Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Amazing Charts User Conference June 2008

The first ever Amazing Charts User Conference will be held at the beautiful Chateau on the Lake in Branson Missouri June 20, 21 and 22. We currently have at least 40 attendees including Jon Bertman and his AC Staff.
Although the Chateau rooms will sell out soon, there are many great hotels and condos in Branson.
Registration fee is only $100 and this includes three breakfast buffets, 12 hours of Cat. I CME, a great buffet/family and friends party and an incredible Amazing Charts agenda brought to you by AC Users and Jon and his staff. Brian will post the agenda soon. This promises to be a fun and informative conference. Please consider joining us.
The web site
http://www.amazingcharts.com/acuc/
Best,
Jim
jimblaine@aol.com

I spoke with Kathleen at Amazing Charts this afternoon and the official registered attendee list is currently at 63.
We may be able to find an additional hotel room or two at the Chateau (we have already exceeded our room block).
Please let me know if you would like information on lodging.
This conference will be fun and informative; please register as soon as possible if you plan to attend so that we may make appropriate arrangements for the size of the meeting room etc.
Jim

We have just received word that the entire hotel at the Chateau at the Lake in Branson is sold out for the dates of our conference June 19 through 22. However; there are still dozens of fine hotels and condos that are available in the Branson area if you would like to attend the conference.
Please check out the updated agenda at
http://www.amazingcharts.com/acuc/
At this time we anticipate approximately 80 Amazing Charts User attendees. It should be a great conference.
Please let me know if you have any questions
JimBlaine@aol.com
or 417 830-9286 cell
Jim

Thanks Jim. I am so disappointed that we are going to have to pass on this. Really wanted to hang out with the gang and shoot the breeze in the evenings too... Keep my beers on the chill for me. Better yet please share generously among yourselves and drink a toast in mine and Nancy's name.

Nothing like doctor's not even having enough money for the CME they need. And what most outsiders always forget, that every day away at CME is lost revenue for the doc and the practice, so it really cost at least twice as much as the retail price tag shows. God bless American healthcare....

Speaking of alot of time--Do FPs have to re-certify like Internists now have to?

Do you mean NYS license wise or board certification wise?

Board certification wise.

Yes indeedly do!!!

Please check out the updated agenda at
http://www.amazingcharts.com/acuc/
We anticipate up to 100 attendees.
The Chateau is sold out of hotel rooms for our dates, but if you would still like to attend there are dozens of fine hotels within a few minutes of the Chateau.
Jim
417 830-9286 cell

Hey we are building "DestiNY USA" here in CNY. Next year the next AC conference is going be held here in CNY!!! I can wish can't I???? Have a great time.... Enjoy my (Nancy's) beer.

Hi AC conference attendees:

How are things going at the conference?
Any updates?
Exciting news?
Tentative dates for V4?
New features thought of?

Keep us updated. Can't sit still here.

Wow, it's been wonderful. The hotel is beautiful. We have about 80 people here, much more than we originally expected, but lots of ideas. There are several distinct groups, those who are newbies, those who are more experienced. We have all been exchanging ideas.
You can see the the agenda on the net, all of the presenters have been good.

Jon has been very tenative about V4. He has stated most of the programing has been done, but he has held off because the installer is not quite there. There are two sides. One is the SQL server, the other is adding the Health Maintanence and Practice management portions.

We have discussed the health maintenance yesterday and what we wanted and didn't want. Jon is very concerned about keeping it simple and backwards compatable. It looks very interesting especially the vaccine management (I'm in Peds). We really haven't discussed practice management, will be seeing soon.

More to follow

Branson is beautiful. We have had a lot of great discussions.

We are haunted by Bert's absence - his experience and attitude are missed.

Also, I have seen several problems described which could be solved by his new programs.

There is a struggle, a tension, between the desire for new features vs. the desire to keep Amazing Charts the same, simple, affordable program we have grown to love.

SQL database is not far away -- a month or two perhaps, from what I can tell.

Health Maintenance and Practice Management are the two battlefields -- how do we arm people with these capabilities without making AC into NextGen?

There are only really two ways to go for reliable and consistent PM.

1) Build it in themselves.
2) Growth by Acquisition! (Yeah, just buy somebody and integrate their software).

