Be Fit With Biray

The National Wellness Conference (held every year at Stevens Point, Wisconsin) is perhaps the most inviting conference within the wellness industry. People always seem to come away having made deep new friendships and feeling professionally rejuvinated. At least, that has been my experience.

This year I was invited as a presenter to speak on various web 2.0 technologies and how they related to wellness. My first presentation “Stop, Blog, and Roll” discussed how health and wellness professionals could utilize blogs to enhance their professional efforts. I was happy that many who attended had heard about blogs (and/or blogging), but surprised that a few knew about the steps in creating one and the benefits/limitations to its implementation. I hope, now, we’ll see more professionals in our field embracing blogs as a way to connect to more people.

My second presentation “It’s URLife, Make It a Healthy WWWone!” was about health behavior change (HBC), specifically referencing the Transtheoretical Model of behavior change. People go through various stages of change when it comes to adopting new behaviors. I wanted to explore the effects of web 2.0 technologies with HBC, wondering if ’stage-matching’ various web-based tools might be more effective in creating change in a digital audience.

I also led an activity session on exergaming, since video games are more frequently being used to promote and increase physical activity levels. I did a demo with Dance Dance Revolution and shared a few techniques on how a worksite wellness program could be cost-effective and exciting with a little ‘game-time’!

My goal was simply to get more conversation about web 2.0 and exergaming within the health and wellness communities. Overall, all presentations seemed to have done just that… get people talking…