It should surprise no one that Derek is a natural pessimist. Virtually any time I ask him a question where he has to guess a number that speaks to the popularity of CMEpalooza (ie, “How many people do you think will watch our live sessions?” or “How many sponsors do you think we’ll get this year?”), he usually predicts some ridiculously low number that causes me to roll my eyes. Fortunately, he’s been wrong far more often than he’s been right (note from Derek: this is accurate.)

And so when we set on a search for our CMEpalooza Fall intern – mind you, even after a successful kickoff of our Spring internship program —  his prediction on the number of applicants we’d get was roughly equivalent to the number of Pulitzer Prizes this blog is bound to win in the future (that would be “Zero.” OK, maybe he predicted “1.”).

Fortunately, Mr. Pessimism was wrong once again and the applications came in waves, despite the challenge we posed to our prospective interns to write us a haiku (for those who botched it, it’s 5-7-5. Probably good to remember for the future).

Of the many worthy applicants, we both picked the same person, meaning that there would be no virtual arm wrestling match to figure out who would be chosen. And so with that, let’s all welcome our Fall intern to the mix.

Hello CMEpalooza Family!

My name is Tejuana Moore, but everyone calls me TJ. I’m beyond thrilled to be the Fall intern for CMEpalooza! I’m working on having my business cards printed right away.

Tejuana (TJ) Moore
CMEpalooza Fall Intern

I think it has a nice ring to it! I’ll admit that when I received an email from Scott and Derek on Monday, I was reading it thinking that I had not been selected. I read the email at least three times before it sunk in that I had in fact been chosen for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

So a little about myself. When I was younger, I used to pretend that I was a CME professional for all types of medical specialties. I imagined reading through disclosures to make sure that faculty members were in fact eligible to present or plan the content. I pretended to write out designation and accreditation statements on activities that had CME credit attached to them. I especially loved pretending to calculate how many hours of CME an activity received. And now, I’m living my dream.

…Just kidding of course.

Like all of you, I literally stumbled into the CME world. I started my career as an annual meeting coordinator for a nonprofit organization. Although the work was daunting and repetitive, I soon realized that this work was the stem to the core of the organization’s success. The core of the annual meeting was the education sessions. This intrigued me, so I moved on to governance and education, since 98% of the sessions at the annual meeting were selected by committees. Once I realized the important role of the education created by specialty societies in the careers of their members, I understood why CME was such an intricate piece of the puzzle. And, so here I am, having served in my current role as CME Manager at the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology for a little over a year.

My ultimate professional goal, at least for now, is to become a CME guru, which is why I applied to be the CMEpalooza Fall intern. I hope to learn as much as I possibly can during my internship and glean valuable experience from these two talented and witty gentlemen (Scott, of course, is the more talented and wittier of the two) (note from Scott: I don’t write this stuff. Honest. I just confirm its accuracy) (note from Derek: This is an outrage! Scott is brainwashing the interns before I get a chance to brainwash the interns!)

I have followed the CMEpalooza blog for some time now and have had the opportunity to tune into four live CMEpalooza events. I can say with confidence that working with this team is a “CME Dream come true.”

 

Last week, we announced the opening of the application process for our CMEpalooza Fall intern. You may have seen the news on the ticker of one of your favorite cable news stations (alas, we were not deemed important enough for those hard-hitting news anchors to actually discuss and debate. Their loss).

I suspect, however, that many of you dismissed the news without giving it a second thought. “Why would I want to be an intern? I have 15 years of experience in CME, I work full time, and I am just barely surviving being cooped up at home for the foreseeable future with my spouse, our two bratty kids, and a cat with bladder issues. An internship? No thanks.”

Look, I get it. You think of an intern and you see a 20-something year old right out of Hollywood casting ready to take on the corporate world and get a leg up on the rat race.

But that’s not what a CMEpalooza internship is. For starters, there is only one intern for each of our meetings so you are special right from the start. Secondly, you aren’t getting us coffee (no matter how many times Derek may ask you to), you won’t be making hundreds of copies of our Fall agenda (there is no copier), and you won’t even need to tweet to your friends and colleagues how great CMEpalooza is (though that would be nice). There is no mindless busywork because “we don’t have time to spend with you.” This is actually something that will be fun.

