Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Tracking your progress at Connectathon

After over eight (!) years participating at the IHE Connectathon, I've developed a number of techniques to determine how on track I or teams I'm supporting are.  These are really simple metrics.

Day one:
Did you come with your stuff and are you on the network by 9:00?  Good
Are you still having network problems at 10:00? Bad
At the end of the day, have you done ALL your no-peer testing?  Good
Are they all verified?  Excellent.
Have you made progress on peer-to-peer testing?  Good
Have you made 0 progress?  Really bad.
NOTE:  In past years, connectathon monitors have been told on Wednesday to focus priorities on peer-to-peer testing, because if you haven't finished your no-peer tests by then, likely you will fail.

Day two:
At the end of the day, do you feel like you will finish peer-to-peer tomorrow?  Good
Have you nearly finished or finished peer-to-peer testing on any profile?  Excellent.
Do you still have more than half of your peer-to-peer testing to finish?  Bad
Still not connected?  If you cannot connect tomorrow, better check for an early flight out. 

Day Three: 
At the end of the day, are you done peer-to-peer testing?  Good. 
Are they all verified?  Excellent. 
Are you nearly done?  Don't panic YET, but get it done first thing, or stay late if possible.
Still not connected?  Go home.

Day Four:
Did you make progress on group tests?  Good.
Did you finish group tests?  Excellent.
Still not connected?  Why are you here?
All done?  Excellent.  Now is the time to go for stretch goals or help colleagues.

Day Five:
Ready to be told you can leave?  Excellent.
Nearly done?  OK, but scramble.

If, along the way you discover that you WON'T be able to meet some of the criteria for a profile, and you don't have another reason to keep testing it, DROP it, or at least don't waste any more time on it.  Dropping a profile is a favor to others who may otherwise try to test with you.

This morning's connectathon lesson is brought to you by the Llama.

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