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.

By now, you have undoubtedly heard about the controversy associated with this year’s CMEpalooza sponsor event, CMEpalooza Pursuit.

People submitting duplicate entries using fake email addresses and fake names.

People using blue pens instead of black pens to complete their entry forms.

People trying to slyly answer 8 instead of 9 questions, thinking we wouldn’t notice.

People forgetting to use the secrecy envelop and mailing in naked forms (note from Derek: oh, the humanity!)

Frankly, it was all a bit discouraging and required a lot of extra work to cull out those successful entrants from those tricksters who tried to worm their way into the prize drawing. Fortunately, we didn’t end up arguing in front of the Supreme Court, although we did have to throw out several thousands entries who didn’t follow our very detailed, intricate submission instructions. All it took was one misspelled word and you were out. Sorry, but dems the breaks (note from Derek: I see what you did there and I approve.)

Nonetheless, we’re happy to report that there were quite a number of individuals who qualified for this morning’s prize drawing. As promised, we had five winners, each of whom were awarded $100 Amazon gift cards. I’d suggest holding on to them for Amazon Prime Day – not coincidentally scheduled to overlap with CMEpalooza Fall on Wednesday, October 14 – so you can maximize their value.

Here are the winners of CMEpalooza Pursuit:

• Vanessa Gray, Director, Continuing Medical Education, Des Moines University Medicine and Health Sciences
• Jesse Henry, Consultant, OhioHealth Learning Continuing Medical Education
• Monica Nicosia, Nicosia Medical Writer LLC
• Cindy Davidson, Scientific Editor, Global Learning Collaborative
• Amanda Kaczerski, VP, Educational Strategy and Design, The Academy for Continued Healthcare Learning

Congrats to the winners. To the losers, as Philadelphia sports fans throughout history have said over and over again, better luck next year.

 

In these trying times, anything that changes up the same old boring routine is a welcome diversion.

“Hey kids, wanna go for a hike? (again)”

“Nah.”

“How about throwing a frisbee around in the park?”

“Not interested?”

“Maybe you can invite a friend over, both wear masks, face shields, body armor, and chain mail helmets?”

“Sounds boring.”

We get it, there just isn’t much left these days. Lucky for you, at least for this weekend, we’ve got fun for the whole family!

CMEpalooza Pursuit

Your kids will love learning about the many fine sponsors of CMEpalooza Fall (“Boy mom, I didn’t know that your work was so interesting. I want to learn more!”). You can perhaps even bribe them by saying, “Look, fill out the entry form, and we split the prize 50/50 if we win.” Then you tell them the prize is $50 (it’s really $100), and pocket the majority of the money. Everybody wins!

If you have forgotten how to play CMEpalooza Pursuit, all of the details are in this post. Entries are due by the end of day on Monday, so that gives you the entire weekend to cuddle up with your loved ones and dig in. You’re welcome.