CCC 2009 Day 2 - Lessons learned and the Road Ahead

After only getting 5 hours of sleep in 3 days, I failed to summon the energy before I could post an update on CCC Day 2. Now, the conference is over and I’m jetting back to Portland. Since I have a few hours to kill, it’s time for me to post a CCC recap.

The day’s agenda was basically split into parts:

1. A series of presentations on lessons learned from implementing everything from IRB to Clinical Trials.
2. Presentations from Click on the road ahead for Click Products.

I attended the IACUC and Clinical Trials lessons learned and found them both very interesting. Personally, I’m still coming up to speed on Clinical Trial so this was another opportunity for me to wade around in unfamiliar terminology but, just as wading around in a pool filled with cold water, I’m getting used to it and the shock to my system is diminishing. There were presentations from both Utah and Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital on Clinical Trials and it was a good opportunity to learn from other’s first hand experiences. My biggest takeaway was that this solution, more than any others, involves so many different groups that reaching a consensus on how a certain feature should work is very difficult. When planning a CTPT implementation, the cost of politics and “design by committee” should not be underestimated. I was pleased to hear that both institutions have worked through most of those challenges.

The session on IACUC was presented by MCW and was very good as well. I had planned to attend DJ’s SF424 update so that I could heckle but I’m glad I stayed to hear about IACUC. I’ll just have to give DJ a hard time back in Portland.

The rest of the day was DJ time. He presented an update on Extranet 5.6 and followed with a discussion of future development efforts. I was personally gratified to see that many of the 5.6 enhancements drew cheers from the CCC attendees. For me, that kind of positive feedback makes the hard work the Click Engineering team put in even more worthwhile.

The conference wrapped up in typical fashion with an open call for suggestions for future improvements. All the familiar faces chimed in with suggestions, some old and some new and I was glad to see some new contributors.  It’s the open dialog from as many CCC members as possible that continues to drive the product forward in the right direction.

A chance for some final conversations as the crowd thinned out and then CCC 2009 came to a close. I left feeling good about the work we’ve done (knowing that there’s always more to do) and impressed with what all of you have accomplished. My number 1 thought for making next year’s conference even better is for Click to deliver Solution level presentations that demonstrate new enhancements, development trends, best practices and future roadmap discussions. While not general platform products like Extranet, the exchange of ideas about how to make them better would be very valuable to Click and I assume everyone in the CCC community as it’s an opportunity for the collective group to share ideas.

I truly enjoyed meeting everyone once again and learning from your experiences. Thank you! This is something I missed in the 2 years I was away and I’m looking forward to doing it all again. I wonder where it will be next time…

Cheers!