You may have noticed (or not, in which case you should look now) that the CMEpalooza Sponsor page is pretty packed these days. For the first time in the history of CMEpalooza, we’re officially sold out of both our Gold and Silver level sponsorships for CMEpalooza Fall, and we’re still more than 2 months from our live broadcast date.

Before I continue along to some of the new stuff, I wanted to recognize all of those wise organizations who have currently chosen to align themselves with our event as Official CMEpalooza Sponsors:

• Gold Sponsors — Genentech and Prova Education
• Silver Sponsors — ASiM, Forefront Collaborative, Global Academy for Medical Education, Integrity CE, Practicing Clinicians Exchange
• Bronze Sponsors — Academy for Continued Healthcare Learning, Clinical Care Options, CMEology, HighMarksCE, Impact Education, Kynectiv, Primary Care Network, PVI, RMEI, Thistle Editorial

In his usual meandering post that took 1,000 words to get to the point (Hey, I was on vacation. I had time. -DW), Derek wrote about the challenges of constantly needing to be creative to come up with new ideas for our Spring and Fall broadcasts. It’s the same story with our sponsorship opportunities – it’s easy to just trot out the same things every year, but we try to come up with some new ideas when and where we can.

In that vein, today we are trotting out two new sponsorship opportunities for CMEpalooza Fall, both of which are included within our updated Sponsorship Prospectus:

• #CMEpalooza Mega-Blog — On 1 specific date prior to CMEpalooza Fall, we’ll open up our blog to members of the CME community, who will all be asked to write a short (250-300 words) essay on a specific topic related to CME. Maybe it’s “The Day I Learned That CME Makes a Difference” or “Why We Love Our CME Community” – we’re not sure and we can work with you on an interested sponsor.
• #CMEpalooza Chat — A few years back, there used to be a periodic moderated CME chat on Twitter that was pretty popular and was a good way to get people talking about important issues in our industry. This would be a Sponsored reincarnation of that chat, where Derek and I (and/or another invited moderator) would coordinate a Twitter discussion on specific topics during 4, 30-minute blocks on a specific date prior to CMEpalooza Fall. Again, we could work with the sponsor on the specific topics for each discussion block.

There are other opportunities that remain available as well — we take an unlimited number of Bronze sponsors, for instance. The CMEpalooza Q&A Line is still available for the Fall as well. I’m not even going to mention poor CMEpalooza Spotlight anymore.

So take a look and let us know if you are interested. Things are moving fast these days so probably best not to wait too long.

On a totally unrelated note, a quick personal plug: I know how much our audience likes FREE things, so if you are at all interested in history (especially Philadelphia history), you can follow along with me as I give a FREE Twilight Tour of Independence National Historic Park this Friday (that’s Aug. 18) from 6-7 p.m. on Facebook Live. Just go to this link – the promo photo is terrible, but that’s out of my hands: www.facebook.com/FINHP. You can ask questions and everything, right along with the tourists on the actual walking tour itself.

There is a reason you don’t hear much from Derek and I in the immediate months after each of our CMEpalooza broadcasts.

We’re mentally exhausted.

Let’s face it, there is only so much patience you have for your little annoying brother who keeps pestering you every day for weeks and weeks about some excruciating minutiae (and yes, in this parable, Derek is the annoying little brother, even though he is older than me). We both just need a break from each other, from the blog, and from thinking about CMEpalooza.

So we take our requisite tropical island vacations (wait, New Jersey’s Long Beach Island isn’t tropical?) to recharge our batteries and let the ideas start to simmer for the next event.

And boy did they bubble over this time.

Today, we proudly present the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall, packed chock full of 7 hours of interesting and unique sessions sure to pique your interest.

We’re got Graham McMahon from the ACCME joining us for the first time. We’ve got advice columnists, breakers of myths, a 3-act performance. We’ve even got a session about Donald Trump (yikes).

It’s seriously a lot of really interesting stuff, and I’m not just saying that because Derek and I have spent the last month lining up faculty and solidifying the session schedule. We’re going to be asking our devoted fans (that’s you) for some help, and soon, in providing material for us to maximize the impact of some of these sessions, but for now, feel free to admire the educational bounty that will be provided for you on Wednesday, October 18. And mark your calendars, if you haven’t already.

Click here to view the CMEpalooza Fall agenda 

A few quick hitters to start your week:

• If you haven’t already set the time aside, you really should plan to watch our CMEpalooza Company Spotlight this Wednesday (April 12) at noon ET, where I’ll be joined by a team from Global Academy for Medical Education. I always think it’s interesting to hear how different organizations focus their CME missions differently and approach challenges/opportunities creatively. It’s only 30 minutes, and I can promise you’ll take something away from it.You can watch on the Spotlight on our LIVE page. There will be the usual opportunity to ask questions and offer comments if you’d like. Or you can just lurk silently.

• Thanks to everyone who played CMEpalooza Pursuit. We had a record number of entries for one of our Sponsor events and crashed a number of our Sponsor websites with the thousands of visitors to their pages who were digging for correct answers. We even had one brown-noser who went above and beyond and completed the full question board. Alas, she was not a prize winner.Here is a list of our winners:
  • Grand Prize ($100 Amazon gift card) – Amanda Kaczerski
  • $50 Amazon gift cards – Audrie Tornow, Gabriella Cruze, Don Harting, Kristi English, Elizabeth McDonald
  • $25 Amazon gift cards – Edeline Mitton, Danielle DeFour, Bonnie Bixler, Andrea Thrasher, Joanne Wise, Karin Pearson

• We’re a little more than a week away from our Spring extravaganza. If you haven’t already called out sick so that you can watch every session from your couch in your jammies, probably a good idea to start working on your cough soon.