-face but for an awareness week. He also pointed out with the greatest of respect that 30 million people have not died of dyslexia.

Once permission had been granted he started to plan and pull together the nitty gritty of the week, first getting 5 different charities on board, one per day, to interact with customers about what each does. They are: 

• Monday: The National AIDS Trust
• Tuesday: GMFA
• Wednesday: The Riverhouse Trust
• Thursday: The Food Chain
• Friday: Body & Soul

He was ordering books on HIV to be displayed in-store and in the window, all of course available for purchase.  He arranged book signings with a number of food writers who specialise in nutritious, as opposed to fashionable, food. He got a graphic designer to produce a Waterstones' logo fashioned out of red ribbons. 

He set up facebook accounts and twitter accounts for the week and arranged for his partner to run diagnostics for tracking mentions and hits the event receives worldwide - a way to prove to management that when he said it would be profile raising, it indeed would be. He has tirelessly promoted the week, including in the social media.

The week's Facebook username is gowerstHIVweek. The Twitter username: @gowerst_HIVweek

There has even been a mention in the Wall Street Journal. Everything he has achieved - he feels that we, who are so privileged, particularly with our healthcare, must learn and have a voice - amazed me. He wants to get those around him talking and engaging with a topic that no longer has fear for us in the western world, nor is fashionable. Yet he knows, as indeed we all know, HIV is still a killer and is still on the rise.

The most wondrous thing about all this, for me, was that his plans for the future include larger events involving more stores next year. That and just how personally healing his journey has been. He told me that the last four months have given him a renewed sense of self and vigour that had been missing for years.  That’s a sentiment that I know only too well.

Andrew told me that none of this is about him.

I went to meet the spokesperson for a corporation that is doing great things, but I met a man, a quiet man, a man with no visible ego.  But a man who is doing great things too.

When I started blogging almost five years ago, it was following the stellar example of PositiveLite.com founder Brian Finch. At an annual general meeting of the Canadian AIDS Society, Brian spoke about his reasons for blogging and about being visible to the broader community. That's when I decided I needed to do that, too, to share my own experiences of living with HIV as the best way to help to destigmatize HIV/AIDS and make more familiar the realities of my own little life.

Once you've started sharing, the sharing tends to get bigger. So HIV or my health experiences are no longer the sole focus of my blog, and they shouldn't be, either. If we want to show the world that we are the kind of people they know, we need to show how full and diverse our lives are. That's normal.

It's also normal that many people living with HIV take advantage of advances in treatment to simplify theirs, and move it to a small corner of our lives, out of the way of our full and diverse life experiences. That might be a personal victory, but is it a setback for the movement?

How many of your friends and family members are aware of your treatment, or better still, understand it? Do they even see it?  In the bad old days, when people were being overdosed on the only drug available, everyone around a person living with HIV had a role to play, even just a supportive one. Everyone knew about the frequent dosing and helped their friend/family member remember it. Now? Not so much. Our treatments are now easier to take in private and we tend to do that.

I'm all for moving on and making sure that we're out there, participating in life. I also think it is important that we share our real experiences of living with HIV with those around us. Some of us choose to do that for an audience big or small in the public space of the internet, but that is not necessarily the appropriate choice for everyone.

What everyone can do, however, is share with their immediate circle of friends and family. They have their own role to play in correcting myths and preconceptions about HIV in their circles. Our stories can help them do that, and reach people we might never meet. Not sharing might be contributing to the stigma that makes life more difficult for all of us.

PositiveLite says: While it was originally written with small business in mind, the comments and suggestions made here are uncannily transferable to non-profits, particularly AIDS Service Organizations either wishing to get in to social media or manage it more effectively

A lot has been made of the benefits of social media.

It can be a cost-effective way to reach large audiences, and it gives people a new way to interact with your agency. While most small agencies worry about the initial steps of deciding which social networks to join and how to get started, one of the most difficult hurdles comes further down the line.

After your presence is established, many organizations realize they are having trouble sustaining momentum. With Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs all competing for resources, many organizations struggle to stay on top of it all.

The prospect of hiring a full-time social media person and keeping fresh content rolling out the door is daunting, with the limited budgets and resources available in a small organizations, but there are ways to cope.

Here are a few ideas.

Plan ahead. It’s amazing how many organizations rush in to social media without a plan.

