NEMUG Newsletter
February, 2003, Articles
Board Meetings
NEMUG Executive Board Meetings are open to anyone to attend. Your presence and views are welcome at any time. The meetings are held on the second Monday of even-numbered months, at the office of Henry Elliott in Wellesley. We try to get started at 6:00 pm. Dates for the next few meetings are:
- 2/10/03
- 4/14/03
- 6/9/03
- 8/11/03
- 10/13/03
- 12/8/03
If you are planning to attend, please let a board member know in advance, as we provide food and eat as we work, and need to be sure we have enough for everyone. The complete address for the meetings is:
Henry Elliott and Company Inc.
One Washington St. Suite 208
Wellesley, MA 02481
From the Vice Chair
As we come around the bend to the spring season at NEMUG we see ahead the Intersystems DEVCON 2003 recap meeting, Saturday Schools, NEMUG Board elections, and the May meeting, "Web Services for Mumpsters like me." We'll be starting problem solving sessions before each meeting.
Saturday Schools
A Saturday School is planned for later in the spring. This is a chance to bring your own laptop or use one at the Eclipsys Offices in Brighton, MA for a morning with others like yourself who want to get together for maximum learning. One idea is for a CSP page work session. Or please let one of us know of sessions that would help you.
Elections
NEMUG Board elections are scheduled for our May meeting and so we are pleased to present the slate for the 2003-2004 NEMUG board. Two seats are expired and there is one more seat which is open provisionally for a good candidate. If you or someone you know is interested please let us know.
| NEMUG Officers | |
|---|---|
| Marilyn Paterno, Chair | 1 yr |
| Heidi Pape Laird, Vice Chair | 1 yr |
| Ben Bishop, Treasurer | 1 yr |
| Larry Van Cura, Secretary | 1 yr |
| NEMUG Board Members: | |
| John Paladino | expired term |
| Ken Wagner | 1 yr, available for replacement |
| Ben Hurley | 1 yr |
| Joe Crisafulli | expired term |
| NEMUG Newsletter Editor |
|---|
| Susan Baron |
| NEMUG Web Committee: |
| Aaron Seidman |
| Bob Macauley |
| Ben Hurley |
| Heidi Pape Laird |
| www.nemug.org Maintenance |
| Roberta Fox |
| Web Contact |
| Gardner Trask |
| NEMUG Ex-Officio Members |
| Peter Crowley |
| Bob Macauley |
| Gardner Trask |
| Aaron Seidman |
We are also pleased to present two candidates for two available seats on the NEMUG board: Aviel Klausner; and Anthony Pilozzi:
Aviel Klausner
Aviel Klausner received a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel, in 1980, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard University in 1986. His research included programming languages and development environments, and relational databases. He has been programming in MUMPS/M/Caché since 1985, when he joined InterSystems Co. Among other things, he has been working there on the design and implementation of the SQL product,including the data dictionary, the query processor, and the optimizer. From 1983 to 1985 he also worked part-time for Negev Software Industries in Dimona, Israel, working on software testing, the design of automatic testing tools, and software process issues.
Anthony Pilozzi
Anthony Pilozzi is a Service Executive for InterSystems Corporation, the developers of Caché. Anthony is currently managing the InterSystems support relationship for a number of large InterSystems customers. Mr. Pilozzi has 14 years of experience in healthcare systems management.
Prior to joining InterSystems, Anthony was the Director of Applications for Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, the former 14 health centers of the Harvard Community Health Plan. In that role, Anthony managed the team that supported all health center support applications, including electronic medical records, radiology, lab, pharmacy, patient billing, intranet applications, medical management, data warehouse and business support applications (A/R, A/P, etc.). Prior to Harvard Vanguard's separation from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Anthony was also responsible for insurance systems for the southern New England region and for medical management applications corporate wide.
Mr. Pilozzi began his career in systems as a programmer using various technologies and then worked his way through the information technology ranks. He would attribute most of his successes to his ability to manage large implementation projects, and his ability to communicate with non technical staff.
Preferences
If you have ideas for improvements of the topics, location or other features of our meetings, like food, please let one of us know.
Heidi Pape Laird, heidipl48@aol.comVice Chairman, NEMUG Board
January Meeting: "Technology's Magical Mystery Tour"
For almost twenty years, Jeff Harrow has been sharing his research on the ever faster moving and converging technologies that are changing how we work, live, and play. He has also been working directly with businesses and organizations to help them understand and address how these changes may affect them, their customers, and their customers' businesses.
Jeff fascinated NEMUG with his fast paced presentation of the explosive growth of computer technology. The rate of computing technology's exponential growth is itself accelerating - a form of double-exponential growth. The key message was that the future would see the Convergence of four technologies -- "NBIC" - Nano-technology, Biology/medicine, Information sciences, and Cognitive sciences, each demonstrating their own forms of exponential growth, yet growing even faster due to their synergy! You will hear a lot about NBIC in the coming years. Moore's Law (that the number of transistors on a chip will double every 18 months while selling at the same price) was predicted to slow down due to the physics regarding spacing between conductors on semiconductor chips. But science always has and continues to find ways around obstacles in its path. Advances in molecular computing, quantum computing and DNA computing will continue to enabled computer technology to accelerate growth in the areas of processing power, storage densities, as well as communication bandwidth, and so in all fields that are "powered" by these technologies.
The raw processing power of one computer is expected to reach that of the human brain by about 2025. Within the foreseeable future, it is projected to reach that of the combined brains of the entire population of the world. Although the human mind is capable of thinking and creating in addition to simply processing information, research in area of neural networks may someday bring "human like" thinking to the computer.
These are but a few pieces of the avalanche of facts, figures and projections Jeff presented. Visit Jeff's Website for further insight into this world of rapidly changing technology, theHarrowGroup.com, and subscribe to his newsletters to keep up to date on the latest developments on the "Magical Mystery Tour" of IS.
~ submitted by Ben Hurley