I am sure you have all been reading in the news over the course of the last year or so about the impact that inflation is having on society. Things are always going to cost more – that’s simply the way finances work – so no, I’m not so worried about that guy who keeps screaming, “I remember when I used to be able to get a slice of pizza for a quarter. Bring back Nixon!” But it is undeniable that this has been a belt-tightening time as costs for just about everything are rising more quickly than many would like.

And, well, at CMEpalooza, things are unfortunately no different.

That is why Derek and I had a very long talk last week about the impact of inflation and the cost of our biannual events. We went back and forth — many hours of mostly silence on the phone (“Are you still there?” “Yeah” “You?” “Yep”) — before deciding that the registration costs for CMEpalooza will, effective immediately, be increasing by 25%. It pains me even to write that, but it was simply unavoidable.

Now I know that some of you didn’t excel in math as students, so let me explain to you what that means in dollars and cents. The “old” cost of attending CMEpalooza was $0. Now multiply this by 25% (or 0.25) and you get the new cost of attending CMEpalooza. If you’ve done things correctly, you should find that this “new” cost of attending CMEpalooza is $0.

(Remember that anything multiplied by zero is zero. So I could have said, “We’re increasing the cost by 34150%” and the result wouldn’t have been any different.)

That’s right folks — CMEpalooza will continue, for now and forever, to be free for everyone.

Our panels for CMEpalooza Fall are furiously working on content for the best education that money can’t buy. So put away your wallets, mark down your calendars for Wednesday, October 18, and enjoy that $25 hamburger at the restaurant down the street guilt free.

As noted in last week’s post announcing the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall, I spent last week on vacation with my family. We were in and around Boston for the better part of 6 days. Boston would be one of my favorite cities in the United States were it not for their arrogant, haughty sports fans (“And over here we have one of our 452 championship trophies. Oh wait, I forgot, it’s 453. One of our teams won again last night.”).

But seriously, Boston is a great city – immensely walkable, appropriately historic, and quite clean (at least in and around downtown where we spent most of our time). I’ve been there many times over the years for personal and work purposes, but this was my first extended time as a tourist.

As I’ve written about in previous years, one of my favorite things to do when I am on vacation is to spend time in that city’s main public library branch (you don’t have to scream, “NERD!!” I get it). Like some of you, I grew up in an era where libraries meant one and only one thing – books. Maybe there were a few tables and chairs strewn about, but libraries of the 1980s generally weren’t considered places to linger around in comfort. It would probably take you 20 minutes to find the book you wanted after digging through the card catalog and book stacks (and don’t get me started if you needed to dig through microfiche for research purposes), but once you got your books, you would check them out and bring them home. Maybe there were one or two beanbag chairs, but that was about the extent of it.

And so frankly, it amazes me every time I visit a big city library to see how they have reimagined their spaces in recent decades. In Boston, I walked into the entrance and just about bumped into Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was being interviewed live in the NPR studio tucked into one of the corners of the library. Further on, there was a 6-piece band playing in the courtyard entertaining those who were eating lunch. Then there was the dainty restaurant that served a massive afternoon tea each day ($65 a person for lots of fancy finger foods, tea sandwiches, and the like – I didn’t partake). Upstairs was the “special collection” area where you could have actual librarians in white gloves (OK, they were cheap, latex blue gloves) very excitedly showing off the various documents they had curated for the month’s theme of “Magic in the Early 1900s.” My son quite enjoyed the “teen center” where they had video games galore you could play for as long as you wanted.

Now don’t get me wrong – I loved the boring old libraries as a kid too. Not all of us are as bourgeoisie as Derek and can afford to shell out $35 in a bookstore every time we want to read something new. The fact that I can simply walk into my library, grab any stack of books I want, and not even have to worry about overdue fines anymore still amazes me.

But to see how libraries have evolved into spaces that truly serve their community got me thinking — why aren’t we doing more of this in medical education? Why aren’t we reimagining how we use our educational spaces to better serve our audience of learners? While there is nothing wrong with the “tried and true” dais of speakers and slide decks, are there innovations we can all consistently build into the live education model to transform them into more efficient learning spaces? I’m not talking about throwing away the core tenets of what we do, but how do we build upon our past to create a more engaging future?

We talk about these sorts of things often during CMEpalooza, and we try to inject new ideas of our own into many of our sessions, but there are probably things we could do better as well. Creativity isn’t always easy when you’ve been doing something well for many years (and yes, I know we may also need to convince funders to, you know, put dollars behind some of our wackier ideas). But I figure that if something as staid as the public library can break from its traditional model, so can we.

We’re now well into the Dog Days of Summer. Pretty much wherever you are reading this, it’s hot (unless you are reading this in Antarctica, which would be pretty fricking cool).

Turns out that the origins of the phrase “Dog Days of Summer” have nothing to do with baseball, summer carnivals, or beach vacations. It dates way, way back to a time before Derek was even born – the ancient Romans dubbed the 20 days before Sirius (the brightest star in Canus Major, or the “Greater Dog”) rose with the sun and the 20 days after it rose with the sun as the “Dog Days.” Seems that they believed the fact that Sirius was brightest in the sky on or around July 20 meant that it gave off heat that added to the sun’s warmth, thereby causing the hottest days of the year on the ground. And here you thought only Derek would give you useless information for your next cocktail party (note from Derek: I can contribute, too! The Harry Potter character Sirius Black was named after this same “Dog Star,” which means his name roughly translates to Black Dog. Sirius Black’s animagus form was, of course, a big black dog. Scott died from boredom while reading this.)

But you know where you won’t find any useless information, but rather extremely useful information? No, no, not on “X” (so weird to write that). We’re talking about CMEpalooza Fall.

I know, I know. Every since we teased the release of our Fall agenda in mid-July, you’ve been frantically refreshing your browser every 10 minutes to see if it’s on our website. You’ve probably let out a few “C’mon guys, is this really that hard?” expletives. I’d tell you to blame Derek and that my sessions have pretty much been locked down for weeks, but that wouldn’t be nice of me to point fingers at anyone else. So let’s just say that we’re both to blame (Note from Derek: Yes, let’s go with that.)

The blame game ends now (well, sort of) as we’re proud to unveil — FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!! – the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall. If you’ve been following our saga for these last 10 years, you probably won’t be surprised that there are still a few “TBAs” with some of our sessions that will be filled in eventually, but there is still a lot of meat for you to gnaw on right now. We’re bringing back some old ideas and introducing some new ones. There will be some faces you’ve seen in CMEpaloozas past and some that will be new to us all. Which is the way we like it.

So check out the agenda, clear your calendar on Wednesday, October 18 (it sounds really far away, I know), and stop poking those needles into your Derek voodoo doll.