Larry's version: The long and winding path that led to this article I knew Jay from when we went to Junior High school together in Southern California over 40 years ago. Like many of Jay’s posts there is a little bit of serendipity behind the writing of this article (actually quite a bit of serendipity). I first found Jay on the web through Classmates.com, a classic Web 2.0 social networking site created before the term Web 2.0 existed. The information on the website is organized by school, dates of attendance, and then alphabetically by name. This structure encourages browsing names of people who graduated at the same time (or nearly the same time) as you did. I saw Jay’s name and started some correspondence. I remembered him but he didn’t remember me. Among other things, Jay added me to the Boidem mailing list. We both use Gmail which allows you to see the online status of friends that you have corresponded with previously. We almost connected via IM during a trip that Jay took to the US a few years ago, but finally exchanged IM messages just as I was about to run out the door to a conference on computer applications in medicine. This conversation (and thus Classmates, Gmail, a well timed IM from halfway around the world and a shared background 40 years ago) led to an offer to write about the aspects of the conference that relate to this column’s goals.

Jay's version: Not all that long, only somewhat winding, but most certainly different When I invited Larry to write a guest column, if I wasn't saying to myself “what am I thinking?!” I should have been. It was clear to me from the beginning that I was putting myself into a bind. If what he wrote was in “Boidem style”, then there would be nothing distinctive about what I do here. And if he didn't write in "Boidem style", what was I going to do with what he sent me? Luckily, what he sent offered me the opportunity to play around, which is what I've tried to do. It also presented me with an opportunity to examine a topic that definitely falls under the mandate of the Boidem, but that's only very rarely been touched on here. The outcome isn't classic Boidem, but on the other hand, it raises some interesting possibilities for new directions. I won't argue with Larry's version of how this writing came about, but I should perhaps say a few words in my defense. I don't think it's fair to say that I didn't remember him from junior high school (as it was called back then). His name definitely rang a bell, and when, after our mother died, I found my junior high school yearbooks in my brother's attic, I was able to search for his photo and say "sure, I remember him". I have, more than just occasionally, mused on "whatever became of ..." though I don't think that Larry was one of those people upon whom I mused. I can't write that I'd never have believed he'd become a doctor, but not because it's out of character as to how I remember him, but simply because I never really thought about this. I wasn't aware that the impetus for our renewed friendship originates with Classmates.com. I registered on Classmates.com pretty much from its inception, but saw no reason to become a paying member - all it really offered me was the possibility of getting the email addresses of old classmates, and if I really wanted these (and I usually didn't), finding them on my own couldn't have been too difficult. As Larry later acknowledged, he also realized this and dropped his paying membership after a short while. I do admit that I'm flattered that among the many names that might ring a bell on the Classmates.com list Larry saw fit to contact me. I'm not sure that our joint use of gmail (is there anybody out there who doesn't use it?) contributed much to this column. For quite a while the gmail address Larry had for me wasn't my primary gmail address, and I checked it only intermittently and was logged in for short periods of time. This meant that rather than being available for chat almost always with my primary account, I only very rarely appeared as available on this account. Most of our correspondence was via my academic account that still (primarily) goes into Outlook.