Looks like the Practice Management may be somewhat later. It may not be ready as soon as the other items. There are a lot of issues there. It has a neat check in button near the yellow popup that the front desk can verify the demographics and insurance data. The insurance issue is all populated with insurance companies for each of the 50 states. The rest is really not ready, we will probably develop a workgroup for more of the details.

Health maintenance is close.

Jon has been getting a lot of ideas and hopefully he can:
1)keep them straight,
2)prioritize
3)get them done in a timely basis, given that he is still working on SQL and version 4 (I separate them but they are similar ( +/- PM and HM))

I would agree that this has exceeded expectations. You can tell how excited people are and the extent to which they are engaged by the fact that almost no one left for lunch today. It simply went from 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM and the hotel had to kick us out because they needed the room. I don't think a single person, no matter how experienced with AC, didn't have at least one "Oh my God" revelation when they saw something that was totally incidental to the topic, but unknown and totally relevant to them personally.

This afternoon I saw Bert click and drag a chart to the message center and my jaw hit the floor. I had no idea it worked like that.

Brian Cotner and Dragon, (the good dragon that is) is simply amazing.

Thank you folks for the updates.

Question re: SQL database:

What hardware does AC recommend for SQL database?
Can you ask Jon at the conference and post it here?
Do we need $3K servers?
Do we need to buy windows server 2003 and client licenses?
Can we chugg along like now: with P2P?

Thanks again.

From what I recall, and I am not there, but:
SQL Express
No
No
Yes

Thank you Bert.

It is good to know that we can continue to use P2P with SQL express as we got new main computer last yr (though not those $3K server); that is working fine on P2P.

I prefer not to buy something new if we can work with what we have.

But what if the SQL is the higher version of SQL rather than just express?

Is MSSQL or MySQL capable of running on P2P or that is a definite no-no requiring a true server/client relationship forcing AC users who upgrade -- to buy true server and client licenses with windows server 2003 software?

Hi AC attendees-

Which version of SQL - Express or higher ones?

Thanks again.

SQL Express, the free version. No you will not need to buy additional hardware (?will it need more memory?)

One of the problems they are having is creating a good installation package.

It looks like version 4 will be SQL

Version 4.5 may include health maintenance

Jon was already saying version 5 for practice management, I don't know if this was a slip.

Jon is trying to keep this backwards compatible. He is very aware that people want improvements without major changes.

Wendell, wrote:

"One of the problems they are having is creating a good installation package."

They Don't need one: a good installation package that is!!! I have suggested VistaDB to them.

George K. Fahnbulleh

Even if it needs more RAM, you can pick up 2 X 2GB for around $100. If you already have 2 X 1GB in 1 & 3 or 2 & 4 of the DIMMs, you are still better off using 2 X 2GBs. You have to be careful with RAM. A mother board can only support so much RAM and sometimes you can have unequal DIMMs and sometimes not.

One thing some people don't know, which I found out the hard way is that if you are using a 32 bit OS, which most people are, the OS can only "see" from 3.2 to 3.5 GBs of RAM. With my server, I went ahead and did the 4GBs, because I needed as much RAM as possible and got lucky that it can see about 3.4GBs

Well, I made it home after an 8 hour drive from Branson. It is the first time I hated to leave a medical conference and the only time I didn't sign my name as being there in the morning and then skip out to see the sites the rest of the day . I personally think this was one of the most useful and helpful and casual meetings I have ever attended!!! The hotel was beautiful (what I saw of it, as I was one that spent the whole day in the conference room) and meeting all the great people from this user board was monentous!! We had users from Alaska, Maine, California (Martin and his son rode their motorcycles...Harley's weren't they, Martin?), and DUBAI!! Bert, I should mention that we dedicated the conference to you and lamented on numerous occasions that you were absent. Hope all is well but, damnit, we missed you and needed you!!
I will leave the transmitting of the more technical features to come out of the conference to Brian and others but I just want to say that everything I hoped to achieve there I did. As one who has had some issues with the EULA (Paul, are you listening??), after I met Jon I was more than reassured that my patient's data would not be kept from me should I terminate or be terminated from AC. Jon agreed to perhaps add a few lines in the EULA which guarantee this and which would spell out the options one would have to retrieve their data.
Also, let me say that Jon is extremely passionate about AC and to me, that was a critical factor. Also, I think Jon got the message from many of us (at least I hope he did) that "Growing AC" and "Improving AC" are not synonymous. I and other stressed to him the importance of keeping it simple, aimed at the small office, with just enough bells and whistles to make our lives better but not so many that it becomes unusable.
And, lastly, before this begins to look like a hockeyref post (I love you , Paul), let me just add how wonderful it was to meet everyone and I hope many of you are now joining in the conversations on this wonderful User's Board. Please do not feel intimidated. You will learn a tremendous amount here from people like Bert, Brian, Martin, Wendell, Joseph, Vinny, Adam and others.
And to Jim Blaine and Brian Cotner, you guys rock (is that the right phrase? Remember, I am old, although as I gladly found out, not the oldest). Thank you for making the arrangements and providing the CME affiliation.
And, to Jon, thank you. Thanks for creating this wonderful program and thanks for listening to us and letting us participate in the "Improvement" (not growth) of your product which impacts us all so much every day.
Ok, now where and when will we meet next year?

