Last Wednesday, Radiohead surprise released a new album (it isn’t really a new album, so to speak, but a new live album of old songs, which, as I always say, old Radiohead is better than no Radiohead) and gave me the great idea that I should surprise release a new CMEpalooza blog post to, you know, generate buzz, and guerilla marketing, and increase synergies, and whatnot, though it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to do a suprise CMEpalooza blog post if I told Scott about the surprise CMEpalooza blog post, so I had to figure out a way to write up a surprise CMEpalooza blog post without telling him I was doing that, which is a little bit tricky since I usually send him a heads-up whenever I have a draft of a new post, so he can edit all my typos, crazy punctuation, and run-on sentences, which he is much better at than I am (don’t tell him I said that), but I can’t send him a heads-up of a surprise CMEpalooza blog post because then the surprise would no longer be a surprise and that would ruin most of the fun of it, which is why I decided to write the surprise CMEpalooza blog post as one long run-on sentence, because then the only punctuation I need to worry about is commas and parentheses and I mostly know how to use commas and parentheses (it’s those dastardly semicolons and em dashes that always get me) and also then I don’t need to bother with all those annoying rules of paragraph formation, like only one idea per paragraph, blah, blah, blah, geez, give me a break, I mean, if that Norwegian guy Jon Fosse can write a 700-page novel as one long winding sentence and win the dang Nobel Prize for Literature, than surely I can do the same for one surprise CMEpalooza blog post, though I have to admit that I have discovered one flaw in my plan for a surprise CMEpalooza blog post, which is that I don’t really have any particularly urgent or new news to share that is worthy of a surprise CMEpalooza blog post, making this, uh, all a bit awkward, unless, let me check, yes, yes, we do have a few new updates to the CMEpalooza agenda that I can report, including new information about the 4 PM Afternoon Snack Session (sponsored by Medscape), and additional faculty added for a couple of the other sessions, so please be sure to check out the updated CMEpalooza agenda if you have not done so recently and thank you for reading my surprise CMEpalooza blog post.

Last week, I received an email from Scott informing me that he wrote up a blog post to let everyone know that we are doing CMEpalooza Trivia Night (again) at the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS). This was very generous of him to do, considering he is currently on vacation…somewhere (He told me where, but I don’t remember. Probably somewhere very expensive and glamorous like Monte Carlo or Bora Bora. Here’s a picture he sent me of him contemplating what to write for the blog):

(NOTE FROM SCOTT: We are in Sweden for 10 days – half in Stockholm, half in Gothenburg. If anyone wants to meet up to rag on Derek while I’m here, hit me up)

Despite being in vacation mode, he managed to crank out a very nice 1,500-word blog post about the importance of educators making a personal connection with unwilling learners. My only complaint is that readers had to scroll through nine paragraphs and 1,200 words before reaching the first mention of CMEpalooza Trivia Night. I’m flattered by the number of subscribers the CMEpalooza blog has (now well over 1,000), but I’m not enough of a blowhard to think that all of you read every single word we write. So, I’d like to reintroduce CMEpalooza Trivia Night just to make sure more of you are aware of it.

Here are the key details:

• WHAT: CMEpalooza Trivia Night
• WHEN: During AIS from 6-7:30 pm on Tuesday, Sept. 9
• WHERE: Hilton at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia (same location as AIS)
• WHY: Because it’s fun!,
• HOW: This is an excellent question. Typically for our trivia events we have five rounds of 5 questions. The first four questions of each round will be related to the theme of that round and the last question of each round will be a pop culture question.

Here is a general breakdown of the types of questions you will encounter during CMEpalooza Trivia Night (subject to change, etc., etc.):

Rounds 1, 2, and 4: Questions from AIS days 1 & 2. We try to create one question from each session from the first two days of AIS. If you are presenting on either of these days, we might be reaching out to you for help with developing a question from your session. As an example, this is one of the questions from last year’s CMEpalooza Trivia Night (I’ll put the answers at the very end.)

Which of the following was NOT mentioned by today’s Outcomes Panel as a way to leverage outcomes to showcase the value of medical education to your organization?

1. Develop a social media campaign
2. Have a poster gallery day
3. Create quarterly infographic outcomes reports
4. Present outcomes to internal stakeholders

Round 3: This is a special round dedicated to our sponsor for the evening, AcademicCME. All questions for this round will feature AcademicCME or AcademicCME-adjacent trivia. For example:

AcademicCME’s Tim Hayes and family vacation every summer in Ocean City, NJ. Which of the following “facts” about OCNJ is true?

