Biomedical Computing on the Internet

Prof. Francesco Masulli (today’s BCIG speaker) and I invite you to a late-breaking BCIG Brainstorming Session tomorrow, Friday, November 30, 2007. The purpose of this session is to have an open friendly dialogue about using the Internet to create communities that share biomedical data and executable software. If you are free and interested just show up in the NIH Clinical Center second floor cafeteria at 11:00 a.m. We will sit near the exit outside of which are the vending machines. This is a very exciting new adventure that could have tremendous impact in establishing a global biomedical computing communities!

Jim DeLeo

301-496-3848

Eight people came to this meeting and several others expressed interest via e-mail. Jim DeLeo sent out the following message to attendees and the others who expressed interest:

Dear Colleague,

You are receiving this either because you responded to the invitation at the bottom of this e-mail or because someone who did respond put your name foreword as someone who might want to know about this new activity. The purpose of this e-mail is simply to report on the meeting. Basically eight people attended and it went very well. A very lively discussion ensued with many excellent ideas coming foreword regarding how to proceed in forming web based communities that share software and data. The book “Wikinomics” was mentioned as perhaps a source of more inspiring ideas regarding this web community building. We reviewed this book in April of this year in the BCIG Book Club and a recorded webcast of our review has been archived on the BCIG website (http://bcig.altum.com/events/bookclub/2007/2007_04.htm). Prof. Masulli outlined the key aspects of the highly relevant attached pdf-formatted paper. It was proposed that attendees and other interested persons engage in an on-going dialogue using the mailing list associated with this e-mail and to see what emerges. Please feel free to suggest anything you think is relevant and please feel free to tell others about this grass-roots initiative and invite them to be on the recipient list (attached WebCollaboration.doc).

I have offered to serve as facilitate (not leader) of this initiative. This means I will update the mailing list, arrange meetings, send out announcements and special reports and be an equal participant along with all others in the dialogues. I will be taking some winter vacation soon and therefore will not be able to be active again in this dialogue until mid-January. However this is no reason for others not to engage in active spontaneous dialogue. We’re off to a very good start! So let’s continue the dialogue on line, have some fun and do some good for the world!

Big thanks to all of you who have responded so quickly and so enthusiastically to a great idea whose time has come!

Happy Holidays!

Jim DeLeo

 The above-referenced pdf-formatted paper is given here

The above referenced recipient list is not given here and remains disclosed only to those on that list. If you have a more-than-casual interest in this initiative, please send an e-mail note to me and ask to have your name and e-mail address put on this list.

Thank you.

Jim DeLeo

E-Mail: jdeleo@nih.gov

Telephone: 301-496-3848