Leslie

Thanks Leslie for such a thoughtful post and for including me in it. It sounds like it was a wonderful conference, more than I ever imagined. But, as Adam said, it will make me even that much more mysterious.

I vote for Miami at the Fountainbleu if it is during the winter and somewhere either in the southwest, read Bryce or Grand Canyon if in the summer -- may need a few more days for exploration, say topics on Thursday, off Friday, then topics on Saturday, leave Sunday. Or California. Or Cuba, Kansas, population 231 located in all 0.3 square miles. Heard there is a great motel there.

WARNING: Paul, you may not talk about the EULA here good or bad, lol.

And, thanks to Jim, DocMartin, Adam and Brian for keeping us posted.

Bert,
In fact, Jim was talking with me about needing more time to see the sights. I like all of your suggestions.

Leslie

We are going to have to start our own Mutual Admiration Society.

Leslie,
Not in front of my wife!!! lol I love ya too girl. Brian, Larry who Nancy and I met at IMP Camp this weekend speaks very highly of you. Read my lightheaded post on the other thread. Nancy and I went back to our room and had a bottle of Prosecco and after she crashed I logged on to see what you guys were reporting on.

BIG SUGGESTIONS:
1) Almost all AC solo PCP's (and even other really small 2-3 doc groups perhaps too) need to take a closer look at IMP'ing and getting involved with the movement. It was so nice to be in a room full of doctors that were not one bit full of themselves, down to earth, fun loving, and who wanted to create great medicine and a great enviornment for themselves and their patients. My hat off to the folks from my conference who put it all togther. We are certainly going back for more.

2) So on that note, I really want to schedule and coordinate the two conference so nobody who wants to attend both should have any issues of choosing between the two. We were in a small northeast Mansion full of AC, Soapware, Allteer, and Springcharts users. It was glorious!

Such synergy and single minded purpose. Folks certainly had different perspectives, road blocks, problems, issues and solutions and no one solution totally fits all. But my goodness, it was so nice to finally hang out with such like minded supportive and pro-health, pro-patient, pro normal provider. WOW! Brian I can not thank-you enough. And you really need to reach out to Larry, I think he could use some support right about now.

So, In closing I really want to open up the conversation between these two groups who really should almost be one. And I guess that is really where I was going with this all along.

So guys please, over the next few days post as much stuff as you can. Both about what is certainly coming as well as the kinds of interesting creative thoughts and ideas came out of the group.

I'm realy sad that we missed joining all you folks out there, and yet I am so glad that we did get to go to the conference we did attend. Let's make sure that all AC users can attend both next year. Oh, and IMP is considering my idea of regional IMP's chapters so we can get together to discuss things that are more regional in nature, support each other during the year inbetween conferences and build a sense of community among us all. Let's try and think about pulling the same thing off with AC or again perhaps combining some of these organizations get togethers when needed. I'm sure we'd all be better off for it.

Good to hear from you guys,
Paul

Hey y'all!

One weekend in Branson and I've acquired southern speak!

One really neat thing I observed was the openess, and willingness, everyone one demonstrated in helping each other out with shortcuts and work arounds. There was even talk about a mentoring program between AC Docs and those interested or those just starting out in AC. (Does the term AC Doc's mean we're cool?) The "KISS" method related to changes in AC was reinforced to Jon. The front office staff that was there also had a lot of great questions that I never would have considered. I think I might be one of the older docs that leslie referred to....no matter. There were some great people there. Sorry that the rest of the giants couldn't make it.

