Back when CMEpalooza started, Derek and I were both in a funny place professionally.

His most recent employer – a medical education company (MECC) whose name you can probably find on his LinkedIn page if you are really interested – had gone under, and he was trying to figure out the next step in his professional career. While the career of “Derek Warnick – CME Consultant” only lasted a short while before he realized he’d be better off with, you know, a job with a regular paycheck and health insurance and all, that stretch plays a very important role in the history of CMEpalooza.

Consultant Derek was, as usual, sitting alone in the corner during an “audience participation” session at the annual Alliance conference thinking deep thoughts.

“Why can’t I put together a conference like this (only better)?”

“Who can I convince to buy dinner for me tonight?”

“Did ALF ever make it back to Melmac?”

We’ll ignore the last two questions for the time being, and focus on the first one, which was obviously the seedling from which CMEpalooza grew. With lots of time on his hands (alas, the life of a newbie “consultant”), Derek was able to go home and think more about his idea of a CME “free-for-all” conference. He bounced the idea off a few colleagues who presumably responded, “Great idea” (or at least that’s what Derek tells me. I have my suspicions) and off he went.

Derek heard from someone that there was a person in the CME world (i.e., me) using this newfangled, and most importantly, free platform called Google Hangouts to live-stream certified education, and he thought, “Huh, maybe this is what I can use.” From there, the pieces fell into place. He came up with a catchy title for the conference, used WordPress to develop a website – this very website we still use today — and basically said to anyone who wanted to present at the inaugural CMEpalooza, “Go for it. I’ve got nothing better to do.”

What, you were expecting a story that involved a business plan, heavy-hitting investors, and accomplished advisers? Surely you know us better than that.

Anyway, while Derek was toiling away at the inaugural CMEpalooza, my employer – a different MECC – was also going under. In a few months, my self-employed career took launch and I too was left with a little too much time on my hands. I sat down with Derek one afternoon and agreed to come aboard as co-producer/co-director/co-something of CMEpalooza (actual transcript of the negotiation: “Me: Do you want help with CMEpalooza?” “Him: “OK.”).

The first order of business for us was to come up with an agenda for our first Fall meeting. Unlike the inaugural CMEpalooza where Derek allowed everyone with any semblance of an idea onto the agenda, it was deemed that we should tighten the reins a little bit for the future and come up with some topics people in the industry would be interested in. With our recent professional history, one of the first sessions we hit on was entitled, “Death of the MECC: Fact or Fiction?” Yes, it was somewhat of an autobiographical topic that hit close to home for both of us, but there was legitimate concern in some MECC circles that our days were numbered.

Jan Perez of CME Outfitters gratefully agreed to moderate this session and recruited a panel from a cross-section of providers to delve into the current and future state of the MECC. As with every CMEpalooza throughout our history, you can watch the session in our Archives (or just click here). To this day, it’s one of my favorite sessions in our history.

Five years later, the MECC model is facing a whole new set of challenges, although fortunately things overall seem to have stabilized since Derek and I had our career crisis (wait a minute, were we the reason our respective MECC employers failed? Let’s not dwell on that too much. Moving on…). As we celebrate the 5-year anniversary of CMEpalooza, we thought it’d be a good idea to revisit that session from our inaugural Fall meeting with a new spin. We’re calling it “The MECC Reborn: Our Present and Future.” It’s on the Spring agenda. There will likely be a “redux” session or two in the Fall as well.

Jan Perez graciously agreed to moderate this session once again (actual transcript from the email invite, “Me: Will you moderate this again? Her: Do I have to?” I kid, I kid). I think it’ll be fascinating to get a sense of where some of our industry leaders see the future of the MECC world heading.

Probably not to Melmac.

Big day for our team of crack interns. They have put in dozens of hours of unpaid overtime over the last few weeks categorizing and collating the many, many abstracts submitted for our Spring event, routing everything to the appropriate team of judges for evaluation, tabulating results, and then inputting everything into a very intricate spreadsheet.

I think I saw Derek pop his head into the interns work area one afternoon just after lunch last week and say, “Good job boys and girls. Extra credit for all of you,” before ducking back out into the game room for another marathon session of Frogger. He’s quite the motivator. (Side note from Derek: I will kick anyone’s butt in Frogger on the Atari 2600. Challenge extended.)

Anyway, we tapped the kegs, cued up a little Digital Underground, and let out a massive “Huzzah!” around 10 p.m. last night when we finally slotted the last session into the Spring agenda. The website was then quickly updated with all of the information so that our adoring (yes, you love us) public can stop with the phone calls, emails, and faxes telling us to, “Get off your lazy butts, and give us an agenda!”

So here is the official Agenda for CMEpalooza Spring (or click on the Spring 2019 tab). There is some good stuff from some new faces (and some old ones too) that we think you’ll enjoy.

Remember, Wednesday, April 17. Highlight it on your calendar.

