We have a leadership call scheduled for this Thursday, July 7 @ 4pm UTC (12pm ET). If you normally attend but can not this week please let me know. Also if there are any additional topics or updates you would like to see on this agenda or a future agenda please let me know.
If members from the community would like to see a specific agenda item added to the topic queue or would like to join an upcoming leadership call please reach out to @jthomas
Heads up; we need to decide wether or not we’re going to move forward with the world summit - and this decision needs to be taken tomorrow.
A subset of us will be meeting with the Ugandan leadership to discuss the Uganda meeting shortly before the leadership call. I feel that the outcome of this call with greatly influence the decision on wether or not to move forward with Singapore.
@jthomas, @terry given that this is high priority, can we move community management to the very top of the list?
Apologies that I’ll miss the call, as I’ll be on a plane.
I have no insight into whether to proceed with two meetings, and having missed the recent discussions, I don’t even know what the criteria to make the decision are…
I’ve never been convinced that there’s sufficient appetite and travel budget in the community to have two highly-attended OpenMRS meetings in a year. It would be helpful if we had some fact-finding, surveys, etc, on the topic…
I am also unable to be on the call tomorrow. I think that the Summit + specific regional implementation meetings was a good idea. However, we have been unable to justify the additional travel expense (food, accommodation, flight) to a majority of stakeholders. Given the timing, I wonder whether there couldn’t be some way to combine both this year in Uganda. I think the point about getting a summit on the calendar for the same time and place every year, would start to build reliability into the planning process, lowering planning costs and allowing people to make arrangements far in advance.
It is unfortunate that we have had all these leadership changes at this time which makes all of this more difficult. If we could commitment from key stakeholders (ThoughtWorks, PIH, Rwandan MOH, Kenyan MOH, etc.0, that attending a high-level meeting in Singapore was worth it and they would attend… that would shift my confidence that Singapore would still be worth the risk. Without confirmation from those stakeholders, I don’t think it is worth the risk. That seems more important than whether the leadership team thinks we should go ahead tomorrow or not
Andy
Andrew S. Kanter, MD MPH FACMI
I think the worldwide summit should not happen unless volunteers help organize it, If we can get somebody in the community to step up and fill the volunteer roles, great then let’s do it. I believe if people want it bad enough, they’ll make it happen. The problem is that it is too much for any one person to do.
The community is in bad shape right now – let’s not try to sugarcoat things by acting like things are hunky-dory, because they’re not.
This comment from Andy makes a ton of sense to me, but as far as I can tell, on last week’s call we decided we’ll go ahead with the conference, without having necessarily reached out to these stakeholders. (E.g. I don’t think anyone has “asked ThoughtWorks” what they think about this.)
I can’t tell from the notes, but have we considered scheduling a couple of “summit” days on either end of the Uganda Implementers Conference?
I also found @akanter’s comment to make a lot of sense. For my part (and many others at PIH), we have been pretty up-front in our comments in the various surveys that have been circulated (whether we could attend, whether we agree with the choice of venue, etc), though I admit I did not respond to the last one about alternative dates.
PIH is unlikely to attend in great numbers (if at all) if a conference is held in Singapore this calendar year. The later into next year it is held, the more likely one or more of us will be able to attend. This is mainly due to budgetary constraints. We do hope to have a presence in Uganda in September, as this is both strategic and accessible for our implementation sites in East Africa.
@akanter, to answer your question, I wholeheartedly agree.
The questionnaire that I put together with Darius’s help was intended to be for key supporters - long term folks who had a say in sending people over, and made leadership decisions. I wanted their input on our event structure and future plans.
The moment i tried to get people’s input on this; I was faced with an overwhelming wall of “be public” “be public” “be public” all over again, and was told that I needed to be “more inclusive” and seek everyones opinions. Since I didn’t have time to argue, I just did as I was told, and opened up the survey publicly.
However, I did email specific folks, and ask for their input.
Andy
Andrew S. Kanter, MD MPH FACMI