OpenMRS Community

I'd like to talk a little bit about the OpenMRS community because it is just that; A Community. From the first day I joined the OpenMRS chat room on IRC, I started to make friends with the other hopeful students, as well as the mentors.

The funny thing was, after the SoC dust had cleared and we all found out who was in, and who was out, those friendships didn't change. In fact, one student that wasn't accepted (well, he was, but he was accepted elsewhere as well) is still active in the channel daily! We're all still friends, on IRC, on Facebook, on AIM, and if we lived closer, in person as well.

The great thing about it is, we aren't just friends in terms of programming/working on OpenMRS. We are friends for social reasons. I'd say the conversations that take place between all of us, even the mentors, is 50% OpenMRS and 50% life. The mentors have been a great resource for me personally, not just in terms of my project, but for everything. They are grown adults and if I ever have some obscure life question regarding credit cards, bills, taxes, black magic, etc... I can always ask one of them and get a great answer.

To me, this is the definition of a community. OpenMRS is composed of a lot of different types of people all sharing some very similar, and also very different characteristics and skills. Given this, they are all working together towards a common goal, but at the same time have built a social community that will stand the test of time.