I never quite understood the concert encore. It’s just dumb.

The singer or band does their thing for a while and then everyone “pretends” that the concert is over. “Show’s over people. Heh heh heh.” Except that EVERYONE knows it’s a sham. The stage lights stay dark, the entire audience stays in its seats, and the band is backstage doing, well, I don’t know exactly what they are doing (I mean, I have a general idea, but we’re a PG rated event so let’s just play dumb, shall we?).

To me, it would make a lot more sense if the concert encore was reserved for something rare, something special. Instead of a “Here you go, you average schlub audience, we’ll accept your tepid applause and play three more songs, capping things off with our most recognizable hit,” maybe it happens 10% of the time. Someone on stage decides with 30 minutes left in the “main” part of the show whether there is going to be an encore or not. If there isn’t, they tack on 1 or 2 of the planned encore songs into the meat of the concert and then when they say “Good night everyone. We love you, Pittsburgh!” they really mean it. The audience isn’t shortchanged much on the actual material they are hearing, so it isn’t a big deal. But on those special nights where everything is clicking, the singer or band decides to truly play an encore. And that’s a night the audience will always remember. “Hey man, were you there that night in Peoria where .38 Special came back and played an extended, 20-minute version of Hold on Loosely during their encore? That was epic!”

There, fixed the concert industry. Well, assuming there is a concert industry still left to fix.

All of this is just a meandering segue to let the adoring fans of CMEpalooza know that we hear your applause after each of our live events. We know you are all standing on your chairs, banging on your pots and pans, chanting “We want more, we want more!” It’s nice, and we appreciate the kudos, but it’s never raucous enough for us to actually want to do anything about it.

Until now. 

Thanks to the kind folks at Haymarket Medical Education, there will indeed be a rare encore of CMEpalooza in 2020. We’re planning a special CMEpalooza Spotlight to be held from 11-11:30 am ET on Wednesday, December 9 ,where we’ll be talking about the topic of “Outcomes Assessment: Creating Value for All Stakeholders.” Outcomes is always one of the big topics in our world, and this session will shine some light onto ways that providers of all types can assess their outcomes processes to ensure that they are reporting out information that is truly of value to various stakeholder types.

If you are not familiar with our CMEpalooza Spotlights, these are special events occasionally held outside of our main broadcast days. We did one in the spring with our friends at Educational Measures (that one was a pre-show encore a week before CMEpalooza Spring) and are now back for an actual encore this time around. You get to see me moderate a session — thrilling I know — instead of just suffering through one of my usual production gaffes. 

Just like our main CMEpalooza broadcasts, you’ll be able to tune in on our LIVE page and do all of the things you are used to doing in the era of all-online, all-the-time education (ie, ask questions, answer a poll question or two, check to make sure you aren’t wearing the same sweatpants for the 5th day in a row, etc.). 

So set aside some time in your busy calendar to join us, It goes without saying that this is free and doesn’t require pre-registration – c’mon, you all know the drill by now. Just don’t ask me to sing “Caught Up in You.” That would definitely NOT deserve an encore.

 

Among the many, many things I miss about the pre-Covid era is my lunch hour. Living in the heart of Center City Philadelphia, there were loads of great options I could either walk or drive to within a very short distance. Most days, I would block off 60-90 minutes (yes, I work for myself and can take as long as I please), sit down and enjoy my daily bounty. It was honestly one of my favorite moments of each day.

Now, well, it’s OK. Some of my previous favorite haunts never reopened for lunch takeout. Some serve food that simply doesn’t travel well. So out of my usual rotation of 7-to-10 really good options, I’m down to 4 or 5. It’s unquestionably getting a bit boring.

In an effort to try to spice up the lunch hour of our CMEpalooza groupies, Derek came up with what I thought was one of his brainier ideas back in the summertime (note from Derek: there are so many to choose from!). He had apparently been on some sort of call featuring someone from GrubHub and was intrigued by a program they had whereby you could provide limited-use gift cards for individuals attending a virtual event. Essentially, they are provided with a code to use to order lunch through GrubHub only during specified hours. Based on this program, we added a “Feed the People” option to our menu of sponsorship opportunities for the fall, and Derek even wrote a blog post about it last month.

