Not far from where my family lives there is an abandoned blueberry farm. It's not actually abandoned. It was purchased by a group that preserves farmland and now people are free to pick the blueberries. We go there nearly every year and my wife's blueberry cobbler is heaven in a bowl ala mode. There are volunteers that come in and trim back the lilacs that are trying to take over. Some years there are fewer volunteers and we trudge through boggy mud up to our calves to find unpicked berries. It's sort of a hidden community garden.
Open Source software is that way too. There are hundreds or thousands of projects developed mostly by volunteers and usually offered for free via a licensing model known as the GNU Public License (aka the GPL). Wikinomics is a great book about how open source, idea markets and the knowledge economy is being accelerated by software such as the LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql and PHP) stack and other technology innovations. Just as more and more farmland is preserved for future generations by passionate volunteers who see and feel the potential for a better future there are passionate volunteers who imagine, propose and participate in the development of new tools to make peoples lives better. It's inspiring.
I came to healthcare through my families love of service. I came to healthcare IT through Open Source Software so I naturally try to see our industries opportunities, challenges and possabilities through that same lens of realistic optimism. It's not always easy. The challenges are not trivial but when we get it right the blueberries are delicious and when we have a good partner to help us cook the cobbler life is good.
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- Billy
- I'm a husband and father of two daughters. I am also a thirteen year veteran of Healthcare IT and am currently a technology director at a not for profit Catholic healthcare organization.
4 comments:
I like it! The header photo could be smaller. You gotta find a way to proof-read or spell-check your entries (I know blogspot does not do this). You are a wonderful and quirky and delightful writer. If you keep it up, I bet the Halamka's of the world will start linking to you. To be a writer, to maintain an audience, you got to write regularly. I'd add more to your Bio so folks know you are credible. Other than that, just start posting!
Okay, after that lecture on grammer and spellcheck I just noticed that Halamka's does not require an apostrophe as I'm not using it the possessive but rather the plural sense. Forgive me.
ARGH! Grammar, not "grammer." I'm going to bed now. I should not be typing after 10pm but am in a hotel in Spokane and have nothing better to do. Plus in my first post I hyphenated "spell-check" and in my second I made it one word. Dictionary.com considers spellcheck one word with an alternate use being "spell check." No hyphen. Life is complicated, isn't it?
Thanks! It's so nice to have comments right away. In any case, Blogger does now have a spellchecker in the editor and I'm using it so if you catch somthing let me know!
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