Thanks to the organizers, and to Jon for the cool AC cap!

Tom young
Creston, Iowa

Hey, I want a cap! Hope I was one of those Giants.

Thanks for the PM earlier Tom.

The conference was incredible. I just got home after a 9.5 hour drive, and I can only echo Leslie. It was fantastic meeting all the folks we communicate on the board with daily. It was great to meet both the folks who are new and not so new. It's always fun to help others learn new things about AC and I learned more than I could have imagined about a ton of things.

As Leslie was saying, I told my wife "Oh, I'll be out in the afternoon, there's not that much going on." because at a typical medical conference that's the truth. They kicked us out yesterday, and I could have stayed today, except a weather front was coming and I had a long drive.

I think they have solved the packaging problem, they are just wrapping it up. They may have some back peddling to correct some of the minor errors we pointed out that had never been sent in. Some we are so used to that we don't even think about reporting them (wrong provider name when you look up future appointments. We worked on priorities and I am sure we will have future meetings.

I want to thank Brian and Jim, they did a ton of work. I do not even know how much Jon picked up, but it had to be considerable. This was not a $100 conference, I ate a hundred dollars worth of food. They charged for internet access ($10/day) and Jon picked it up for the room we were in. Thats how I could give you real time feed back.

For those who could not make it, we will see you at the next one. Hopefully it will work out better for you next time.

Thanks Wendell for the feedback. I will definitely try to make the next one. But, maybe....I will remain an enigma.

The Wizard of OZ

We have just returned home from the ACUC 2008.
I have been involved in the coordination of many conferences over the past couple of decades, but I have never experienced one that had the enthusiasm that this one possessed. Not even close!
Althugh we had approximately 85 total attendees, Jon had previously met only five. We AC users have always admired Jon from afar; much as the citizens of OZ admired their wizard. However; as Jon emerged from behind his curtain, we were delighted to find that this CEO was as passionate about AC and its improvement as any of us. I think that the ACUC attendees can reassure all AC Users that Amazing Charts' future is in good hands.
As has been mentioned previously, we dedicated this first ever ACUC Conference to Bert. AC User Vickie Edwards had to cancel at the last minute, but said that her greatest regret was that she would not get to meet and thank Bert. It seems that, when she was setting up AC, Bert spent over two hours on the phone talking her through her questions. He did the same for me, and, as we related this story to the group, apparently for many more as well as evidenced by the show of hands.
Our speakers were wonderful.
Martin Sechrist traveled to Branson from California on the back of a Triumph Crotch Rocket (zero to 60 in 2.8 seconds) and accompanied by his son, Brandon, on his Ducati. Martin gave us a spectacular view of health maintenance planning.
Fritz Faust was the most entertaining as he treated us all to a review of his exploits as he set up his solo pediatric practice.
Adam Lauer exhibited maturity and experience far beyond his years as he instructed us on the proper setup for fool proof back ups. He was a huge asset to the conference.
Tim Lewan gave an informative talk on UpDox.
Although Leslie did not yield to our pleas to give us a talk, she contributed wonderfully to the ongoing discussions as did Wendell and many others.
Brian Cotner spoke on speeding up documentation and championed the use of Dragon Naturally Speaking with AC. I may actually give the Dragon another try as a result of his enthusiastic presention. Brian was co-chair of this event; he and his lovely wife Laura contributed a great deal to its success.
Many thanks to my wife, Barbara, who videotaped the conference for us; we will let you know how it turns out.
The speakers all plan to make their Power Points available.
Finally, Jon's wife, Sandy, along with AC Staff Kathleen and Jon K. worked to make this conference hum and this made it enjoyable for us all. Our thanks also to Cathy Leiboult, Executive Director of the Greene County Medical Society, who was so impressed by the attendees' enthusiasm that she ended up donating her time monitoring our CME for two days.
Jon was an integral part of our agenda committee and remarked on several occasions during the planning process that he did not like public speaking. He may not like it, but he is certainly good at it. The attendees were so intriqued by his presentations that we ended up meeting straight through lunch on Saturday (7:30 a.m. to 4;30 p.m.) and even turned down Laura Cotner's offer to have Brian buy ice cream for everyone at 3 p.m.
My personal favorite portion of the conference was the networking that occured. I loved getting to meet our fellow AC users and sharing our experiences and hopes for the future.
We had multiple informal surveys throughout the meeting; when the group was asked at the end of the meeting who would be willing to help new AC users, everyone's hand shot up.
I am already looking forward to ACUC 2.
Jim

Can the attendees give technical updates?

