Ben Franklin once famously said that, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man ready to consume a full day of CMEpalooza” (look it up if you don’t believe me. It was in the August 6, 1768 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette).

And where, pray tell, did our Founding Father utter these prescient words so many years ago?

Philadelphia.

So it is with the spirit of our city’s favorite son (sorry Rocky Balboa) that we’ll gather this coming Monday evening to learn about the history of Philadelphia in the revolutionary era, the stories of how our earliest capital city helped shape our country, and yes, lots about Mr. Franklin. We’ll meet at 7 pm (get there a bit earlier please) in the lobby of the Lowes Philadelphia Hotel and walk a few blocks to the historic district for the start of a 1-hour(ish) free walking tour. The Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions has their Industry Summit going on next week, so this is technically built into the agenda, but you don’t have to be attending the meeting to come along. You can just show up (shh, I won’t tell anyone).

I’ve been volunteering as a tour guide in Philadelphia for the better part of two decades each summer, so this will be a good refresher for me in preparation for the 2023 season. I like to think I’m reasonably entertaining (true story: I met my wife on one of my tours many moons ago, so apparently somebody thought so) (note from Derek: no comment. Too easy.) and won’t bore you with a litany of names and dates. Plus, in true CMEpalooza style, there will be cash giveaways for smart people who know their Philadelphia and/or pop culture trivia. If you want to give yourself a leg up, here are a few topics you can brush up on:

1. One of our earliest First Ladies met her husband in Philadelphia. She also really liked ice cream. Some of her favorite flavors were, let’s just say unusual. You might want to find out what they were.
2. There were no Halls of Fame in the 1770s, but that didn’t stop one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence from being posthumously enshrined as a sporting pioneer in one of them.
3. Not every colony and/or state participated in the biggest events in early Philadelphia history. Might be worth looking into these.
4. The First Family of American Theater is still an acting family. How is their most famous current thespian tied to her great-grandmother?

The weather looks fairly nice (bring a light jacket) so if nothing else, consider it a leisurely springtime stroll in the city.

Another CMEpalooza is in the books (this was CMEpalooza XIX if you are scoring at home) and boy, it was definitely a historic day. Historic how, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

1. We set a new record for viewership. There were a whopping 1,090 of you who watched at least one CMEpalooza session yesterday. Derek and I were skeptical that we would ever top our numbers from April 2020 (the very beginning of COVID when CMEpalooza was about the only thing happening in the world), but it only took us three years to get there. Thanks to everyone who tuned in. (Note from Derek: a quick peek at the YouTube analytics this morning tells me that we had over 200 live viewers for every session (not counting the last session — see Scott’s note below.) That has never happened before.)
2. We had our first weather delay…and our first weather-related postponement. We’re all hearing so much about the ways that climate change is affecting weather patterns around the world, and we can now proudly (?) say that CMEpalooza is not immune to these challenges. Two of the panelists for our 4 p.m. ET session were under a tornado warning in the late afternoon, causing us to delay the start of the session by 15 minutes until the warning expired. But then 10 minutes after we revved things up, their phones did the whole boop-boop-boop emergency chime and they were told to shelter in place once again. We’re working on a new time/date for this session since it was a really cool (and important) presentation. We’ll keep you posted. And just in case you were worried, we’re told that our panelists are both fine – just a lot of wind and rain in south Florida yesterday.
3. Derek set a record for the quickest update of our session archives. OK, he didn’t (no Spring 2023 tab yet). This is just my way of giving him a subtle nudge (note from Derek: a valiant, yet ultimately futile,  attempt at guilt-tripping me into action. Good effort.) That said, if you go to our Spring 2023 agenda page, you can find all of the archives from yesterday’s sessions. Those are pretty much automatically set for us, so it doesn’t take much effort. Feel free to go in and watch any sessions you missed. One word of advice: Please don’t submit questions via our text line to a session you are watching in the archives and expect a live answer from our panel. They aren’t there anymore. It’s always a little weird, but this happens from time to time.

Before we leave you for a few weeks of tropical fun (the corporate jet is on the runway and the pilot is tapping his watch to hurry us along), I wanted to share a few final tidbits of feedback that we received yesterday. As always, these are real comments from our viewers.

Kudos to you both. CMEpalooza is the most valuable industry conference to me, hands down. I took notes. Yep, notes.

That was a great day of CMEpalooza right there

A huge thank you for your epic efforts in providing quality education for CME writers that is accessible all over the world.

Did Derek realize he had a piece of spinach stuck between his teeth all afternoon?

Yup, these are our people.

In case you were not able to tune into one of the many, many major networks who carried our prize drawing extravaganza this morning, here are the winners of “Liar Liar CMEpalooza Pants on Fire” sponsor event.

• Jeannine Creazzo, MLIS, MBA, AHIP, Director, Medical Library, Continuing Education, and Research, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset
• Dana Zook, Assistant Director, Program Development, Office of Chief Operating Officer, ASHP
• Cindy Davidson, Scientific Editor, Global Learning Collaborative
• Michelle Hu, PhD, Manager, Scientific Affairs, PRIME Education
• Jenni Binon, CME Analyst, Continuing Medical Education Office, Advocate Aurora Health

They each won a $100 Amazon gift card to blow on something totally frivolous and unnecessary. Thanks to everyone who participated in our sponsor event, and a hearty “Huzzah” to our winners. And if you didn’t win, surely you saw that we are giving away even more money this week. With our generosity, it’s amazing we still have enough left over to feed our families.