ViVE Conference Attendee Comments

I asked readers who attended the inaugural ViVE conference, offered by CHIME and HLTH, to give feedback about their experience.

CHIME Track

Even though this was a conference that was about innovation and transformation, the rest of the CHIME conference emphasized the focus groups that CHIME keeps pushing members to attend. If you decline after several attempts to bring you in at $100 each, they stick multiple sessions on your calendar anyway. I assume they promised the vendors that are paying that they would have a certain number of attendees.

CHIME Chief Analytics Officer Steve Lieber described how CHIME is now going to harvest all the information that its members submit as part of Most Wired for a new analytics service. If we want to do some benchmarking with this data, we can now pay them for access to information we handed over to them. Will make me now consider if Most Wired is really worth it, which I already had doubts about anyway. I think this recognition has run its course.

I actually spent less time on the CHIME stuff, other than the focus groups, and felt comfortable among the vendors, which is not usually the case. Perhaps that also is a comment on the CHIME topics for the larger sessions.

CHIME did a good job, but it felt more disjointed than previous spring CIO forums when it was the day before HIMSS.

Most of the CHIME general sessions had more people than seats available, so I suspect CHIME was pleased.

I enjoyed the combo of the two events and felt like I attended CHIME and HIMSS in one setting, which is a plus for me.

CIO Participation

There was little CIO representation on the exhibitor floor. It was easy to distinguish attendees as CHIME members, as we had a dark blue and black badge lanyard and everyone else had a neon green one. As I walked the floor, I was usually one of very few without a green lanyard. 

It was a nice effort to attempt to bring the startup community together with the CIO community. One would think that would be a good thing, but it I do not think it worked. From the outside looking in, it may have seemed to resonate with everyone buzzing around, but it was really what amounted to two separate conferences.

There were plenty of CIOs walking around the exhibit hall and the corridors. While chatting with a colleague for 20 minutes, I counted 15 other CIOs that walked past. The CIOs did not have a badge that stood out, so it might have been harder for those who don’t know faces.

Education Sessions

Some of the fireside chats and startup roundtables were really interesting. I have great respect for many of these founders who are putting a lot of effort into solving some very discrete health care problems.

Hosted Buyer Program

I paid the registration fee instead of agreeing to meet with eight vendors so I could control who I spoke to. Others may have found value in that program.

As an academic medical center CIO, I loved the hosted buyer concept and found it quite valuable. I received a registration rebate in return for having eight 15-minute meetings with vendors – both parties had to agree to meet in advance.

Exhibit Hall

It was low key on the exhibit hall floor since each booth has limited staff and most were approachable. I talked to many interesting companies, even if they did become repetitive. Established, non-startup vendors seemed underwhelmed about the value to them for attending. .

As an exhibitor, you’ll get zero out of it if you don’t do pre-conference prep make appointments. You can’t just show-up and hope that the CIO of a 17-hospital system takes time to pop into your booth just because they like the fuzzy socks you’re giving away.

You would have had a field day with all the booth workers in their phones as CIOs walked right past them.

Many of the CHIME CIOs were on the exhibit floor. Our booth was non-stop busy with questions and demos. Very happy with the experience and looking forward to next year in Nashville.

Overall Conference Reaction

There was little use for the CHIME side of ViVE. If you look at it as just a smaller HLTH conference, participating as if it was, it delivered.

I found ViVE to be very well done for a first-time effort.

The number of startups and PE firms was impressive.

As an introvert, I was on stimulation overload by the end of the day Tuesday and looking for quiet. I was out of practice for this type of event, and frankly have not stood so long over a two-day period in some time.

Smaller booths, fewer vendors, and the reverse trade show (Hosted Buyers) format were fresh changes from HIMSS.

I also love the smaller cities it can go to versus Orlando, Las Vegas, and Chicago.

I see it as my new choice over HIMSS.

The vibe of the event was very high energy. People seemed to feel paroled from COVID and I can say I saw and talked with many CIOs in the vendor area. Most of us were seeing vendors we knew, friends in the business, and some of us tried very hard to learn something new without being pressed for a sales commitment. The challenge, as the venue was so big and beautiful, was to timely get to all of your events.

I will certainly go back.

I will never attend HIMSS again. ViVE was everything I hoped it would be and more. It was not too big, not to small = just right. Kudos to CHIME + HLTH for an outstanding event.

As a 20+ year HIMSS attendee, I found ViVe refreshing and energizing. Fun touches like a DJ, Betty White tribute, bright signage and excellent navigation in the right-sized convention center were truly appreciated. I attended HLTH last Fall and felt the educational sessions included too much future casting, not enough real-world implementation. This was not the case at ViVe’22. The UC Davis Summit was particularly helpful along with sessions that included CIOs (like Vanderbilt’s CIO on obtaining ROI for IT investments). Great work to Team ViVE’22!

ViVE was exciting as it brought together health systems, vendors, and partners who collectively were looking for innovative ways to transform healthcare with technology. ViVE wasn’t the same old, same old HIT trade show with typical sellers, buyers, and tire-kickers. Rather, the content and interaction was fresh, with an intentional focus on digital transformation in healthcare.”

ViVE was great. It could be because it was in real life for the first time and without masks but they did a good job imho of balancing the various elements of a conference (education, fun, & networking).