Several people attribute this to the declining IT sector in Thessaloniki and Greece in general; some have pointed out that COMDEX DTE in Athens has siphoned off exhibitors; one or two have mentioned that even DTE is experiencing a modicum of trouble, hence the name change.

Funny thing is that 3 speakers spoke about the same thing from the same perspective... The main themes are:

• it's expensive (whatever 'it' is)
• interoperability is mandatory (and therefore DICOM)
• HL7 is hot
• Greece has large retraining costs (yes, we have public servants that have never user a computer in thei life)
• no single 'solution' will have large success (ala Windows), rather small-scale applications that work well together (via the above protocols)
• 2 of the three speakers also mentioned the fact that electronic health record systems must change focus from the data, to the humans behind the data. This include making all data available to the patient.
• do not use 'user-friendly applications' as a target, but 'attractive applications' I'll write more later, including a post about the section on electronic government.

Today there would be a presentation on the Struts application framework, which I would love to attend. Unfortunately I was delayed at the last minute and couldn't make it :-(.

And now for something completely different: I received a check for services rendered from a... ah, let's say a source of as-yet unknown trust. Should I be worried?