The meeting takes place in Chicago, November 7-11, 1999. Additional information is available on the APHA Website: http://www.apha.org.
Public Health Practitioners who use the TC will want to download software, spiff up presentations, learn about software, get problems solved, and read email. Other uses may occur to them as they use the Center.
1. The Technology Center at the APHA Annual Meeting has most recently been a place where public health practitioners could download free public health software. I would like to encourage a wider exploration of this concept into commercially available software. Johns Hopkins keeps a pretty updated list of free software, but has not been interested in a list of commercial software.I would like to ask if there are any volunteers to create a list of commercial software of interest to public health practitioners. For example, I have begun maintaining a listing of GIS software (not available yet). Other types of software that should be included (this is a partial list only) include:
- decision making softwareThere should be some kind of quality indicators, and an annotation. Most shareware sites usually give some kind of evaluation - even if it's just the number of times the software has been downloaded. I will ask if this can be mounted on the APHA Website and enhanced from year to year.
- statistical manipulation software such as SAS, SPSS
- Web editors (already done, but could be linked)
- knowledge management software
- document managers
- indexers
- portal software for managing Intranets
- networking software
- email programs (including desktop)
- utilities
- productivity
- office suites
- PIMs and Contact managers
- project management
- other, including CD-ROMs and other downloadable software
2. Many participants at last year's meeting required a place to revise their PowerPoint presentations. Some needed handholding. I would like to see volunteers provide assistance to those needing it. Speakers often tend to be panicky and need to be treated with kid gloves and lots of encouragement and assistance when they need it.
3. As a followup, I would love volunteers who might be willing to do ad-lib mini-tutorials for those having technology/software questions. We provide training on a daily basis in our organizations so we are quite adept at translating computerese to folks newly come to computers. This part is a lot of fun. These unofficial tutorials might be anything from helping someone track down information on the Web, introduction to PubMed and HealthSTAR searching, help creating folders, downloading demo software for later testing, and changing the resolution on their screens and so on. Volunteers could also answer questions relating to (almost) all aspects of using a computer as a public health practitioner including searching the Web for information, buying a computer, downloading and evaluating software, and so on. The interaction would be quite personalized (one-on-one).
We should also think about making provision for product demos of various kinds. Vendors may wish to do some hands-on in the Lab section. Also, some of the speakers in the Technology Center may wish to arrange for hands on after their formal presentations. Perhaps we could act as TAs.
4. I would also like to see more formal training sessions. I would love to have an EndNote or Procite session, Searching the Web, using some of the software mentioned above, or whatever folks would like. I'm thinking of perhaps 1 "formal" session on Monday, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday - 3 hours or so.
5. Volunteers would assist folks in doing email, recognizing that a 10 minute limit has to be enforced if necessary, because of the large numbers of conference participants and the small number of computers (10).
Regards,
Laura Larsson
larsson@u.washington.edu