2010 Implementers Meeting After Action Review

Thursday 9 September

What did we expect to happen?

• Make a schedule

• Entertaining introduction from Chris Bailey

• Highly-anticipated talks would be spread through all days

• Update on OpenMRS and its development status

• Meet new people in OpenMRS and mobile apps

• Find out where OpenMRS is

• Sun throughout the day

• Meet Sy Haas & Mark Goodrich

What actually happened?

• We set the agenda for day 1

• High-level update of OpenMRS project

• It rained

• Darius met a bunch of people who he had only e-mailed with before

• Chris Bailey did not sing

What did not happen today? (Bonus question?)

• No chance to debate agenda once it was put up

• The internet "didn't totally suck"

• No report back from sessions

• People did not get to all the sessions they wanted

• Not enough time in sessions

• Very few people added their notes to the wiki

What could we do differently?

• Allow a way to add new topics for upcoming days

• Encourage new attendees to participate more

• Consider longer sessions

• More seats in the pool room

• More transfer time between sessions

• Discuss more issues on training & capacity building

• Group common topics together

• Lightning talks & demo sessions

• More stringent time-keeping

Friday 10 September

What did we expect to happen?

• Better coordination

• Longer sessions

• More salad

• Higher door handles

• Good internet

• Sunshine

• Hear about some implementations

• To have an "I want to see/do/talk about" board

• Local wiki for postings

• More participation from all including new people

What actually happened?

• There was sun

• Longer sessions

• Transition time between sessions

• Lots of data talk

• Saw implementations

• Better schedule

• "Internot" worked

• Good collaboration/participation

• Some of the same old people said new things

• UI roadmap

• Timing was flexible

• We "unconferenced"

What didn't happen?

• "Internot" didn't work

• Couldn't post to the wiki

• Both wifi overload and insufficient bandwidth

• Didn't rain

• Didn't get to surf

• Didn't have too many complaints

• Didn't look at the "want to see" board

What could we do differently?

• Changing the venue to something larger

• More chairs in the small room

• More implementer showcases

• Lightning talks

• OpenMRS ask-the-expert

• Indicator reporting methods & architecture

• UI Framework developer discussion

• UI use cases

• Web app architecture tutorial

• Attendee list with e-mail addresses, organization, country

• Chris Bailey could sing

Final Conference Thoughts

What did we expect to happen?

• See a bunch of demos

• Learn where OpenMRS is going

• Connecting faces to e-mail addresses (faces were better than expected)

• Change where OpenMRS is going

• Build community

• Be surprised by some amazing work being done that we didn't know about

• New developers and implementers to learn new things about OpenMRS

• Meet people outside the core community that were coming in

• Hear Chris Bailey sing

• OpenMRS/OpenROSA cohesion

• Meet a lot of business development people

• See all the different ways OpenMRS manifests itself

What actually happened?

• Had some demos

• Feel a notch closer to being part of OpenMRS community

• Implementation showcase / speed-geeking

• Didn't have great internet connectivity

• Roadmap talks were more about community than software

• Didn't starve

• 100 people who wanted to attend could not attend

What could we do differently?

• More implementer showcases

• Showing more interoperable examples like OpenROSA

• Have an attendee list at least a week in advance of the conference, ideally with photos

• Much more involvement by new people

• Discussion about platform and apps to build on top of OpenMRS

• More lightning talks

• More fishbowl format (e.g. capacity building session)

• More demos

• Get the timing of sessions right next year

• More communication next year

• Set a template for the agenda in advance

• "Minute madness" at the beginning of the day to "advertise" potential sessions

• Consider voting on topics in advance of conference

• More "ask the expert" time

• OpenMRS form sharing event

• More clear topics & understanding of what level they are

• Have technical people arrive ahead of time and do things like day-long technical work sessions

• Short list of topics wanted or offering to give

• Entrepreneurship/business development sessions

• Much earlier decisions about attendance (to prevent visas, flight problems, etc.)

• Avoid religious holidays and consider days of week

• Be more focused on next steps after conference (goals, outcomes, etc.)

Other notes and open questions

• What are the pro's and con's of the location and frequency of the meeting?

  • One un-conference and one "traditional" conference?

  • Who attended because of the meeting's correlation with another conference (e.g. Medinfo)?

  • More regional events?

  • Be careful of the dynamics of the event