On Wednesday morning, our crack team of interns finished their work on the ballot for CMEpalooza Spring and we pushed it out to the CME world for their input. Frankly, Derek and I never quite know what sort of uptake we’re going to get with these sorts of things – as the pessimist, Derek typically moans and groans about how “we’ll be lucky to get 5 people” while I offer what I feel is a more realistic view of “perhaps 300.”
Not surprisingly, the final numbers often fall somewhere in between our glass all empty/glass all full prognostications.
You can imagine our giddiness when the numbers began quickly adding up – 50 voters in the first 2 hours, 100 by the end of the first day, 135 by the end of day 2. We’re now up to 137 138 139 voters (I told you these things change fast!), with a week still left for the laggards to chime on in. Polls close next Friday, Feb. 17, at 5 p.m. ET.
While our staff can see the polling numbers add up in real time (thank you Mr. Google), we prefer to keep the results close to the vest so as not to discourage any last-minute voters from chiming in. That said, here is a broad snapshot of what we’re seeing:
Truth: No single session in any category is garnering more than 50% of the vote.
Conclusion: With the help of some of our friends in the CME community, we came up with lots of potentially attractive ideas. And every single vote counts and all.
Truth: Only 1 session is garnering less than 20% of the vote (admission: it’s one of my ideas).
Conclusion: I’m not as smart or creative as Derek thinks I am.
Truth: The one session I thought would be a clear winner in the voting is, uh, not winning.
Conclusion: Maybe not such a great idea to follow my lead in laying down $1,000 on the Phillies to win the 2017 World Series (but it’s 150-1 odds people!)
Truth: Session descriptions that rank less difficult on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease scale are doing better than those that rank more difficult
Conclusion: Fake truth. I totally made that up. But I’ll have our interns run an analysis just in case I am right.
CMEPALOOZA 