We are joining great cities of the likes of Boston, San Francisco, Toronto, San Diego, Philadelphia and Nashville in holding a HealthCamp in our wonderful city of New Orleans.

HealthCamp is an unconference inspired by the popular BarCamp conferences, which are intended to allow people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

The purpose of the HealthCamp is to bring together health, fitness and wellness professionals in the Greater New Orleans area to share knowledge, network, and open dialogues around the challenges, issues, and concerns they face every day.  As well as, brainstorm, explore and discuss solutions, ideas and the latest innovations, policies and technology available.

An unconference means that the attendees are the presenters – this is a user generated conference.  There is no keynote speaker and planned agenda for the day.  However, we are establishing some guidelines and tracks.

HealthCamp NOLA will explore 4 different tracks:

Technology

Sessions in the technology track will vary from discussing improving or extending the efficacy of health care by embracing social networks, open standards, and the latest web and mobile technologies to new breakthroughs and latest technology available or being developed that will change the way health services are provided.

Prevention/Wellness:

Sessions in the prevention and wellness track will focus on discussing and addressing what can be done in our community to educate, assist, motivate and encourage people to take preventive measures to prevent diseases and health problems. What can be done?  What are the biggest factors affecting the members of our community? How can health care and fitness professionals best support and help each other? Etc.

Policy

Sessions in the policy track will focus and vary from discussing federal, State and city policy that impact health and wellness providers.  This could include anything from funding issues and concerns, privatization of local hospitals, and the impact of the Health Care Reform Bills recently signed by President Obama.

Business

Session in the business track is to discuss the state of health and wellness businesses, opportunities and entrepreneurship in the health and wellness industry.  What opportunities exist in New Orleans? What type of businesses already exist – what makes them successful?

This will be an extremely beneficial event to all health, fitness and wellness professionals in the Greater New Orleans area – the energy, opportunities and networking generated from unconferences can’t be compared to anything else you have attended in the past.

Our first priority in bringing this event to New Orleans is finding a location that can support 100-150 attendees.  A space with 4-5 classrooms.  The event will be held on a Saturday.

As soon as we have reserved a location, we will accept sponsorships.  Sponsors are critical to make this a free event for attendees.  The sponsorship will be used to pay for the food for the day, possibly the facility and t-shirts.  NO MONEY is made by the organizers of this event – this event is being organized by volunteers…currently myself and Tung Ly; assisting us is the HealthCamp Organizer Mark Scrimshire.

You can stay abreast of what’s happening by joining our Facebook Group and following us on Twitter.