Session Name: Closing the Community Meeting
OHIE18 Event Page -  ohie.org/OHIE18 
Time / Room: 4:30 - 5:00 Marquee
Presenter:Paul B

Notes:    
        
What we expected to happen:
  1. Build relationships with people in the community
  1. Tools & technologies in action
  1. Meet people that I talk to on the phone & didn’t know what they looked like and never talked to before
  1. Meet people and buillding HIE profiles & technologies
  1. Understand OpenHIE governance
  1. Architecture - how it works & how I can engage with it
  1. Health information systems meeting standards 
  1. See Mount Kilimanjaro
  1. If people have the same problem as mine & how to solve it
  1. Meet implementers & share about interoperability
  1. Sharing experience with other colleagues
  1. Find new collaboration activities 

What actually happened:
  1. Member of a human community (was a member of a virtual community- need to be f2f on an regular basis
  1. Learnt a lot & made new friends; network with other people
  1. Talked more than I thought
  1. Built a lot of bridges (not burnt)
  1. Learnt a lot - new to health - 2 pages of things to google
  1. A lot of new people that I have not met before & learnt that they are doing similar things, just across the ocean
  1. Standards and interoperability 
  1. There are a lot more tools & resources available than I was aware of
  1. Implementations that are very cool - like NFC cards
  1. Practical issues setting up interoperability cases in South Africa
  1. Thought there are opportunities- thought bringing a certain concept would be new, but it wasn’t, like biometrics
  1. Had no idea & was blown away by interaction - looking forward to bring back into own environment
  1. A lot of the OpenHIE community has interesting dance moves
  1. Fantastic unconference sessions
  1. Saw Mount Meru
  1. Good to collaborate electronically - important to do it face to face.  Looking forward to doing it annually
  1. Going back to my country having confidence in community
  1. Met a lot of talented developers - very impressed by how people are using amazing technologies to solve problems
  1. Didn't know what to expect, but made a lot of new friends.  Amazing the amount of talent we have in the community

What can we do different next time
  1. Facility or site visits shouldn't be in the middle of other sessions.  Site visits were good but shouldn't run concurrent with plenary sessions
  1. Better microphones
  1. Time of the unconference session - I wanted to participate in multiple sessions at the same time - review the planning
  1. More formal way to share country experiences - maybe through short papers that would be easy to share - this would help us in our discussions
  1. Once the unconference sessions have been set - go back and set a description.  Some were a bit vague
  1. We could have done better in engaging our Francophone colleagues - we lost a segment of our community
  1. More tutorial sessions - could have done standards & initeroperabiility session better.  Know your audience
  1. Increase community by including others like students who have implemented already
  1. A way to schedule sessions to better conflict resolution
  1. Don't assume knowledge - acronymns were thrown around and not everyone are au fait with health sector
  1. An extra day could have been good - there is more than enough contacts/contexts to go through.  
  1. More demos consistently through the whole conference
  1. With our retrospectives, we should come up with common standard, while we don't have a formal one, that can be followed by the community
  1. Have various representatives that can go out & push what we are doing/trying to achieve  - push a common agenda at the countries that are represented
  1. Our East African friends - there were no translators.  Including the site contents
  1. More deliberate involvement of the regional representatives, like the ESE, ACSA community... more acronyms :-)
  1. Round tables specific to skills so that people can stop by & ask questions - 'where do I find FIHR resources', etc
  1. Sending in advance a list of pre-reads
  1. Asking attendees to self identify if they're multilingual & can help with translations
  1. List of items that we would like to follow up on
  1. If the sessions were recorded, it would help to share with people that were not able to attend
  1. POS applications & those that consume it - interaction with HIE.  This was very component heavy
  1. A hashtag so that we can share more information
  1. A mobile app to follow the schedule
  1. Improve timekeeping - some were cancelled due to not starting on time
  1. 3 days are too short? Some thought so, others thought it's just right.

In summary
When OpenHIE started, there were only a few people around the fire.  as it grows, we made more space and now we have reached bonfire status - this is fantastic.
Everyone is empowered to be _the_ leader of OpenHIE.  If you see the opportunity, jump in and do it, be it.  
We might be wearing different hats but it's all in pursuit of the same goal.   We are the agents of setting the culture.
This is just the first of many - there will be one in 2019.  If you're a MoH and interested in hosting, the leadership should come up with a set of differentiating criteria for bids; everyone will get an opportunity to weigh in (and bid).  Will aim to have it in different places every year and to do it every year.  If you're a country that's interested in hosting, you have to let the leadership know.
A lot was accomplished in a short space - long list of acknowledgements....Ministry, organisations, PATH specifically, PATH Tanzania & Carl

Final remarks
Blown away by the whole week - excited that we ended strong on standards session.  Lots of excited feedback.  HOpe to see the engagement & excitement grow.  Amazing that everyone is showing an interest & passion in something making such a difference in the world - looking forward to seeing & everyone & their colleagues next year
Thanks to everyone on the team, participants, Ministry of Health.
The definition of Ubuntu:  I am who I am because of what we all are.  This event is a beautiful example of that.  We have an opportunity to do amazing work because of this community.  Reminder of opening remark. 
Looking forward to seeing everyone online on forums, mailing lists & phonecalls 

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