So I took a trip down Ol’ Memory Lane last night and called up the very first live online broadcast I ever moderated/produced, even before the days of CMEpalooza. This was way way back in 2013, so only eight years ago, but it honestly seems like much farther in the distant past. It’s kinda cool that you can still dial this up on YouTube. One of the big reasons that Derek and I initially used Google Hangouts On Air and now StreamYard as our platform is that it links directly to YouTube, so archiving things takes exactly zero effort. Which is a great thing for lazy people. Not that we’re lazy… OK, maybe we are sometimes.

Anyway, what struck me while watching this – besides the fact that I had more hair — is how little has changed in the look and feel of what we’re doing with some of our live online broadcasts. Yes, I know that some providers will create really fancy set designs and bring faculty in studio (or at least they used to), but most of what I see these days really looks and feels quite similar to what you see here from the earliest days of live, online CME.

Certainly, we’ve advanced in a few ways. For one, we can actually ask and receive responses to Audience Response Questions now. In 2013, that wasn’t really possible — or if it was, it was beyond my brainpower to figure out. I think we did get some live questions from the audience later in this series through YouTube comments, but obviously that’s common these days. Secondly, we’ve largely been able to thankfully ditch those clunky headsets. Audio and video quality is much more predictable, though still not perfect.

Otherwise, though, not much has changed. You still have physicians participating from their very crowded offices, or homes, or hotel rooms. You still have slides and cases and discussions. You still have the little squares of everyone on video. You still have faculty who don’t look at their cameras.

Good times all around.

With that nostalgia behind me, let’s turn to something more important – today’s deadline for the submission of your Cluedo Palooza forms. I get it, you inherited oodles of money from your oil baron Uncle Cletus, but still, couldn’t you use a $100 Amazon gift card? We’re giving away 5 of them. And it’s not like your chances of winning are miniscule – they are actually pretty darn good (though no promises). So set aside 15 minutes or so today over your lunch break and learn a little.

It’s one of those things that always made me scratch my head but never quite piqued my curiosity enough to research the answer. Why is the board game Clue called Cluedo in the United Kingdom? Is “clue” not an actual word across the pond? I’m pretty sure it is – Sherlock Holmes would sound pretty stupid telling Watson, “Aha, a cluedo!”

Alas, the explanation was not quite as interesting as I had hoped but still doesn’t make a ton of sense. The game was actually first called “Murder!” when it was developed in the 1940s but then morphed into Cluedo, which is a combination of the word “clue” with the word “ludo” (it means “I play” in Latin). But then shouldn’t it have been called Cludo? I mean, you are mushing the “lu” so why keep the “e”? OK, I’m overthinking this.

Anyway, while I liked the board game Clue, I loved the ’80s movie. For all the Millennials out there, no, I’m not talking about the Alicia Silverstone vehicle, “Clueless,” but rather the Martin Mull/Tim Curry masterpiece from the mid-80s.

“1+2+2+1+1”

I used both the board game and movie as inspiration for our CMEpalooza Fall sponsor event, which is creatively called Cluedo Palooza. You see, it takes the word Cluedo and combines it with the second part of CMEpalooza. I know, super creative.

There weren’t enough characters/weapons/rooms in the Clue board game to cover all of the CMEpalooza sponsors, so I pulled a few from the movie to fill everything out.

As with all of our special sponsor events, Cluedo Palooza is a competition where you can win real cash prizes. We’ll be giving out five (5) $100 Amazon gift cards to our winners this fall.

Here is how Cluedo Palooza works:

1. Click here to download the list of forms you will need to play, both the questions and the answer form
2. Use the Sponsor tab of the CMEpalooza website to get links to all of the entities involved in this event. You’ll need to visit the Sponsor sites to get the answers to all of our questions. We promise there is nothing that can’t be found within a click or two.
3. Complete the entry form by coming up with a correct response to three Character questions, two Weapon questions, and two Room questions.
4. Added bonus this year — you can enter up to three times, as long as you select different sponsors for each entry.
5. Send your completed entry form to me via email at scott@medcasewriter.com by 5 p.m. ET on Friday, October 1.
6. Watch Clue: The Movie

Periodically during the summer, my son sets up a lime-aid stand (not a lemonade stand!) outside our city rowhome. We are in a neighborhood with a lot of foot traffic so sales are generally rather brisk.

We have our standard protocol well set by now – I serve as the cheap (very cheap!) labor in the kitchen squeezing the limes, mixing up the ingredients, putting out the cups, etc. while he handles sales out front. People are generally rather generous – we charge $2 per cup ($3 for two cups – learning the value of bulk sales), but I would say more than 50% of our customers gladly pay double or more as a bonus. It’s a pretty easy, sweet gig for a 10-year-old.

I don’t mind being the brawn behind the sales – in fact, I rather like it that way. I’d rather be the doer in the background while letting someone else handle the schmoozing and chit chatting with potential customers. That’s never been something I terribly enjoy.

And yet, here we are in Year 7 of CMEpalooza and I am still the one regularly responsible for drumming up interest in our sponsorships. Why is that, you ask? Well, perhaps because while I would rather be the behind-the-scenes guy, Derek would rather be the way-way-behind-the-scenes guy. So I stepped up out of necessity (note from Derek: You’re doing a great job, buddy!)

Quite frankly, it’s gotten easier and easier over the years to attract sponsors to CMEpalooza. Whether it’s the affordability, the value, or simply the fact that we’re such a likable duo, we tend to get a barrage of companies who rush towards us with fistfuls of cash to lock in our sponsorship packages when they are announced in the spring. You can check out our Sponsor page to see all of the companies who have already latched on for CMEpalooza Fall.

But what about you over there, you who chose to wait or simply forgot to lock in a sponsorship package in the spring? Well, I’ll be honest – there isn’t a lot left. But we have gotten creative in adding a few new opportunities for the Fall that you can read about in our Updated Sponsor Prospectus. You’ll learn about things like CMEpalooza King for a Day, CMEPalooza 5 Questions With…, and some other goodies. And hey, we’ve always got our most popular standby with our Bronze sponsorships, which is essentially an entry-level gig – we take as many of those as people want.

Sound interesting? Just shoot me an email with the subject line of “CMEpalooza Top Salesman Alert” or something else that is aimed at the Willy Loman in me and give me an idea of what you’re interested for. I promise to get back to you within 12 hours – I mean, if you send the email at 1 am, it’s going to wait until morning.

Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you need to add a tip to any sponsorship, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you don’t need to add a tip to any sponsorship either. You do you.