It has been quite a month and no, the month (of November) is not up yet but what a ‘month’ it has been since I got back from South Korea.
I have basically been spending my time (and will continue till the month is up) on 4 major items this month and I reckon I should talk about the first 2 points (the remaining 2 will be reveal later) because while it appears that I have ‘slowed down’ on the work at binaryHealthCare.com, I have in actual fact, work on a great number of related projects 🙂
So this is the first 2 items (out of 4) that I have been working on for the month of November;
1) Writing a Book
Before I ramble on ‘The Book”, allow me to share with you a side project I’ve been working on since February 2009 – the development of a post tertiary program on Imaging Informatics (aka PACS Administration) for an institute of higher learning in Singapore (yes, first of its kind in the region with more to come!)
Part of the work includes the development of the educational materials and I decided to write the text myself – hence a book (there would be slides and lab practice too). While I have no problem developing presentation slides for conferences and articles for the media, I actually have no experience in authoring a book, even though I took a course on book writing to minimize the learning curve, the actual process is by no means an easy feat (I’ll post more thoughts on this ‘little journey’ once I finish draft one)
2) Building the community at ClubPACS 2.0
Now one would imagine that rebuilding ClubPACS would be ‘a walk in the park’ given its fame and popularity before closing down. Well at least that’s what I thought, boy was I so wrong.
For those who have never managed an online community before but like to visit one, do the community owners / managers of those community a small flavor (if you visit ClubPACS 2.0, do me this favor too). Participate in the forums. Yes, it really helps.
The reason is simple, it actually reflects that there is activity going on in the community. I get so many PM (private messages) asking for help and I made the mistake of actually replying in full – the results? Empty forums, and let me tell you, empty forums is bad because it gives the impression that no one visits the community (which is not true).
The other problem I had was trying to get people to register. For ClubPACS 2.0, no registration is needed, anyone can assess the contents (forums included, unless they want to post) so what happens? People just read through the content / knowledge base. This is ok (that’s what ClubPACS is about – sharing of knowledge) but it just give the impression that the community is not alive and this ‘vicious cycle’ goes on (which is bad if you are trying to build a community).
The good news? It’s actually getting better and the research and practice I did on community management is making me a (slightly) better community manager.
However, if you are reading this and you have not register or post an introduction at ClubPACS 2.0, get it done right now 🙂
So there you have it, the 2 items that has been keeping me busy but it is well worth the time because the deliverable from these 2 items will benefit the health informatics on the whole 🙂
BinaryHealthCare (BNHC) 