I was on the Gram the other day (mind you, I don’t have my own account, but I “borrow” my wife’s from time to time to lurk) and saw another one of those pesky abbreviations that threw me for a loop.

“TLDR We’ll be open by the end of September ”

Muttering to himself: WTF does TLDR mean? IDK. SMH. NVM.

My 15-year-old son would be proud of me.

Now, of course, I barely even know what any of these abbreviations stand for — I stopped trying around the time of LOL — but I do like to be able to understand what people are trying to tell me, so I looked up “TLDR.” And got pretty darn angry.

TLDR = Too long didn’t read

Basically, it’s Internet slang for lazy people. My apologies if anything more than 2-3 paragraphs seems like too much effort for you, but I’m not going to spoonfeed you the highlights like a small child. A good story (or a good blog posts) takes time to tell. It’s not a let-me-cut-to-the-chase kind of thing. Maybe that seems too harsh. Tough noogies.

Quick aside: Here is a list of “great literature” I was forced to read in high school and college that should be labeled as TLDR (or maybe, too boring didn’t read). There are probably more but these are the ones I remember best.

• The Scarlet Letter
• Oliver Twist (sub in the Dickens book of your choosing)
• Beloved
• Romeo and Juliet
• Fahrenheit 451

Anyway, back to the point of this post. I hate TLDR. Maybe it’s because Derek and I spend a lot of times on these posts and we really, really want you to read every word so that we don’t feel we are wasting our time. Maybe it’s because I like to read good writing. Maybe this is my “get off my lawn you whippersnapper!” moment.

But hey, whatever it is, I promise that I will never give you a TLDR “out” atop one of our Palooza posts. Which reminds me that we actually have a few newsworthy items to share:

1. CMEpalooza Trivia Night is back for the third consecutive year at the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS). This year, it will be held from 6-730 pm on Monday, September 14, in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Thanks to our event sponsor, Academic CME, there will free food and drink as well as cash prizes for our winners. Because of the truncated nature of AIS, the focus of our questions will be a little bit different than in previous years. We will only be able to cover one block of presentations with our questions, so other rounds will focus on things like the Almanac, the ACCME, and other related topics. Plus, we’ll have our usual wildcard questions that align with our personal interests. And musical interludes. And dad jokes.

Please come.

2. We’d like to rev up our Ask Us Anything advice column in September, but that really depends on you. There have been a few items trickling in, but we need more. So if you have a personal or professional conundrum that is particularly vexing,  drop a line in our virtual mailbox. We have saved jobs and marriages with our advice. We’re that good.

3. Did you know that Derek gets $100 every time someone books a vacation to Iowa using code WARNICK? Yup.

IYKYK

If you were to ask 10 people to think of an adjective that best describes me, “kind” would not be a word that ended up on anyone’s list. Other 4-letter words, sure, but “kind”? Not so much.

Don’t get me wrong – I have my moments. For instance, when I see someone in and around my neighborhood who looks like they are clearly lost or confused, I will often step in to ask them where they are trying to go and point them in the right direction. It still bothers me that I sent someone the wrong way by mistake 3 summers ago. Totally accidental, Mr. Belgian Tourist, I promise!

No, I am not your classic “nice guy” who is going to go out of my way to help out a stranger or stop in the middle of the block to chat with the new neighbors (but Derek absolutely would!). Which perhaps is why it amazes me that I have fallen into an industry where kindness to relative strangers seems to be an unspoken prerequisite.

Certainly, we have been privy to this in CMEpalooza over the years, not so much when we reach out to people to take part in our sessions since they hopefully feel that this is something they benefit from on a professional level, but moreso when we need some sort of technical or specialized advice on the side. Virtually without exception, people go out of their way to be kind and offer whatever help we need. Often, their help goes far beyond what we expect. We’re paying back some of these “super helpers” (or burdening them excessively, depending on your perspective) by inviting them along for the ride during the upcoming anchor session of CMEpalooza Fall entitled, “Ask Us Anything: Live Rewind.”

