Ninth VistA Community Meeting: Houston, Texas — 11-14 March 2004
The VistA Community will meet again in
Houston, Texas from Thursday, March 11 through Sunday March
14, 2004. The meeting will be at Rice University (www.rice.edu).
Draft Meeting Agenda
Typical Meeting Agenda
VistA Community Meetings are working
meetings.
Ultimately, the agenda of a VistA
Community Meeting is driven by the interests of the participants. The
first session is a round table where the participants introduce
themselves and state their objectives for the meeting. The meeting’s
tracks are then finalized and working groups are formed. The groups
work independently (often in the same room), with regular plenary
sessions to review progress. The following are the common activities
of VistA Community Meetings.
-
Software
installation — anyone who attends the meeting with a laptop or personal
computer will have an opportunity to leave with the VistA open source
free software (OSFS) stack installed on it. Attendees are invited to
bring their personal computers with network cards and cables or WiFi
cards. -
Development
coordination — there is ongoing VistA development in the VistA
community outside the VA, and the VA provides regular updates of VistA.
These parallel developments must be merged in order to keep VistA
coherent. -
Education and
information sharing — although VistA is easy to use in a clinical
setting, it is a tremendously capable system that takes expertise to
configure and maintain. There is literally no one person who is expert
in all aspects of VistA. -
Advocacy — since
VistA is in the public domain, there is no vendor with a large
marketing budget to publicize and promote it. The economy around VistA
is based on providing services. Thus, public advocacy of VistA plays a
significant role in the effort to bring to society the benefits of
VistA–a monumental and valuable project for which we have paid (and
continue to pay) with our tax dollars.
The
meetings are opportunities to work hard–individuals are often there
late into the evening–and also to interact with others from around
the
country, and sometimes around the world, who share an interest in
improving the quality and affordability of healthcare through the use
of
the VistA OSFS stack.
Registration
Please let us know you’re coming by completing the form at the following Link
Accomodations
The following links to the Rice
University website (www.rice.edu)
should be helpful:
Hotel list
Directions
Campus Map
(the meeting is in # 29, Duncan Hall)
Rice University is closer to Houston
Hobby Airport (HOU) than to Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH).
You may have a choice.