Brian,
> What is the right conference to concentrate on for open source health
> care?
First off, there are all too many organizations and conferences if you
ask me. Who in the world can attend all of them? So I like it that
you do not propose to create an organization "open source in health
care" with a semi-annual meeting :-)
> The reason I ask is that there are now starting to be more applications
> under active development and it makes sense for those of us interested
> in this area to focus on a venue.
>
> What's happening right now is that individual projects are being
> presented at specific events, but there are rarely two projects
> discussed at the same event.
True so:
> I think the alternatives are:
>
> 1) An open source conference, such as O'Reilly's annual event
> 2) A medical informatics conference, such as HIMSS or AMIA
> 3) A Linux event (of which there are now many)
> 4) A standards meeting (HL7, Corbamed)
It depends on whom you want to reach. If you want to reach a broad
range of healthcare people, you should go to AMIA or HIMSS or both.
AMIA could certainly provide some kind of forum for that purpose and
might invite open source (especially free software) developers with a
cheaper booth in the exhibition room. Don't know about HIMSS
leadership. We might be able to install something for AMIA Fall 2000
(whose Chair happens to be just a few yards from my office booth and
has some interest in that matter. :-)
HL7 and CORBAmed are standards working group meetings where there is
little time and space for "industry shows". At least for HL7 we have
just too much work to do and to discuss that such open source
presentations would not get the attention they deserve.
I also think that O'Reilly's or Linux conferences (or USENIX for that
matter) are a very different audience. If you want to speak to
computer geeks, that's fine. But don't expect a significant medical
domain audience to hear you there. I certainly would very much like
to go to every USENIX event, or Linux or whatever, but I just don't
have the time and funds for it.
regards
-Gunther
Gunther Schadow ----------------------------------- http://aurora.rg.iupui.edu
Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
1050 Wishard Blvd., Indianapolis IN 46202, Phone: (317) 630 7960
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