Last week, Derek made another attempt to alienate our younger blog readers with a post completely centered around lyrics from a 1960/70s rock band that even I struggled to follow at times. After it was posted, I had more than one person email me to ask if Derek was feeling OK. I mean, obscure references are kind of our specialty, but that took things to a brand new low. (note from Derek: Meh, I don’t need to fight to prove I’m right. No, I don’t need to be forgiven.)

When I mentioned to Derek that, “You realize that no one under the age of 40 is going to have any idea what you are talking about,” he responded with a snippy, “That’s probably only about 5 of our blog subscribers anyway.”

I didn’t think that was fair. I mean, we have more than 900 subscribers to our blog, and I would like to think that there are at least 25 people among them born after the year of the last Philadelphia 76ers championship (that would be 1983).

So to get a toehold on this demographic and to gauge their feelings about CMEpalooza (and to supplant Derek’s planned Jimmy Buffett tribute post) (note from Derek: Wasting Away in CMEpaloozaville blog post coming soon!), I decided to put together a little Gen Z focus group. I encouraged our participants to use their best current slang that would probably go way over the heads of some of our readers but would hopefully help some of you out there avoid becoming this guy (OK, “this guy” is actually legendary Philadelphia Eagles’ announcer Merrill Reese, who was born in the age of the dinosaurs. I just wanted an excuse to mention that the NFL season starts this week and that I should not be bothered for the next 22 Sundays).

LET’S GO!!

(Quick aside: “Let’s go!” is my least favorite trendy phrase of the last decade. Every time I hear someone scream out, “Let’s go!” I can’t help but wonder where exactly they want to go. It makes no sense.)

Question 1: So what do you think about CMEpalooza?

Lowkey, CMEpalooza is pretty gucci. I’m a total stan. No kizzy cap.

Question 2: How often do you read the CMEpalooza blog? How valuable is the blog to the full CMEpalooza experience?

TBH, you guys are the CEOs of bloggers. I feel like so many people try to flex these days or they are just total noobs. Your blog is pretty lit.

Question 3: How do you feel about Derek’s haikus?

They make me want to yeet my laptop out the window. That dude is such a Chad. Take the L already.

Question 4: What do you find to be the most valuable thing about CMEpalooza from an educational perspective?

Watching CMEpalooza…it’s like I’m hanging with my squad. It just hits different than other events. Those other meetings are so cheugy. But CMEpalooza is cool AF.

Question 5: Any thoughts on the fashion sense of our hosts?

OMG, that drip is sad. You guys need to yassify yourselves or something.

Question 6: What could we do better with CMEpalooza?

It doesn’t happen a lot, but it’s always a bit sus when you have the same people two years in a row. They must be giving you guys some mad guap. IYKYK.

Question 7: Did you give a follow to the brand-new CMEpalooza LinkedIn page yesterday so that you don’t miss any important updates about our event?

Of course — you guys have mad CME clout. Plus, I’ve got FOMO.

Question 8: How much are you looking forward to CMEpalooza Fall on Wednesday, October 18?

I’m low-key freaking out that it’s only a few weeks away. Don’t sleep on CMEpalooza everyone. It’s gonna slay.

Periodt

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.