I’ve been an analyst for over a decade in the NHS and for the most part I’d never been to a conference related to my work. Partly it was that they didn’t really exist but also that there is a cost involved for tickets, travel, sometimes hotel, and there was never any budget. Then in 2018 things changed for me. NHS-R Community was set up and I went to one of the first free training sessions in Leeds and because it was free I got a rare agreement for the Trust to cover the costs for travel and hotel. Also in 2018 we had the first (still free!) NHS-R Community conference and I got a lift there so the only cost was the of me being away from my work.
Since 2020 the conference has been either fully in person or streamed so more people can join 1 and one of the great side effects of going virtual is that things are recorded so we have a YouTube channel full of wonderful content from the NHS-R Community. And we also have increasing opportunity to go to other conferences like HACA and AphA but with greater choice it can become even harder to justify the time out of the job to attend or catch up on conferences.
This year’s NHS-R/NHS.pycom conference was a success for those that could attend and partly that’s because we tried things out:
we did QR codes to sign in and the code is in the open
we gave Slack a go for questions and got really great conversations and connections
we tried unconferencing where people made suggestions for round table talks.
But we got things wrong:
we don’t have subtitles on our streamed recordings
we didn’t collate presentation links or share them in advance of the talks
we didn’t promote the conference as well as we’ve done in previous years.
We can do better.
But what is it that we want to be better at?
Is it putting on a better conference?
Is it producing more output that convinces managers who are not sure of the uses of open source programming?
Is it changing our name as it suggests we are just “NHS” and “R” – which we aren’t?
Have we done enough?
We might have a lot of work to do but one thing I do know is that if we are going to do more we are going to do this together because all that we’ve built has been by us: the NHS-R Community.
And how do we do better? I think we need to start with a new Committee to help shape the next 3 years. We have questions around rebranding and promotion of the work we do, how do we measure how successful we are (which helps with funding opportunities), what shall we do with our space at the HACA conference 2024, and of course there is our own conference to plan.
Can you help?
Would you come to the Committee and share your views? The more diverse the better.
We need commitment of your time and, more importantly, we need your enthusiasm and desire to keep the NHS-R Community going so in the next few weeks I’ll be setting up Committee meeting where our first task will be to shape what we, as a Committee and a Community, will do.
If you are interested in being involved with the Committee please contact me via our Slack group or email zoe.turner3@nhs.net
Join the Slack groups
Details are in the Open Analytics Resources and feel free to contact NHS-R Community via email at nhs.rcommunity@nhs.net
Footnotes
Hybrid is a tricky label to give a conference as you need to have both participants and speakers to be in person and virtual so I can’t say that we’ve done that in NHS-R Community..↩︎
Comments
Calum Polwart
20 October 2023
Sorry I didn’t attend this year. I attended for the first time last year, because I had something to share. I’m sure I will be picking up some video too. I’m sure everyone will be different but some off the cuff thoughts from me - It’s hard until you go, to know quite how geeky it will/will not be (answer as geeky as you want!) Timing. I don’t know why but Oct-Dec for me seems to be peak conference season! This isn’t my only part of my job and so I need to balance things. Posters. To me posters are a big thing at conferences. You can get ‘up close and personal’ with the presenter. Is there scope for poster presentation as well as stage? And what about opportunities to critique… Bring your last graph… We will tell you what could be better? I’m there to learn so I need to know how to improve. Any opportunities for a Hackathon?
Zoë Turner
20 October 2023
Thanks for these comments! Much appreciated and we will be definitely be talking about some of these (posters, timing, hackathons) at the Committee. You’d be very welcome to join in :) Details are in the blog.
Charlotte Foster
26 October 2023
Is this a call for help to analysts in all departments? I’d be interested in having a conversation! :)
Zoë Turner
30 October 2023
Absolutely yes it’s a call for anyone in the NHS-R Community and that includes all public sector and Government organisations. Please do get in touch! Thanks