Organizations that never do anything without a thorough analysis may, with social media, break with tradition and just jump on the bandwagon. They think it’s better to be there first than to be there in a meaningful way, and this hurts them in the long run.

Having a clearly defined plan that’s aligned with other communications efforts and fits well with the overall strategic plan will greatly increase your chances of success.

Approach social media as you would any other business decision. Make sure it makes sense; create goals, define the scope, and allocate resources. Be very clear about what you want your message and yes, your branding to be, and don’t deviate.

Once defined, share the findings with all internal stakeholders to ensure consistency and focus.

Look at what you already have.  For organizations struggling to create content, the most surprising revelation is often how much they already have.

Not everything has to be new, or created specifically for social media. Start by digging. Go through old projects or your website and catalogue everything that might be interesting.

It’s amazing how much content already exists, and with some minor tweaking it can become highly sharable.

Sharing where the organization came from and why it was first started is often as important as where it is going. Video is highly sharable, and if done well, it provides a great way to build your organzations’s profile and to highlight past successes.

Similarly, content that wasn’t created for social media can easily be modified to be made more sharable, easier to digest and more interesting to your followers.

Consider making an infographic, for example, that’s based on statistics from an annual report or choosing interesting points from a presentation and creating a blog post around them.

Create a conversation calendar.  In addition to ensuring consistency in the tone and cadence of your social media presence, a conversation calendar, or schedule,  will help you plan what’s coming up in terms of content so you can get things ready in advance.

It’s also a great way to assign work to people from across the organization and ensure that social media is becoming an integral part of every marketing and communications initiative.

The calendar should be a living document, housed where everyone can access it and contribute to it, but with one person assigned to ensure that competition for share of the feed is sorted out in a way that best suits the organization.

Curate.  One of the most compelling changes social media has made is how it has empowered individuals and organizations to take a meaningful role in news or content curation (content gathering).

Curation is one of the easiest and most resource-effective ways to provide valuable content to your audience.

Sharing timely and on-topic articles from trusted sources with your followers helps build authority and demonstrate thought leadership without breaking the bank on internal content creation.

Third-party content also provides a valuable opportunity to spice up your conversation calendar and provide a break from owned content. There is no tried-and-true rule for what type of content mix will work well with your community.

Test it out, and when you get to that sweet spot, where engagement is high, complaints are minimal and you’re not losing followers, stick with it.

Who’s going to do all this?  Social media can be a lot of work, but you may have people on your team who would love to take ownership of a particular component.

An in-house graphic designer would probably enjoy working on the odd infographic. You may have an office manager who is a passionate blogger and a detail-oriented employee or volunteer who would be the perfect person to edit your online content.

By involving a few people from your team and sharing the role of content creation, you are giving employees an opportunity to work on something different and a chance to learn new skills.

Training will be involved up front, but chances are you already have people who would like to get their feet wet and will make the time.

At the end of the day, social media is “social.” With the right strategy, training and team, it can be surprisingly easy to share the workload and ensure yourorganization is authentically engaging on a continuous basis with audiences that matter.

I'm kind of unusual.  I hardly ever suffer from writers’ block. On LiveJournal, before defecting to here, I wrote 3,000 posts, one a day for - well, you work it out. On the HIVstigma.com campaign I wrote about HIV Stigma and nothing else for six months. That’s a lot of stigma! Here on PositievLite.com I write much less often, but that’s because the Editor’s job keeps me busy.

So writers’ block is a problem for me more in that I sometimes hear about it from fellow bloggers.

I’ve always been a generalist. I write about anything. I really have no niche of my own. Too narrow a niche and you’re in trouble, I think. But more importantly, after all this time at it, I THINK like a blogger. What does that mean? It means that if I read something in the paper that interests me, amuses me or irks me, I have a mental filing compartment called “blogging ideas” that opens when it hears something noteworthy, the contents destined to be retrieved later. Ideas can come from TV, or YouTube or other people’s blogs or RSS feeds or – well, just about anywhere. Sometimes I jot those ideas down. In fact it really helps. Call it blogger’s elbow.

I’m not sure how blogger's elbow is developed though. I think perhaps it grows over time, like moss on the side of a tree that gets little sunlight.

In terms of blogging about HIV, it’s a BIG topic to take on. There is much room in there to stretch, so again, don’t make your niche too narrow. You may be HIV-positive but the world - and life - is your oyster.