1. It is the marlin fishing capital of the world
2. The city bylaws include a prohibition on painting any house within city limits purple
3. It is a “dry town,” prohibiting the sale of any alcohol within city limits
4. It is the birthplace of singer Frankie Avalon

Round 5: CME Wildcard! (I used an exclamation mark to make it sound more exciting!) This section will consist of general questions related to CME, AIS, the Alliance and/or the ACCME. Here is an example from last year:

Which one of the following does the Alliance suggest as a way to celebrate Healthcare Education Professionals Day?

1. Host an awards ceremony
2. Send out cards or e-cards
3. Give an extra day off
4. Make a large cash donation to CMEpalooza

Pop Culture Questions: As I mentioned previously, the last question of each round will be a pop culture question. We’re using “pop culture” as a bit of a catch-all term here. It basically means questions on any topic other than CME or AIS. It could be anything from TV shows to movies to history to sports to whatever. Since AIS is in our hometown, there’s a more than likely chance that these questions will have a Philly slant to them. Here is an example from last year:

Daryl Hall and John Oates, the founding members of Hall & Oates, met while attending which university?

1. Penn
2. Drexel
3. Villanova
4. Temple

Now that you know all about CMEpalooza Trivia Night, make your plans now to join us. There will be snacks. There will be prizes. We’ll be done in time for you to make your dinner reservation. See you in September!

ANSWER KEY: Correct answers in GREEN

Which of the following was NOT mentioned by today’s Outcomes Panel as a way to leverage outcomes to showcase the value of medical education to your organization?

1. Develop a social media campaign 
2. Have a poster gallery day
3. Create quarterly infographic outcomes reports
4. Present outcomes to internal stakeholders

AcademicCME’s Tim Hayes and family vacation every summer in Ocean City, NJ. Which of the following “facts” about OCNJ is true?

1. It is the marlin fishing capital of the world
2. The city bylaws include a prohibition on painting any house within city limits purple
3. It is a “dry town,” prohibiting the sale of any alcohol within city limits
4. It is the birthplace of singer Frankie Avalon

Which one of the following does the Alliance suggest as a way to celebrate Healthcare Education Professionals Day?

1. Host an awards ceremony
2. Send out cards or e-cards
3. Give an extra day off
4. Make a large cash donation to CMEpalooza

Daryl Hall and John Oates, the founding members of Hall & Oates, met while attending which university?

1. Penn
2. Drexel
3. Villanova
4. Temple

An argument can be made that Robert Caro – author of The Power Broker and the four volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson – is the greatest biographer, if not greatest writer of nonfiction, of the past century. The Power Broker celebrated its 50^th anniversary in print in 2024, including a special exhibit at the New York Historical Society (if you hurry, you can still visit. The exhibit closes the first week in August. It’s well worth the trip.). Meanwhile, the literary world eagerly (and somewhat nervously) awaits the fifth and final volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which the 89-year-old Caro is still writing and for which he has not yet announced a release date.

There are many aspects of Caro’s writing that elevate him to the pantheon of “great”: his turn-every-page style of investigative journalism, the type of immense dedication to understanding his subjects that he willingly moves from NYC to the Hill Country of Texas to better comprehend the environment around LBJ’s formative childhood years. But for me, the reason I read anything Caro writes is his ability to make even the most mundane topics fascinating.

The Power Broker is a 1,300-page tome (and only limited to 1,300 pages because that was the maximum number of pages that could be bound in a single volume) about early-20^th century urban planning in NYC and the man who made it all happen (Robert Moses). It’s riveting and reads like a novel.

The Path to Power, the first volume of the LBJ series, opens with a lengthy overview of the Texas Hill Country landscape, including three pages dedicated solely to describing the wild grasses of the region. It’s captivating and sets the tone for the entire series.

Today we are releasing the mostly complete agenda for CMEpalooza Fall 2025 (Wednesday, October 22.) As usual, we have designed CMEpalooza with the same spiritual essence as a Robert Caro book: to be both informative and entertaining. Our goal is to take topics that, while important, can also be a bit dry if not presented appropriately and turn them into and enjoyable educational experiences for everyone.

You will see some of the standard topics on the agenda – accreditation standards, grant review, outcomes assessment, etc. – though all with a unique ‘Palooza spin. But you will also see some newer topics that we are featuring for the first time, such as social listening and utilizing circadian rhythm science in educational event planning. We’re happy with the blend of sessions and hope you will be too. And if you’re not, blame Scott.

We still have some pending information for a couple of the sessions and will be making updates over the next few weeks. For now, take a few minutes to peruse the agenda, block off your calendar for Wednesday, October 22, and enjoy the remaining weeks of summer!

Click here for the CMEpalooza Fall 2025 agenda!