A Moment of Silence

There's no award I could give that would fully recognize the contribution of Bill Majurski to the Cross Enterprise Document Sharing community.  That won't stop me from offering what surely is not enough, but my own recognition none-the-less.

Bill's favorite expression at IHE meetings discussing Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) was "I'm with the government, and I'm here to help you."  And he was, and he did.

XDS would not be the foundation our US national infrastructure today if it were not for Bill.  But even more so, it would not be the foundation of national and regional infrastructures around the world.  Bill and his team built the first XDS registry/repository system used for testing XDS in the first year, the first open source reference implementation, and for the next 15 years, Bill and his tools and teams were there supporting implementers at every IHE Connectathon to follow.

Sadly, as most of you already know, Bill won't be attending any more Connectathons except via TCP/IP over heavenly ether.  I've been hearing Bill's voice in my head as I have code exchanges using XDS and related specifications ... "That's not going to work...", "What I think we need to do is ...", and "Did you check to see if you ...".  I'll still be hearing it for the next 15 years.

I used to joke about the father and mother of XDS, and Bill was always "the mailman" (i.e., the true father).  But that joke doesn't seem right somehow.  Bill was more like the adoptive father, who nurtured, fertilized, pruned and cared for that initial seed, and let it grow into the mighty tree that it is, and from it which has now grown a tremendous forest enabling interoperability through the original specification, and many revisions and derivative works thereafter.

And forest is an apt description, as Bill was an avid fan of nature, of biking (the pedal kind), of hiking, and camping, and sharing that experience with the scouts he supported.

EVERY, and I mean EVERY interoperable exchange of a CDA document using nationally recognized standards in the US, and in dozens of other countries works in part because of something Bill did, or continued to do for 15 years afterwards.  If there were a national medal of honor for interoperability, it should go to Bill.  If there were an international recognition of the same esteem, it should go to Bill.

I don't have that capacity, I can only make him a Lord of the Ad Hoc Harley, but he always was one, and all I'm doing now is documenting it.  

He is hereby inducted into the 2003 Class of the Lords and Ladies of the Ad Hoc Harley, the year that the XDS Registry was invented by Bill.

Bill Majurski

Semper et semper ascendens deinceps

(ever and ever riding forward)