Keep your head up and your eyes forward. Look straight ahead. Keep an even stride. Don’t pause, even for a second.

You hear those voices — “Hi! Let’s talk for a second!” “I have something I want to show you!”?

Ignore them! IGNORE THEM!

If you tilt your head or show interest for even a split second, she’ll know you are interested in her. Don’t show weakness. Focus on your goal. 

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! Don’t wave hello! Did you just make eye contact? Great, now you have been sucked into her vortex, and she knows you like her. Fine, go talk to her. Why don’t you just give up loser? WASTE OF MY TIME!

OK, maybe I’m channeling the voices inside my head during my daily walk to English class in 7th grade as I carefully averted my eyes from my secret crush, but I’m actually going for something a little more relevant here as well.

Meet “Exhibit Hall Scott.”

I mean, I get it. Businesses that sell a service need to market themselves somehow, and one way to get in front of potential clients is to purchase booth space at a conference. Nonetheless, I always cringe when I have to make the walk down aisle after aisle while trying to find the bar, er, coffee table to get me through the day. It just feels, I dunno, icky.

(Shameless CMEpalooza Fall plug coming in 5…4…3).

On the flip side, there is nothing icky about the sponsors who have committed to be a part of CMEpalooza Fall. You can either visit them on the Sponsor tab or not (but of course you should). You can either click on their links to find out more about them or not (but of course you should). I mean, no pressure or anything (it’s not like Google is tracking every click of your mouse or anything).

Seriously, though, we’re thrilled that our initial wave of sponsors have recognized the value of CMEpalooza Fall as a non-icky alternative to the exhibit booth at live meetings.

So thank you to our Bronze Sponsors — CMEology, HighMarksCE, Impact Education, LLC, RedMedEd, and Vivacity Consulting, LLC. A big hug to our Silver Sponsor, Imedex. And a wet, sloppy kiss to our Gold Sponsor, Genentech.

Of course, we’re still happy to bring new sponsors into the fold, so for anyone interested in what we think about the value of a sponsorship, well sure, we have that too.

Now to hunt through Facebook for that girl who stopped me on my walk down the hallway. Surely she remembers me, right? Right?

So when Derek and I crafted the schedule for CMEpalooza Fall, we purposely built in a break over lunch for several reasons.

First and foremost, it would give us a chance to take a breath and eat something. After all, a hungry Palooza co-producer is a grouchy Palooza co-producer.

Second, it would give our audience a break as well. We recognize that we’ve coordinated a very busy schedule and people are more likely going to pop in and out of the live sessions than sit through the whole day, so taking an hour off would be sensible from that standpoint as well.

Finally, we wanted to throw the carrot out there to anyone interested in a Gold Level Sponsorship that signing up would permit them to work with us to plan a Lunchtime Symposium that would fill in this open slot.

A pipe dream? Maybe. But, ah yes, sometimes Little Johnny, those pipe dreams come true…

And so it is that we are thrilled to announce that Genentech has signed on as the Gold Sponsor for CMEpalooza Fall. We are currently working on finalizing the panelists and specific details for this session, but the working title is “Incorporating Learning Systems and Quality Improvement Into Continuing Medical Education.” We’ll have further details on as plans solidify.

So now the question is, who wants to deliver us sandwiches at, say, 11:55 a.m.? We promise we’ll eat off camera. And wipe the mustard off our face.

Everyone has their time-sucking Web site, that page you visit when your brain needs a 5-minute break at work or home. For several years, mine has been Sporcle. It’s not quite the brainless entertainment as, say, People.com (apologies to the wife), so I don’t feel too guilty when I’m on there.

Sporcle is a repository of quizzes using a variety of different formats that focus on thousands of different topics and themes. You can find a quiz on just about anything. The “Featured” quizzes on the homepage are either written by staff or nominated from those developed by the public.

For about a year, I’ve been trying to think of ways to incorporate a Sporcle quiz into an educational activity (Can you put a post-test up on here? Hmm…) but haven’t actually tried it yet.

I did, however, create a Palooza quiz just for our upcoming event. So when your brain needs a break, check out this link. I’m guessing the average score will come in at around 50%. You’ll be able to see how others answered on each question when you’re done. Maybe you’ll even learn something.