First annual HIMMS Blogger/Reader meetup was a smashing success

I just wanted to thank all of you that attended the meetup last night in San Diego. We had dozens of people coming in and out and everyone I talked to said they had a great time. Special thanks go to Will Wieder (CandidCIO) for coming up with the idea and to Tim Gee (Mr. Connectologist) and Neil Versel for making the venue arrangements.

We had bloggers and readers from the healthcare policy, provider, financial, IT, infrastructure, media, and vendor communities represented. Our little gathering even had bloggers from forward-looking companies like Sun and Microsoft (who has a great healthcare blog of their own) attending so suffice it to say our Healthcare blogosphere is gaining the attention it deserves. If we pool our resources like this in the future we’ll soon be able to affect policy.

Some of our east coast readers and bloggers were unable to make it because they were shoveling out from many inches (and in some cases feet!) of snow so we send our sympathies. I myself came early so I got to miss the snow in my hometown of Silver Spring, MD which got 9 inches. We especially missed Jack Mason who is trying to put together a “blogposium” where we can have real in-depth discussions on issues important to all of us. I hope he’s able to make it in today so we can get together again.

I hope to setup another blogger meetup at TEPR coming up in Baltimore. If you think you’re interested, drop me a note here.

If you attended the meetup, let me know what you thought and how we could improve it in the future. I’m going to put up a “guestbook” database soon so we can all capture our thoughts for the next go-around.