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