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.

Today is the deadline for entries into CMEpalooza Pursuit – forms must be sent to me before midnight ET. Don’t forget that we’re giving away $500 in Amazon gift cards and really only asking for 5-10 minutes of your time. You never know, you might learn something along the way too.

Here is a reminder of how to play:

Here are the rules of CMEpalooza Pursuit:

1. Call up the Sponsor page on the CMEpalooza website. You’ll need this for reference purposes to access our Sponsors’ websites.

2. Download the CMEpalooza Pursuit question form by clicking on this link.

You’ll see that questions are divided into categories that will be familiar to anyone who has ever played Trivial Pursuit – Geography, Entertainment, History, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, and Sports & Leisure. There are three questions within each category, the answers to which can all be found on the sponsoring company website.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to answer every question – just one per category. If you want to be the teacher’s pet, of course, you can answer every question, though you get no formal extra credit, just that all over warm feeling for a job well done.

3. Download the CMEpalooza Pursuit answer form by clicking on this link. This is where you will enter in your answers – remember, only one answer is required per category. I promise that none of the questions are tricky or difficult. If it takes you more than 10 minutes to complete the entire challenge, you are doing something wrong.

4. Email me your completed answer form. It’s scott@medcasewriter.com. All completed forms will be entered into our drawing. One entry per person. Perhaps you make this a company-wide challenge and have your entire team enter individually. Perhaps you keep this a secret so that your chances of winning improve. Whatever. Just make sure that your entry is submitted by the deadline of midnight ET on Thursday, April 6.

We’re all about innovation at CMEpalooza – heck, Derek broke every rule of common sense and ate his bowl of Lucky Charms at his desk this morning with a spork (he claims, “You need to try it, dude” but I remain skeptical).

Hopefully we have a few more interesting innovations for the CME community in the next few weeks. We’re rolling out one of them this morning.

Our friends at PlatformQ approached us a few weeks ago and asked us if we were interested in using their online “Q Board” during one of one Spring sessions. Never one to shy away from people offering him something for free, Derek quickly answered, “Oh my God, yes, yes. Thank you so much, thank you. I love you, I love you, I love you…. er, wait, what’s a QBoard?”

Being the more grounded and logical part of our duo, I was a little more circumspect, but nonetheless after taking the platform for a brief test drive, I thought it would be worth a try this Spring.

And so we’re making a special CMEpalooza QBoard available in preparation for our 2 p.m. ET Spring session entitled, “What is Data Visualization and How Can I Apply It?”

It’s a very simple platform. Here is how it works:

1. Take a look at the description for the “Data Viz” session on our Spring agenda page and think about anything specific you’d like to hear or ask about during the session
2. Click on this link to open the QBoard
3. Either type in a new question using the “Ask” button or up-vote a current question to make it a higher priority for our panel

That’s really about it. Our crack interns have pre-populated the QBoard with a few questions of their own, but feel free to contribute others. Our panel has promised to gear their discussion as much as possible to the questions that come in.