Behind the Scenes – February 2018

One of the reasons that I love what we do at MStranslate is that it allows me to meet and develop relationships with a lot of amazing people.  Through conversations online and offline, I have learned about some of our wonderful community members; their stories, experiences, disappointments, hopes and triumphs.  In return, I hope that people feel that I have been just as open and honest about my journey and my goals for the future of MStranslate.

As a way of extending that, I thought it would be worthwhile writing a monthly article to provide a ‘Behind The Scenes’ look at what has been happening at MStranslate.  Firstly, for those who may not be aware, MStranslate is a science communication company that was started by two brothers: myself (Brett) and Eric Drummond.  You can learn more about us in ‘The Team’ section of the website, which provides background as to who we are and why we are doing this.  Secondly, it is important to realise that all of the work that is performed at MStranslate is done largely unfunded and this has been the case for the 5.5 years that we have been in existence.  We do not have any large philanthropic or pharmaceutical backing, nor is a larger company paying us for our time and efforts.  Whilst we occasionally get paid for small side-projects that we do providing our services to other people that may benefit from them, the majority of content and the overall running and management of MStranslate is driven purely by our passion to make high-quality and accurate information available to the multiple sclerosis community.

So what has been happening in our ‘office’ this month?  Whilst it is true that our commitment and desire keeps us going, unfortunately it isn’t sufficient to pay the bills!  Therefore, a lot of our time to start 2018 has been devoted to trying to establish collaborations and initiate projects that will provide some funding to help us continue to operate MStranslate.  Many of these conversations are focussed on ways that we can partner with other groups within the MS community to expand and extend the reach of our work, as we think many more people can benefit from the information that we generate and the manner in which we do it.  However, the reality is that we are in a situation now where we also have to look beyond the ‘MS’ space to access funding – this may be finding people that require science communication for other areas or even just website, social media, filming or video production work that we also excel at.

Although the business development side is imperative for us at the moment to maintain the MStranslate presence, we are not letting it stop or distract us from continuing to innovate and launch exciting new initiatives.  As you may have seen, we have launched a new part of the MStranslate site, whereby the community can help directly support MS research.  This has been a project that has been almost 18 months in the making and one which I personally feel very strongly about.  Not only does this help ensure that more research into multiple sclerosis can be conducted, but with part of your support also going to MStranslate, it helps us keep you informed about all of the developments in this area.

As always, it has also been a big focus in our planning meetings at MStranslate to continue to listen to the feedback of our community.  Two things that consistently come up are the desire to hear more about lifestyle based research and to have greater direct access to the research sector.  I have been keeping a close eye on all of the diet, exercise and other lifestyle based studies that are being published and you will see summaries of these on the MStranslate website over the year.  Similarly, we will look to increase the number of researcher Q&A’s that take place over Facebook Live in 2018.  We have already had one fantastic event with Emily O’Kearney, who discussed diet outcomes and multiple sclerosis, the full video of which can be found here.

Thank you all for your continued support and I can’t wait to have some new and exciting Behind The Scenes content for you in March!