Earlier this week, Derek and I were interviewed for a MeetingsNet article focused on (what else?) how the world of CME has changed in these last few months as the shift to virtual live education has gained steam. Apparently, since we’ve been doing this CMEpalooza thing way before virtual live education became cool, we’re supposed to have some sort of useful insight to share. Sadly, we spent most of the conversation debating which was the coolest of the Keebler Elves (did you know they all have names? Yes, yes, they do. Buckets is my guy).

That’ll teach anyone in the future to expect anything of significance to come out of our mouths.

But I guess since you’re here and everything, I might as well make myself useful and offer some personal observations based on what I’ve witnessed over the course of the last few months related to live virtual education:

1. If you build it, they will come
   I suspect there was some initial consternation over whether there was going to be an audience for virtual live education. But with so many people in so many industries (and yes, even healthcare) working from home or working unusual hours, the attendance for many live broadcasts has been somewhat of a shocker. The viewership for CMEpalooza Spring far surpassed any previous year’s event, and I know that a few of the larger specialty societies had their servers crash due to extraordinary levels of traffic.
2. The days of bad connections and shoddy audio/video are over (almost)
   In the early days of CMEpalooza, there would inevitably be a session where we couldn’t get someone’s video to work or the audio would trail way behind the video images. That’s been pretty rare in the last year, and it’s not only because Derek and I are really, really good at what we do (note from Derek: we’re not.) Online A/V technology has gotten much better and even the default camera on your laptop or phone will typically provide a pretty crisp image. It’s the rare live online session I’ve watched over the course of the last few weeks where I said, “Ew, that looks/sounds pretty terrible.” And with 5G right around the corner, things will only get better.
3. The bells and whistles surrounding online platforms have gotten fancier (and probably more expensive) but they still can’t cover up bad ideas and bad content.
   There are still too many people who are falling prey to unproven gimmicks that turn out to be either very confusing for attendees or simply don’t work. I attended one online event where they took a room of 100 people and divided us up into breakout groups of 8 people. We were told, “Here are the 5 things we want you to talk about in the next 15 minutes. And… breakout!” In my breakout room, we ended up staring at each other for 2 minutes in total silence, one person disconnected due to the awkwardness, and then we wasted the next 10 minutes mostly talking about nonsense. One of those ideas that may have sounded promising, but just didn’t work. At all.
4. There is a lack of creativity on session design
   Pretty much every session I have attended has been the same – one or more presenters, a handful of slides (usually), maybe a polling question or two, and then some Q&A from the audience. There hasn’t been a single time I’m walked away from a session and said, “Hey, that was pretty cool.” Maybe it’s because a lot of us are still getting used to the functionality of online platforms, but think bigger people!
5. Don’t make me look at other people
   Derek sent me a screenshot last week from a session he attended where one of the people watching spent the better part of the hour eating his lunch. Derek said it was a “big salad.” Presumably, not the famous “big salad” from Seinfeld, but it looked pretty hearty. One of my least favorite things about some of the current online platforms is having to watch people who aren’t among the presenters. It’s quite distracting. And I certainly don’t want people looking at me, although I know how to turn off my camera (I guess some people don’t). Figure out a way to disable this (note from Derek: Agreed. Massive Zoom calls with 400 people on camera are dumb. Thus ends my contributions to this blog post.)
6. The financial puzzle remains the big conundrum
   Then there is the big question, “Do live virtual events have staying power?” We’re not talking about CMEpalooza – we’re not going anywhere. It’s more about that 5,000 person multi-day conference or that 300-person satellite symposium or even that 25-person grand rounds. Remember that many of these surround hugely profitable events that drive the budget for lots of organizations. A 1-year blip is painful but likely not devastating. But can some organizations survive if this is a long-term shift? I honestly doubt it. Maybe the hybrid solution will become more popular – please God, don’t make that mean a simulcast of a 3-hour symposium with nothing more than a video feed – though I guess we’ll have to see what the market will bear.

 

 

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).