One of the Campaign's partners, MassBio, is joining us this Friday for the 2012 eAdvocacy Summit. They will be watching the event via the online stream and interacting with the attendees and presenters via Twitter. They've drafted a guest post for us about why they are attending eAdvocacy. We hope you find their story as compelling as we do.

MassBio, the trade association for biotechnology companies here in the Commonwealth, has been involved in policy and advocacy for the last 25 years, and in that time we have used every method possible to help advance our cause. Over the years we've organized legislative visit days, launched "call your legislator" campaigns, and coordinated testimony or letters endorsed by industry leaders.

Most recently, we've added e-advocacy to our toolbox. We at MassBio have been excited to join in e-advocacy efforts including the Campaign for Modern Medicines and Faster Cure's Time=Lives Campaign. Seeing the results of such efforts--whether it's the very real legislative victory of PDUFA reauthorization or the less tangible building buzz around finding cures faster--has been downright inspirational. So we're jumping in!

The policy and communications teams at MassBio are working to launch a new advocacy effort that combines the departments' priorities with the power of social media. We hope to harness the power of our network of biotech companies, employees, patient organizations, disease foundations and patients themselves to turn up the volume on our advocacy effort.

It's why we're joining in the e-Advocacy Summit via webinar. We are hoping to learn from our colleagues who have some experience--in building social campaigns, in using new tools for legislative action. Can't wait to (virtually) see you there!