Chicago Connectathon 2007 advice

[Moo...@mir.wustl.edu]

We are now 1 week away from the Chicago Connectathon to be held at the Hyatt Regency
downtown. For those of you on autopilot to Oak Brook, you will be surprised.

This does not directly apply to the folks in the New Directions areas. They have their
own mothers.

More importantly for the new folks.

1. I am attaching a word document that shows you some screen captures of
the Kudu tool that will guide you through the test process for next week.
This is now available to you online so you can experiment before you
get to the Connectathon. I urge you to run the examples in the Word document.

2. During the week, you will run into compatibility issues with your partners
(technical, no comment on social). When that occurs, follow these steps
- Refer to the text in the Technical Framework first. Do not rely on your memory
- If not documented in the Technical Framework, find the appropriate standard
- If you cannot come to a resolution, find the Connectathon managers. These
are (only): Moore, Felhofer, Furst, Poiseau. They may send you somewhere else, but
start with them.

3. During the week, someone is likely to tell you: "I need you to change your
application because my application requires X" or "We do it this way
in the field." Be wary of such claims. If you cannot find support for that in
the Technical Framework, come talk to the Connectathon managers.
For example, if the TF says that the Patient ID is defined in PID 3 and someone
tells you they need your message to supply a copy in some other field,
I would kindly but firmly tell that person no.

4. The Connectathon tests represent our interpretation of the Technical Frameworks
and referenced standards. We do make mistakes. If you feel there is a mistake
in a test, talk to the Connectathon managers. Do not just convince your partner
there is a mistake; we need to reuse these tests in 3 months in Berlin.

5. The managers (Moore, Felholfer, Furst, Poiseau) have a larger global view than the
monitors and many of your staff. You may know your industry better than us
(we readily admit that), but we have a better handle on the overall Connectathon
process. Please do not subvert the process by making up your own rules/process
and trying to get your partners to follow them. If we ask you to do something, it
is for the good of the overall event. It may cost you extra time, but our goal
is that might save your partners 5X.

6. The Connectathon monitors will come to your tables to examine your results.
They are focused on low level testing. Do not ask them global policy questions.
I am going to instruct them to refer policy questions to the 4 managers.
We will risk the bottleneck for consistency. Again, this is global view vs local view.

7. Some of you have signed up for a signficant number of actor/profile pairs.
You will be challenged to complete your tests and to get them evaluated. We do
not promise that all tests will be evaluated; our volunteers have limited time and
other customers to service. You need to take a realistic look at your status Tuesday
afternoon and Wednesday afternoon and decide if you need to drop actor/profile
pairs. If you need something for a demonstration, we are not going to grant
it to you just for the sake of the demonstration; you are required to complete the
testing process. Better to sacrifice a part of your system than to complete
25% of everything (and therefore fail everything).

8. We are planning on starting Monday morning at 11:00 with the tests for Consistent Time.
This will help as follows:
- It will make sure your system is operational
- It will make sure you know how to use Kudu for entering tests
- It will expose all Connectathon monitors to the process

9. Remember that the general rule to pass tests is that you need to complete
3 instances of each test with a different partner. If there are two tests, A and B,
you could use the same 3 partners for A that you use for B. You cannot run A twice
with the same partner. You cannot run tests with your own company (we will
not evaluate those). If you run a test A with a system from a large company
that has several peers, we will push you hard to pick other peers from different
companies. Otherwise, you are likely testing against a similar code base.

10. The first days of the Connectathon are dedicated to unit tests and some larger
tests of the Technical Framework. Please focus on those unit tests Monday 11:00
through Thursday 12:00. The plan is to complete the unit tests and turn the groups
over for demonstration tests on Thursday at 12:00.

regards,

Your mother, Steve Moore

(See attached file: kudu-connectatahon-exericises.doc)