As the CMEpalooza Fall intern, you’ll get to do basically whatever you want to do. You get to tap into your creative side that has been beaten down these last few months. Your name gets out to the CME community as someone who cares about our industry and has something important to say. And hey, you get to work with Derek and I (OK, let’s ignore that one as a perk).

There are many more details about the nuts and bolts of this internship on last week’s post that I’m not going to rehash here. If you are interested in applying, you have until the stroke of midnight ET on Friday, July 3 to submit your application. There isn’t much to it, but you should probably be familiar with the structure of a haiku (it’s 5-7-5 people).

 

 

Hello again people. We’ve missed you. Heck, we’ve missed anyone. How do I know? Even Derek said to me last week, “Man, I really miss socializing with people besides my wife and kids.” You know when the world’s self-proclaimed No. 1 Introvert starts to break down that things are seriously ca-ca.

Anyway, after the usual dragging of our feet following a successful Spring meeting (record attendance once again BTW), Derek and I reconvened last week to start talking about CMEpalooza Fall (set your calendar for Wednesday, October 14). We have the usual basket of good/bad ideas for sessions that we’ll be picking over a bit more this week, but one thing we know we’ll be repeating is the selection of an official CMEpalooza Fall intern.

Admittedly, our Fall intern will have some pretty big shoes to fill. Not only will they be following in the footsteps of our most talented intern ever (the illustrious Spring intern Katie), but they’ll also have to up their game to even approach the varied skills of Derek and I. OK, maybe that second component won’t be so tough.

Not convinced this is the perfect opportunity for you? Maybe you’ll be swayed by what Spring intern Katie had to say about her experience.

“It was OK, I guess.”

A rousing endorsement if I’ve ever heard one.

So what exactly are the expected duties of the CMEpalooza Fall 2020 Intern?

1. You’ll have the opportunity to contribute to the CMEpalooza blog at your leisure. Maybe once a month or so. You can write about just about anything. Hopefully nothing that will offend others. That’s typically my territory.
2. We’ll have you shadow one of us virtually as we plan a CMEpalooza session. You’ll learn how the proverbial sausage is made. Maybe you’ll even pick up a thing or two that you can incorporate into your real job. You’ll even have the chance to show up on camera during a Fall session so you can show your doubting friends and family that, yes, you are officially part of the CMEpalooza team.
3. You will spend every other Saturday spending 2 hours sewing masks to send to every CMEpalooza panelist for our Fall meeting (optional duty)
4. You can let us know if there is another way you want to contribute. Maybe you are web-savvy and have some suggestions on how to spruce up the website. Maybe you have an idea on how we can market CMEpalooza better. Maybe you just want to frequently tell Derek and I how great we are. These all work.

So what qualifications are we looking for?

1. You should be working in CME in some capacity
2. You should have a thick skin – it’s pretty certain that we will make fun of you at some point
3. You should not consider Mork and Mindy to be the “greatest TV show ever about an alien being” (that would be ALF). Sorry, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

Beyond that, we’re open to anyone. Maybe you have only worked in CME for 1 year and want to learn more about our industry? Great. Maybe you’ve worked in CME for 25 years and want to do something fun? Also great. Maybe it’s been your lifelong dream to get a personal email from Derek and you think that this is your chance? Er, um, OK.

Please also note that if you applied for our Spring intern position and were not selected, you can send in an application once again for this fall. The questionnaire is slightly different, but still very simple to complete.

While this is an unpaid position, Derek has promised to send our CMEpalooza Fall 2020 Intern an unopened pack of Garbage Pail Kids trading cards (he’s a fan of Schizo Fran).

The application process for the CMEpalooza Fall 2020 Intern is simple and short. Fill out a brief questionnaire by clicking on this link to apply. Every answer is vitally important so please think before you respond. The application process will close on Friday, July 3, at which time a special task force will cull through the applications to select our winner. You can email us if you have any questions (our email address is on this site somewhere – you just need to find it).