A week in Philliphines with OpenMRS Implementers Meeting- part 2

Day 3 and 4 .........

Apart from the normal sessions there was the group photo taking on Wednesday evening. All the crowd gathered for the event and we were chatting with each other till the place is set for the group photo. 

Group Photo

There was also a photo booth where we could simply go and take photos as we want, and the photos were given to us printed in the next day. Everybody was eager to take some funny pictures with their friends etc. so it was very funny to watch :D 

The Thursday was entirely dedicated to site visits. By the time we arrived near the YBS Hall there were two buses waiting there for us, getting ready to take us to the town. The breakfast was arranged in packets so i grabbed one of them and got into bus to find a good seat to have a nice town view :)

The buses waiting to take us to the site visits

All of us were divided into 7 groups and taken into 7 different healthcare centers. I was a part of the team who visited “Toro Hills Sentrong Sigla” health center in Quezon City. The clinics had been started by the time we went there and, it was the child vaccination day in the center. 

The doctor explained us how they use an OpenMRS based recording system to keep track of the patient data. It was a nice experience to get a live demo on the application.

Apart from learning through sessions and meeting the fellow community,   OMRS12 was a fun filled event too. We were greeted with a great Philippine music session at the restaurant after the site visits as well as there was a wonderful entertainment session at night right after the dinner. Therefore the days were not only for work but they were giving us the opportunity to experience the Philippines culture too.

Now recalling those precious memories from the Implementers Meeting, it feels like that was the best experience I have got in working with any of the projects in my life so far. When I first started GSoC I never thought that I will be able to go this much further with OpenMRS. But as now I have been able to learn whole lot of new things and what are the newly emerging works in OpenMRS and, more importantly I was able to meet a great bunch of people who are so friendly and supportive towards each other, called OpenMRS community. I felt really proud to be a part of them and looking forward to continue my journey with them. So this is most probably not an end but just a beginning :)

A week in Philliphines with OpenMRS Implementers Meeting 2012

There was one month had been passed after the GSoC 2012 programme had officially ended, where i completed my project, HTML FormEntry module with the guidance of my mentor Mark Goodrich, and i was informed about a real surprise. It is from the OpenMRS mailing list that I first saw that they are willing to offer a limited amount of scholarships for those who are interested to be in the OpenMRS Implementers Meeting this year in Silang, Cavite, Philippines. Michael who is our GSoC coordinator, had also sent a specific mail to the interns’ mailing list, highlighting that we as student developers can also attend to this meeting. The first thing I did after that was searching for information on meetings in previous years and, after reading about that past stories I was really excitingly wishing that how great it would be if i too can attend :) Therefore i  applied for the scholarship mentioning my contribution so far and what i would like to do in future.

And yeah, I got selected! At first I couldn’t believe my eyes reading the scholarship mail. Ever since then I was counting my days to be in Philippines to meet all the people I have known from IRC, mailing lists and to learn about how the development work we do are used in real world applications and, especially to meet two of my fellow GSoC friends Jordan and Harsha who were also supposed to attend.

As this was my first out of country I was pretty nervous about managing everything on my own in a different country. But thanks to Dawn, Michael from organizing committee and Ana in the host committee, everything was well arranged. As soon as we landed in Manila we were picked up by a guide, driven to the IIRR (International Institution of Rural Reconstruction, which is the meeting venue) and then guided straight to our accommodation area too. Ellen, my roommate who was from PIH (Partners in Health) was a great companion, she helped me a lot to get familiar with everything around.

Day 1 and 2 .......

At 9th Tuesday morning after the breakfast, we all were there for the opening ceremony and the roadmap of OpenMRS as well as the current state of OpenMRS is explained by Dr. Paul Biondich and Dr. Burke Mamlin, who are the co-founders of OpenMRS.  The first two days of the meeting was filled with lot of unconference sessions where there were three sessions happened parallel and we were given chance to attend whatever the session important and interested to us. 

Just before the commencement of Opening Ceremony

Right after the opening ceremony everybody was invited to join on expressing themselves about the things they would like to be discussed here. I was very amazed to see that how eagerly everybody participated in doing this, without a single forcing, almost all people just volunteered to say what they willing to know during next few days. Within few minutes there are a whole lot of ideas and we were out there, arranging each topic under session slots and deciding who will lead the session.