A few things to note:

• After experimenting with dividing CMEpalooza Spring into two half-days last year, we’re back to a full day this year. While people told us on surveys that they would be more likely to watch our sessions if they were split into two days, the actual viewership didn’t bear that out. Numbers don’t lie. Plus, it makes our lives a bit easier mushing everything together in one big lump.
• There is a open slot at noon ET for the first time in a long while. Is it because Derek and I want a break to grab some lunch? While yes, that would be nice (my lunch usually consists of a scarfed down bowl of Corn Chex between sessions on our broadcast days), the truth is that we’re still looking for a Gold sponsor who wants to claim that session. Anyone? Anyone at at all?
• Because this is a fifth anniversary of CMEpalooza, we will be having a “redux” session in both the Spring and Fall meetings where we revisit a topic from our first year of Palooza-ing. This spring, we’re bringing back Jan Perez from CME Outfitters to moderate a session looking at the business side of the medical education company (MECC) and how things continue to evolve. More on this in a later blog post.

Rejoice, everyone, rejoice. And join Derek in the game room at 3 p.m. today with a pocket full of quarters, ready for play Burger Time into the wee smalls of the evening.

 

Like me, I am sure you get annoyed when you open your morning inbox and see another email reminding you that “The deadline for submitting an abstract for Meeting XYZ is next week. Don’t miss your opportunity to share your knowledge with colleagues and further your career!”

So no, this isn’t a post to remind you one last time that the deadline for submitting an abstract for CMEpalooza Spring is tomorrow (even though, well, yes, it is. Derek is counting on you).

Today, I’ll be telling you about something of potentially monumental importance both to you and the organization you represent — sponsorship opportunities for CMEpalooza! Whoo-hoo!

OK, OK, settle down now. That’s enough whoo-hooing for one day. You’ll hurt yourself if this goes on any longer.

Since we introduced sponsorship opportunities prior to CMEpalooza III (it’s Super Bowl week, so Roman numerals are acceptable), more than 40 companies have come aboard to support one or more of our events. Every year, we tweak the goodies offered to sponsors, especially at the higher levels. Our initial batch of sponsors for CMEpalooza XI (that’s this year’s Spring meeting) were put up last week, but there are still many opportunities available at every sponsorship level.

Here are some little known facts about a CMEpalooza sponsorship:

1. You can have a session of your very own. That’s right, if you want to take the ultimate leap into a Gold sponsorship, you get the honor of working with Derek and I to plan your very own CMEpalooza session. Now I know what you are thinking – “In what world is working with Derek and you considered to be a ‘honor?'” OK, OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but at least it’ll be less painful than a mortgage/rent payment! I had a conversation with a colleague last week who works with a prior Gold sponsor. She told me, “We were going to do it again, but we didn’t have any good ideas for a session.” Hogwash, I tell you, hogwash! We have lots of ideas. They might not be good ideas, but they are ideas. We’ll figure something out.
2. Derek will write you a haiku. You all know how much I love CMEpalooza haiku. I have written about it before. It’s one of Derek’s favorite blog posts. He cozies up on the sofa with a giant bag of Cheetos, gets that orange cheese dust all over his keyboard, and bangs out what the New York Times literature reviewer calls, “Eh, something.” For the first time this year, all Silver and Gold sponsors of CMEpalooza get your very own customized haiku written by the esteemed Mr. Warnick. He is extremely excited about this opportunity to further advance his pathetic — I mean, poetic — career.
3. You will get tremendous exposure. Whenever sponsorship time rolls around, we always get the question of, “But, why sir, why?” Look, I can’t promise you that your company’s revenues will double if you decide to sponsor CMEpaloooza (though if they do, I will take full credit). But I can tell you that we have a lot of people read our blog (nearly 500 subscribers who get an email with every post as well as those who simply come to the website every hour), view our sessions (a record 644 unique visitors watched 1 or more sessions in CMEpalooza X last fall), and participate in our special sponsor events like CMEpalooza Bingo!! or CMEpalooza Pursuit!!. For some reason, people seem to like us, and by extension, they will like you if you sign up to be one of our sponsors.
4. You will have money left over to buy many, many “4 for $4” deals at Wendy’s. While I haven’t actually been to a Wendy’s since, I don’t know, the 10th grade, I won’t argue that their food is expensive (whether or not it is actually good, well, you can be the judge). The point is, CMEpalooza sponsorships aren’t terribly expensive. They start at the low, low price of $600. You probably have that much in your couch cushions right now! OK, maybe you don’t (but if you do, seriously, lift up those cushions more than once a decade). Regardless, you get the point.

If I’ve done enough to convince you to climb aboard the Sponsorship train, well, bully for me. Just send me an email with some very basic info, and we’ll get the process started. If you remain on the fence and want more info, you can check out the full Sponsorship prospectus. If you are laughing uproariously at this post’s shameless plug, the Pit of Despair is just over yonder.