I wanted to see what others said about blog writers' block. Google the topic- and google is THE number one tool to fight writers' block , by the way – and you’ll find lots about it. I sifted through the many sites out there, some commercial some not, offering blogging advice, and this one I liked best. The fact that it came from something called streetdirectory.com, which is apparently a Singapore Travel Guide (WTF?) can be ignored for now. Because this is seriously good advice.

Here’s what they say the number one problem is. It’s FEAR!

Because this is good stuff, and because this is precisely what you do when you have absolutely no idea what to write about – you “borrow” – here is what I learned from the Singapore travel guide peeps.

Danger Signs

Writers' block can be from deep-seated fear that you have absolutely nothing of value to say. And, it doesn't matter if you've done all your research and all you have to do is arrange sentences together into coherent paragraphs. Writers' block, based on fear of looking stupid, can strike anyone at any time.

Here is a list of dangers signs. I’ve paraphrased throughout!

1. Perfectionism. The thought in your head that says you must produce a masterpiece of literature straight off in the first draft.

2. Editing instead of composing. It’s the stop and start syndrome. Midway through your first or second sentences you think - "No, that's stupid. Start over!" "Uh...that's no good either...uh..."

3. Self-consciousness – there’s pressure on you to write, but something is telling you that you really are not a capable writer.

4. Can't get started. You become convinced how critically important the first sentence is. It must be brilliant! It must be unique! It must hook your reader from the start! Errr - no.

5. Shattered concentration. Your good intentions when you sit down to write are derailed by random thoughts "Did I pay the electric bill?". "What time is it?" “ Is it time to watch porn yet” - and on it goes.

6. Procrastination. It's O.K. to walk away for a while, to avoid the hassle right now; writing can in fact be put off while you clear your head. But when procrastination takes over, you have lost the battle.

But there are solutions . . .

Any of these sound familiar to you writers’-blockees out there? Let’s see what the Singapore peeps recommend to reverse the situation.

1. Be prepared. Once your research is done - yes, research can be VERY important for bloggers, in fact it’s almost impossible to avoid, so learn to love it - spend a few minutes picturing in your mind's eye the story you are about to put “on paper”. (Or screen. Surely Singapore has computers, right?)

2.Forget about perfectionism. (Yay Singapore!) Start writing regardless of what you think about your skill as a writer. Just write, one sentence after another after another. Let it flow. Some of it will be garbage, sure, but so what? That’s what edits - and editors - are for. The final product is what counts.

3. Quote: “compose instead of editing. Composing is a magical process. It surpasses the conscious mind and kicks on your creative flow because it doesn't judge quality. It only cares about quantity at this point. It totally ignores the writer's block demon! It doesn't care what anyone thinks. It just wants to write!” (This sounds a lot like point 2 to me, but I’ll give Singapore the benefit of the doubt.)

4. Forget the first sentence. In fact, expect to throw away the first couple of sentences. You can sweat over that all-important headline and opening paragraph when you've finished your piece.

5. Concentration. Avoid distractions. (I think they mean the porn thing again.)

6. Stop procrastinating. Kind of duh, but absolutely spot on. Just attack your keyboard to get the flow started. Type anything and everything that comes into your head!

Finally, if ever you get writers block, and it just won’t go away, write about the first thing that comes in to your head. Like, say, writers’ block. Like I did.

OK, I admit it. I get it once in a while too.

​

Back in February I was interviewed by reporter Norren Fagan for Xtra Ottawa about winning AIDS Activist of the Year, my fundraising initiatives, and my participation with positivelite.com as a regular blogger. Now, in conjunction with modelling for the cover story on the modern complexities of HIV/AIDS and Ottawa’s upcoming AIDS Walk , my interview sees print, and you can read it here. Those wishing to read the entire issue, including an editorial by David Hoe, can view a pdf of the September Xtra Ottawa edition here.

I'd like to extend a big thanks to everyone thus far who have taken the time to write to me with their comments, concerns, stories, and support for my cover story and interview. An extra special thanks to Jenn Farr and her partner for opening up their home to me (and for the pizza and beer!) and to Scissors Hair Studio’s Jeff Chambers for the great haircut that graces the cover. Making the cover of a paper I've been reading since my early teens as a closeted gay boy has been a personal milestone for me and a career highlight, my gratitude to Noreen Fagan, Rémi Thériault, and his assistant David, for helping to make it happen.