Helping with making the Conference schedule

There were lot of interesting topics and I was bit worried that there are more than one interested session happens at the same time, because as a newbie I saw a lot value in each topic for me.

The sessions were very much informal where everyone interested were welcome to join. We gathered around and listened to the speakers to know what they say, while everyone expressing their ideas and asking questions in middle. I did like the nature of the sessions a lot as it was easy to join and learn things in this way than being in a big formal talk.

I was able to learn lot of new things by attending the sessions. As I have only involved in coding, I didn’t have a clear idea on how our code is customized and used in real applications in large scale. From listening to various speakers in their sessions, I learnt that how they use OpenMRS in Kenya, Rwanda, Philippines, Malawi, Israel India, Pakistan, Haiti and a few more countries. They were giving out details as how many centers in each country, what modules they use, how many patient entries in database etc. I was very happy to hear that HFE module in which I am working is being used widely with lot of implementations.

Unconference Sessions

There were many different sessions and various informal chats (BoF sessions, lightening talks) happening throughout the meeting. I found lightening talks were very interesting where each person was giving five minute presentation of a topic of his/her choice. It was a good way to get quick introductions on many things.

Lightening Talks

So that is how the first few days went. My next post will be on the remaining days which were the best days of the meeting :) 

To be continued.................

A Visit to Sri Dalada Maligawa

Last week i had the opportunity of visiting the Sri Dalada Maligawa, which is a most sacred place to all of us Buddhists in Sri Lanka as well as all over the world. I was very exciting about the journey since it was my second visit to Kandy and also as we were travelling by train in the Observation Saloon for the first time(thanks to  my better-half <3).

Travelling to hill country by train was really a remarkable experience which one should have in the lifetime. Around 7.00 A.M in the morning we were at the fort railway station and the Colombo-Kandy Intercity Express train we were scheduled to travel by was already parked there at the platform. Since we were going in the observation car we had no difficulty in finding a place to sit. Because you have to book tickets in advance to travel in the observation saloon. FYI: Advanced ticket booking can be done by visiting any of the railway stations mentioned here in one month advance to the journey day. The prices of the train tickets for local visitors are varies as;

First Class Observation- Reserved: Rs 360.00

Second Class - Reserved : Rs 220.00

Third Class - Reserved : Rs 150.00

We came and found our seats as mentioned in our tickets. The saloon was very comfortable with fresh air, comfortable seats and luggage carriers. There were 24 passengers including us while some of them were foreign visitors and monks. While we were starting to get our breakfast inside, the train started the journey around 7.03 A.M. So here we come Kandy :)

It was said that the train only stops at Gampaha, Peradeniya and Kandy. Therefore the journey was very fast and untiring. We came out of the saloon during the journey and we were able to see many breathtaking sight scenes of the upcountry which we didn't forget to get caught as memorable snapshots. I noticed that the foreign tourists inside our saloon were also very keen and excited on getting photos of this great natural beauty. The following are some of the snapshots we could got during the journey.

We arrived Kandy at 9.35 A.M and the city looked busy as it was a working day. Dalada Maligawa is few meters away from the railway station therefore we started heading towards Maligawa once we came out of station. One has to pass the famous Kandy lake when going to the Maligawa and we also stopped there for a while. At the front gate, we bought fresh lotus flowers,oil and other things we needed to worship. Even it was a working day there were a lot of people inside, dressed in white had visited Maligawa to worship the sacred tooth relic of Lord Buddha.

The 'paththirippuwa' of the Maligawa is the first thing gets visible to someone who enters there. I was amazed at the beautiful view it made along with the mountain range behind and also was so filled with a great devotion towards worshipping the sacred tooth relic of Lord Buddha. We were fortunate to go to the 'Ihala Malaya' within the 'Thewawa'  time so we could worship 'Sri Dantha Dhatun Wahanse', before the 'Thewawa' was finished. We spent around 3 hours in the Maligawa worshiping and i can still remember how much my mind was relaxed at that time from participating various religious activities at this sacred place.

Before leave Maligawa we also went to the museum built for 'Raja' elephant who carried the sacred tooth relic in Dalada Peheraha for around 20 years. After having lunch, around 3.00 P.M, we headed back to the return Intercity train which was scheduled to come back to Colombo.