I just returned from an energizing week at the Spear Summit! For those of you who missed it, please plan to attend next year. It's definitely one of the best dental Mecca's I've ever been to.

While at the Summit, I have to say that I was absolutely humbled and amazed at the number of you guys that sought me out to comment about the value of my posts to you and in your practices. Talking to several of the other moderators of SpearTalk, they also had very similar experiences. For me, I had no idea that we had so many "groupies," which sort of weirds me out. I really don't believe that I have that much earth-shattering information to share, and certainly not much that I haven't learned over the years from many of my mentors who are much smarter than I in many fields. It is just my passion to help others avoid many of the mistakes that I have made over the past couple of decades. I actually learn much more from SpearTalk and from my involvement with the Spear family than I can ever contribute.

I believe that I speak for many, if not all, of the SpearTalk Moderators, when I say that we truly appreciate your feedback. We put a great deal of effort and time each week into working to provide a safe learning environment on this board. I truly believe that while there are many other discussion boards out there in the field of dentistry, this one is the most trustworthy source of information that you will find. As you can tell, the moderators are able to support, challenge, and question opinions as appropriate in manners that hopefully do not inhibit but encourage innovative thoughts in dentistry while adhering to ethical standards and well-founded evidence-based thinking. I am proud to be a part of the SpearTalk community and of this wonderful group of talented moderators that each have unique specific areas of interest and expertise about and beyond excellence in general dentistry including staff management, sleep dentistry, risk management and HIPAA compliance, oral surgery, implantology, prosthodontics, periodontics, orthodontics, TMD and orofacial pain, digital and analog clinical techniques.

Thank you all for your kind words and for any suggestions for improvement that you may have.

Along those lines, please let me propose a solution to a consistent question that I heard from at least three folks at the Summit. Apparently, many of you have become familiar with specific interests of each of the moderators, and you may keep an eye our for our response and may be disappointed if we do not engage specifically on a post. I think that's probably just do to the fact that each of us also have families and practices to run and may not have seen or read a specific thread. I can assure you that it is not a lack of interest! Therefore, please let me propose a solution....

Feel free to private message any of us whenever you have specific question about a particular post if you think that you'd like to hear from us on a thread on which we may not have commented. (To private message anyone, find a post on which a person has posted and then click "Send Private Message" under their profile picture. It will send that person a personal e-mail to the e-mail address linked to the Spear system.) Please remember that we try to visit and review threads at least a few days each week on an alternating basis among the moderators and that if you mention a specific moderator in a post that there is no tool currently that "tags" us to call attention to that post currently as other social media systems might. It also would help if you would copy and paste the link to the post in question in those private messages so that we can quickly reference the thread.

It was also brought to my attention that some of you would like to post topics periodically but are not comfortable wordsmithing an "appropriate" question to post on this forum. Since we want everyone to feel comfortable discussing topics safely on this forum, please feel free to private message any of the moderators if you would like to discuss a topic that you may not feel comfortable posting openly. We would be happy to help you craft an appropriate question to best address your topic or even post a question for you based on a discussion with you. We are all here to serve you, our SpearTalk readers!

Thank you for staying engaged!

Kevin