Can Adam Lauer post his presentation of backups like on pdf etc?

Can Martin and Brandon post their Health Maintenance views?

Can Jim upload the video on youtube or someplace? Please do not worry about the quality of the video/pictures. I believe the words/speech are the most important.

With the above postings, the conference will be eternal on the net.

Thanks folks.

Whoever is in charge of planning the next AC conference, let us know ASAP when and where the next one will be. We wanted to attend this year, but could not afford it. After hearing from this years participants, we will be there next time.
It sound like the attendees have a wealth of knowledge to share. PLEASE let us know when and how we can access it.

Thanx to everyone that contributes.

Brad

Thanks to everybody who came and supported the User's Conference. I think it was a big success.

Jim Blaine and his lovely wife Barb did a wonderful job setting up the meeting room, acommodations, and the CME portion of the Conference. Their organizational talents were very apparent.

The hotel was magnificent, with many wonderful amenities. I especially enjoyed watching the sunset over Lake Taneycomo with Allan Kirkland, Jim Blaine and Jon Bertman (and our families) as the Branson Belle steamboat rolled by, and smelling the purple sage.

All our speakers were excellent, and we had a lot of great discussions.

I was very surprised at how the Conference grew from a half-dozen folks getting together to put a face with a name (and to put our heads together about AC). Once Jon said he wanted to come, the thing exploded.

As mentioned above, we ended up with people from every part of the nation and overseas. We had people who had been using AC since the beginning (Wendell) to people who had never used an EMR. Plus, the creator of AC was in the audience! This actually made it a little difficult to know what level to pitch our talks to.

In the end, I think it worked out fine. Even the veteran users got to see some things they had never seen before. We tried to spend plenty of time with the newcomers answering their questions. By the end of the conference, I had many people who came up to me and said, "Learning [one particular thing] made the whole trip worthwhile, if I had learned nothing else!"

For me, one of the best things was meeting some of the folks I have been getting to know here. As has been stated many times, we sorely missed Bert who couldn't make it. It was good talking to Wendell Wheeler, who I liked right off. He is a tall, friendly, distinguished looking fellow, with excellent posture. Leslie Strouse is as sweet as she can be, with a lovely warm voice. Adam Lauer is a bigger guy than I imagined; the strong silent type. Marty Sechrist is a really nice guy, very energetic and enthusiastic. I had never met Fritz Faust before, and I think adding him to the line-up was a stroke of genius as he is a total technophobe and added a dose of reality to the proceedings; he also has a great sense of humor. Tim Lewan (pronounced Le WON) volunteered to present UpDox at the last minute without any preparation, which was much appreciated. Of course, I had already gotten to know Jim Blaine before the conference -- Jim loves to meet new people and connect them with others -- he has a talent for remembering people and names that I do not.

My regret is that I was so busy with organization and speaking that I did not get to know more folks better on a personal basis. I hope that this meeting will be the beginning of some new friendships which will grow as we get together again in the future.

I will post more on various topics, and we do plan to make available the PowerPoint presentations, if there is a demand, as well as links to programs and products discussed. We did videotape, and we are waiting to see how that turns out.

As far as future conferences go, I think everyone is still shell-shocked, and some of us haven't even made it home yet. However, we are all open to suggestions.

joseph,

I think the presenters will post or make their slides/presentations available.

I believe I heard somewhere that the conference was videotaped and, after those who were on it agree that it's OK, it will be sent out.

Hi Bert:

Thank you for the update.
Hope you are feeling better now.

Thanks Joseph.

If I recall from a ways back, you had a very good network. Can you remind me what it was? Thanks.

Hi Bert:

If I understand correctly: we have P2P, (as Al says if one server goes down, just move the files and point the others to some other workstation with all the moved files), cat 6 cables, we have unmanaged switch, battery backups for the switch and key workstations. Cable internet.

We do use VNC a lot as it cuts down the time to log in.