Nailed it

So today was the day I presented to the Healthcare IT conference. It was a 1 hour session about my idea for a new methodology for data warehousing with newer electronic medical record systems... Ok it sounds dry, but it's actually a pretty cool way of looking at existing data in a new way. The hitch is that my "big idea" is actually sort of radical in that it's never been done, nor was it even possible until a couple of years ago...

The other hitch is that I was HOPING to have proven it already with a starter client, but due to delays, I'll actually be pitching this same idea to a client TOMORROW. I guess today was great practice!

What was odd was that while there was some good discussion from the participants, there was one in attendance who for one reason or another decided to challenge me on some very basic points - asking about historical precedent, data structures, query design, and other very micro things. Fortunately, they were all things I'm prepared to discuss, so the whole group got to watch me design a star schema for a medical administration record, and differentiate it from a snowflake schema... which if anything established that while the new idea is pretty out there, I am not a dreamer and I know of what I speak.

Afterward I followed up with the student, and I came to realize her challenges were actually due to the fact she's been asked to design a mini data warehouse and while she had read the key texts in the methodology, it wasn't really gelling for her. So my explanation of the concepts in the context of my proposal actually helped HER understand better what she needed to do. There was also a little of an ESL issue there, which led to things sounding perhaps more abrupt than they needed to be... but all was forgiven, since I was able to handle it.

Of course there were a couple of people in there from competing companies - one of which I know i pitching to the same clients I am - and he was taking furious notes during the presentation, so I'll be interested to see if my little idea makes it around before I do. Such are the risks of vision.

I started ROUGH by the way - the first 3 slides were not my own, and they were more background and overview... I was stumbling to summarize, but had to just swallow my pride and READ the text on them. Once I made it past them, I was far more comfortable.

A admit that a part of me was dreading this day, since I really was presenting an idea, not a proven product... but seeing that I was able to carry it, it made me think HEY, I could totally present to venture capitalists! Why the heck NOT?