Our Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group awareness presentation at the Techvibes high tech tradeshow was a great success!
We had about 5 volunteers at various times of the day and we were fairly busy all day even though we were in an out of the way place in science world. Thanks to everyone from our Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group who helped out and made this happen. We’ve really got a lot of creative talent in our group, and they’ve got big hearts.
It was a bit of a gamble that paid off. I wasn’t really sure what the response would be. There are a lot of ADDers who work in high tech careers. It was a hell of a lot of work, but great karmic payback, many people told us they were very grateful we were there and doing the work that we were doing, i.e., the adult ADD support group and promoting adult ADD awareness. We had a lot more people come to our booth than I expected and we didn’t have to deal with the “ADD is a conspiracy of the drug companies and the space aliens type” people.
We talked to ADDers and people who thought they might have ADD or knew someone with ADD and wanted to find out more info on ADD in general. We had people from a wide variety of backgrounds from individual computer consultants to hi tech marketers to people in the educational sector to entrepreneurs and everyone in between. One of the common themes seemed to be that people were very relieved and happy that there was a place with real live humans to talk about the different aspects of ADD where they were not judged and condemned. People like them. That’s why we have 30-70 people at our Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group meetings even thought there’s lots of info on ADD on the net. We provide people a chance to talk to live humans who are in the midst of or have gone through similar situations as you may be going through right now.
If you have ADD and have not attended an ADD support group meeting I’d highly recommend checking one or two out. I have a section on my ADDCoach4U website that lists 35 Canadian ADD Support Groups broken down by province and another page that has International ADHD Support Group Listings.
If there’s no ADD Support Group in your area, start one! I did, and it is very rewarding to know that you’re making a difference in people’s lives. A big hidden secret of life is that by helping other people (not to the point of neglecting yourself), you really help yourself. It makes you feel good and there’s no hangover the next morning.
If you want some ideas where to get started, I section on my website called How to Start & Run Support Groups. There are articles on nearly every topic relating to starting, operating, and promoting an ADD Support Group including manuals, dealing with problems, and connections to other self help organizations.
We had an Emac with Dr. Ed Hallowell’s DVD interview on the Jane Pauley show playing (used with permission of course). For anyone of you who haven’t seen the 45 minute interview, I’d highly recommend it. It was all about Adult ADD, and it was a very positive show. He did talk about the negative aspects of ADD but also talked about the positives one, and had the had the CEO of Jetblue Airlines, David Neeleman who has ADD and built a billion dollar business by understanding it and identifying and focusing on the advantages of ADD i.e., hyperfocus and creativity, and hiring people to do the things he either didn’t enjoy or wasn’t good at. A great role model for ADD.
If you want to explain what adult ADD is to someone who doesn’t know much about ADD, showing them this interview would be a great way to do it.
I went around to some of the booths to pass around my Top Ten Advantages of Having ADD in a High Tech Career article that I wrote for the show to show people that having ADD in a high tech career was a competitive advantage, promote ADD Awareness from a positive angle, to let them know about the Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group and encourage them to come to our table.
Most of the people I showed it to were very receptive, many said that they had ADD or a relative or an employee had ADD and even suggested I send it to them to get published in their newsletter. The article also got some great comments, laughs and “that’s me” remarks.
One Internet marketing person who came to the table said we were a perfect fit for the show, “80% of the people here have ADD”. I don’t know if the numbers were that high, but they were definitely more than the standard 5%.
I think I might be on to something here. I wonder how many other people in the high tech field have undiagnosed and untreated ADD?