And… crickets.

It certainly appeared, sadly, that Feed the People was going to hit the CMEpalooza graveyard along with other ideas we’d trotted out over the years.

But, “Aha!, Not so fast my friends!” A savior arrived earlier this week to appease the appetites of the masses.

Yes, the fine folks at FreeCME have graciously agreed to serve as the sponsor for our Feed the People initiative, providing solace to the grumbling CME tummies around the United States (sorry for anyone overseas, but you’ll just have to forage for your own food this year).

So who wants a free lunch next Wednesday?

If you are saying, “Yeah, free lunch sounds good,” just click here to give us your name and email address. On the day before CMEpalooza, we’ll send the first 25 respondents a $15 GrubHub gift card to use to order lunch during our live broadcast on Wednesday. That way, you don’t have to miss a second of the amazing content we have in store for everyone. Just be sure to put a napkin over your keyboard so you don’t spill any of that sriracha mayo between the “D” and “F” keys.

This Fall marks the 14th iteration of CMEpalooza. That includes the inaugural two-day free-for-all in the spring of 2014 during the BSE (Before Scott Era) and then 13 Spring/Fall events featuring the best duo since the Captain and Tennille. Every year, Derek and I try to make some minor changes to the way we do things, many of which our audience probably doesn’t even notice. Like the year when Derek suggested that we “get crazy haircuts” the week before our live event. I went to my neighborhood barber to give him carte blanche and he laughed at me. He’s mean.

But anyway…

For this Fall’s event, being held next Wednesday, October 14 between 9 am-5 pm ET, there are more “new” things than usual, so I wanted to get everyone prepared:

1. The biggest change is with our LIVE page, otherwise known as the page where you view our sessions. In previous years, we would stream each session on the same page and force learners to refresh their page every hour to view the next session. No more. Thanks to technological advances of our production platform, StreamYard, we are now able to pre-schedule all of our sessions, which means that we can also create unique pages to view all of our sessions. So now, when you go to our LIVE page on the day of our live broadcast, you just need to click on the link to the session you want to view. If you are really, really bored, you can even click on each link now and just sit there staring at the screen until the session begins. The staring record is 22 hours, 17 minutes, 19 seconds. Email Derek if you beat it.
2. It’s not that Derek and I are cheap (OK, maybe we are), but we’ve always used the “free” version of whatever recording platform we were using at the time (note from Derek: we did this to make a point. Mission accomplished, I think.) Consequently, you would always see a little icon with the logo of that platform on the screen of our sessions. This year, I finally convinced Derek to be a grownup and pony up some of his hardly-earned cash to upgrade to the lowest tier of StreamYard’s paid plan. So now you’ll see the CMEpalooza logo in the top right corner of each session. Super important, I know.
3. A few years ago, we offered all of our brilliant CMEpalooza sponsors the opportunity to embed a promotional video beneath their listing. We would typically have 2 or 3 sponsors who took us up on the offer. For whatever reason, this fall we’ve had way more people asking us to put up their videos than usual. As of this writing, there are 10 promotional visits you can check out. Many of these are quite slick.
4. We’ve used Poll Everywhere as our audience response technology for the last few CMEpaloozas. It’s fairly simple to program and run, so we now offer it to our session panelists. I don’t know that everyone will use it this Fall, but a fair number will (and for the anchor 4 pm Trivia session, you absolutely will need Poll Everywhere to play along). Not a bad idea to download the app to your phone/device in advance. Our meeting “handle” is CMEpalooza000. If you don’t want to download another app, you’ll be able to go to this link.
5. While it’s totally voluntary, we are asking everyone to tell us a little about yourself by going to this link. Like I said, not mandatory, but if you want to let us know how amazing you are, this is the link you need to click on. So please, click on this link.

You know what’s not changing about CMEpalooza? The cost. CMEpalooza remains and will always be free for everyone to watch. No pre-registration, no credit cards numbers, no nothing. Every year, we always get a few people emailing us to ask “How do I register for CMEpalooza?” We tell them the same thing – you don’t. You just show up whenever you want to. Missed a live session? View it in the Archives. Also for free.