Recommend A Program Manager (Please?)

The planning for CMEpalooza Fall on Wednesday, October 14 is well underway, and to the amazement of the entire CMEpalooza staff, I manged to finalize the moderators for all of the sessions I am running before Scott finalized his. This is truly a momentous occasion as it is perhaps the first time it has happened since the very first palooza Scott and I did back in the fall of 2014.  For those of you wondering if we really make this a competition, I tell you the same thing I tell my wife whenever she asks me the same question: Everything is a competition. Sometimes I just don’t tell you.

(note from Scott: I actually have had my moderators in place for 6 weeks. I just didn’t say anything to Derek. The guy needed a win. I am tired of hearing the same story over and over about how his 7th-grade basketball team won the state CYO championship).

One of the sessions I am particularly excited about is one that comes directly from a suggestion we received on our most recent post-CMEpalooza survey: Program Managers: We Get the Job Done! As you can probably infer from the title, the session will be focused on providing participants with a number of program management tips, best practices, workflows, etc., that program managers (heretofore abbreviated to “PMs” for convenience. Also because I’m never sure if it should be “program” or “project” manager, and this covers both bases) of all levels can utilize.

Christina Hosmer-Gallo, Senior Vice President of Educational Development at Med Learning Group, will be moderating the session, and we are hoping to have a panel of experienced program managers joining in on the conversation. Here is our current conundrum: PMs are often the behind-the-scenes kinds of folks who don’t get a lot of exposure to the broader CME community. So we don’t really know a lot of the ones who are really, really good at what they do (and preferably aren’t camera shy).

So what’s the solution? Well, you are, my good friend. As part of the process for putting the panel together, Christina and I would love to get some recommendations from the CME community for PMs you have worked with who would potentially be a good fit for this session. It can be someone you have worked with in a partnership, someone who works for your organization, or someone you talked to at a conference and thought was really smart. Or you can recommend yourself — we don’t mind!

You can use the form below to submit your recommendation. We will leave it up for a week and make the deadline the end of the day on Monday, July 27. We will take another week to review the recommendations and then reach out to the individuals we think will make the best panel (our goal is to have a panel of 3 or 4). Make sense?

If for any reason you prefer to email me rather than fill out the form below, you can send your recommendation to thecmeguy@gmail.com.