(I could use this time to remind everyone to drop a postcard in our virtual “Ask Us Anything” mailbox if you need any personal or professional advice, but that’s not the point of today’s blog post)

In the last month, I was twice reminded of the inordinate kindness of my colleagues. Every now and then, I run into an issue in my non-Palooza duties that has me stumped. Perhaps I’m flummoxed by the non-response of a supporter, or a faculty member has ghosted me for weeks and weeks, or there is a new project I’m working on with some weird innuendos that I have never before encountered. It happens to all of us. Ideally, we have a rolodex (remember those?) of professional colleagues to whom we can reach out to get the answers we need. But there are times when we need specific information that only a select few people in the CME world have access to. These are the times I ran into recently.

I emailed reticently – I’m paraphrasing here – “You don’t know me, but I work in CME too and I’ve got a problem I’m hoping you can help with. Pretty please?” And you know what? Both times, these total strangers not only came to the rescue but they volunteered to talk me through all of the issues I was having and helped to identify some that I hadn’t thought about. Some of them sent me documents and templates that they had created to help keep them on track and encouraged me to use them as well instead of building something new from scratch that likely would have taken hours. Why? What was in it for them? Kindness. That’s apparently what people do around here.

“So tell me neighbor, it looks like you help getting up on that ladder. Anything I can do?”

(Nah, I’ll let Derek handle that one. Just doesn’t feel right yet.)

 

You may be wondering why you haven’t heard anything from Derek or I since we wrapped up CMEpalooza Spring back in April. Here is a brief story to explain…

I was recently out for a secluded hike in the North Carolina woods with a few friends of mine on a drizzly morning when we began to hear a few crackles in the distance.

Gunshots? (There were legal hunting grounds a few miles away)

Thunder? (It was raining, but no threatening dark clouds)

We concluded that the noises were most likely caused by falling trees, even though there wasn’t a wisp of wind. Of course, one of us had to trot out the old adage, “If a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

During one of our rigorous, full-day planning meetings to discuss CMEpalooza, I relayed this anecdote to Derek. He perked up immediately with one of his “Great Scott!” expressions as if he was Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future.

Me: What? What did I say?

Derek: I have an idea. Bear with me for a minute. It may sound crazy. But what if we plan a Palooza, but don’t tell anyone about it. Did the Palooza still happen?

Having nothing better to do as real work piled up around us, we bandied this question back and forth for a while. I said it definitely did happen. Derek said it didn’t. We bickered like two crotchety old men in line at the grocery store (“Can you believe they are charging $3 for an avocado?”).

But then we decided, hey, let’s take the theoretical and make it practical. We’ll plan sessions, recruit panelists, schedule times, but…and here’s the key… we tell no one. No blog posts. Nothing on LinkedIn. No mentions at CMEpalooza Trivia Night coming up during AIS in September (more soon on this).

Total. Silence.

Riveting, right? You are hooked now, aren’t you? I will admit that it is amazing how creative I can be when I want to cover up for the fact that we simply have been too lazy to write up our usual cadre of new blog posts. Plus, during my hike, a tree actually fell about 10 feet from where I was walking. Fortunately, it fell away from me. Otherwise, this post would be coming to you from a hospital bed, at best (note from Derek: missed again!)

So yes, never fear, my good friends, our lazy streak is over and we are back with a very important CMEpalooza announcement.

LeBron James is a Philadelphia 76er!

Wait, wait, that’s not the one (though still quite important). Ah, here it is.

The 2026 CMEpalooza Fall agenda is officially live.

Now before you get too excited, I should include the caveat that this agenda is a work in progress. Our Gold sponsors — Med Learning Group and Daiichi Sankyo — are still finalizing the details for their sessions, while several of our other panels are filling in some of the final presenter slots. This is par for the Palooza course. But what you will see on our Agenda tab is at least a glimpse of the variety of topics and formats we have in store for you on Wednesday, October 21. We promise to have our usual fun while covering educational topics that resonate across the gamut of providers.

And yes, vacations be damned, we promise not to hibernate for the summer for too much longer.