Archive Revamp

In 1982, a 9-year-old Derek liked nothing better than piling into the back of my family’s ’79 gray Mercury Cougar and heading out to the Milford Shopping Plaza, where I could buy a pack of Fleer baseball cards for a dime at Ames (RIP). [Brief side note: the 1982 Fleer set has some of the worst lighted cards of all time. Just check out hipster-Mike Schmidt’s card]

As soon as we came home, I would rip open the pack, throw out the bubble gum, and immediately file each card behind the appropriate team index card in my baseball card shoe box. That single shoe box turned into two shoe boxes, and then a 3-ring binder, and then multiple binders, and then boxes and binders, and eventually an entire closet in my bedroom (where they still are today. I promise to pick them up soon, Mom!) I spent hours and hours going through those cards, sorting and organizing, organizing and sorting. I was a little obsessed.

These days, I channel my organizing itch into other things, like categorizing our 300+ books by genre and author’s last name (I was not aware that other people don’t do this). Last week, I set my sights on the CMEpalooza archive, which I’ve never been very satisfied with. Now that we’re approaching close to 50 archived presentations, it seemed like we should have a better way of organizing them than just by date. I thought that stratifying the sessions by topic might make the archive more useful and beneficial to those not looking for one specific session.

In the end, I came up with eleven different topic areas, from Accreditation to Technology. Some sessions are listed under more than one area and some areas only have one or two sessions. Take a look and let me know what you think. Am I missing any topics? Do the names I gave the different areas make sense? Are there any sessions that are misfiled or missing from a topic area? I’m hoping this organization of sessions makes the archive a more valuable resource to all, so please feel free to tell me any way that it can be improved. All feedback appreciated!