San Francisco. Feels a bit like being home (Amsterdam that is). You can just walk through the streets here and not have to take a cab for every place you want to go to. That’s nice! And in some ways it’s even better than Amsterdam: they have a a proper Apple Store :-)
Yesterday Jen and I had dinner round Fisherman’s Wharf after we arrived here in SF. Pretty weird eating seafood at 6.30am Amsterdam time… but it’s a nice place. Unfortunately it was too dark (and I was too jetlagged) to take a stroll around, but I will definitely do that the next few days. Maybe the best part of the evening: the cab ride over to Fisherman’s Wharf from UN plaza. My! I know that San Francisco was a kind of a ‘hill city’ but it’s extreme! Walking in that part could easily be compared to mountain climbing (well in The Netherlands for sure, where we have like, no mountains. :-) The cabbie told us the breaks on the cabs get replaced every 10 days! Thankfully he just charged us for the ride and not a new set of breaks :-)
Today is pre-conference day packed with meetings and parties. There’s rehearsal stuff going on this morning and then lunch at Soluna cafe with more healthcare tweets. After that there’s the Health 2.0 accelerator meeting, more preparing/rehearsal at The Marriott and than the VIP party after that. Well yes it’s hard being in SF, no doubt :-)
I’m very much looking forward to meeting all the people coming over. Already on Twitter there’s lots of people are queuing up at airports or already in town (look for the tag #health2con). I’ll be volunteering at the conference but I’ll definitely try to cover it live where I can (on Twitter, on Nexthealth or here). There will be lots of demos and interesting apps being shown, but I’ll also be on the lookout for the larger scheme changes in healthcare, connecting online and offline and patient with professionals. I think there’s lots of inspiration here to do a followup on the Nexthealth paper: reaching consumer-centric care.
Let me know if you’re in town and like to meetup! Also for your European people: I’d love to talk with you about what we could use in Europe… Is there room/interest for a conference like Health2.0 (focusing on entrepreneurs) or are there different needs? Speak out here or IRL at the conference!
