5. You don’t need to travel anywhere to watch. Unless you are the type of person who loves waking up early, fighting traffic to the airport, parking, waiting in the security line, taking off your belt and shoes, putting your belt and shoes back on, sitting in an uncomfortable seat while trying to get work done using the airport’s spotty Wifi, buying an overpriced coffee at the airport coffee shop, shouldering through the crowd of people gathered around the entrance gate even though their zone hasn’t been called yet, sitting in an uncomfortable seat while trying to get work done using the airplane’s spotty Wifi, bonking your head on the airplane ceiling when you stand up to de-plane (that might just be me), waiting for a taxi/Uber/Lyft to take you to your hotel, checking in at the hotel, registering at the conference, and finally sitting down at a round table with ice water and those weird fruity candies — not needing to travel is a nice perk.

4. It’s a good excuse to binge-watch Season 7 of Game of Thrones. This goes along with reason #5 — if you don’t need to travel anywhere, then you can tell your boss you are going to stay at home to watch CMEpalooza Fall and not have to deal with constant distractions, like Larry from accounting always stopping by your office to tell you about his Fantasy Football team (nobody cares, Larry!) And while I would never encourage anyone to do this, since all of the CMEpalooza Fall sessions are recorded and immediately archived, you theoretically could spend the day watching all of season 7 of Game of Thrones in order to catch up before season 8 begins, and then watch the archived versions of the palooza sessions later on. I’m not saying you should do this, just that you could do this. If you wanted to. (Side note: my wife would like to recommend everyone binge-watch Outlander instead, which she claims is just as good as Game of Thrones. My counter to this is: does Outlander have dragons? No. Does it have zombies? No. Does it have zombie dragons? No. Then it’s not as good as Game of Thrones. Point for me.)

3. Scott might do something nuts. Tap dance routine? Tuvan throat singing? New tattoo reveal? You never know with that guy. Tune in to find out!

2. Have you seen the agenda? Seriously, have you? It’s quite good.

1. It’s free. Always has been and always will be. I mean, if you want to pay us a registration fee just out of habit, that’s fine, we’ll take it. I’m not actually sure how we would do that, but we could figure it out. Maybe bitcoin or something? On second thought, forget it. Please don’t pay us a registration fee even if you want to. It will just lead to more emails back and forth between Scott and me arguing about how to set up a Venmo account on the website and I’ll end up saying something about trusting the process and Scott will throw out a reference to some obscure 80’s sitcom I’ve never heard of and we already spend way too much time doing this and don’t need an excuse to do it more. So, back to my original point: CMEpalooza is free!

This past weekend, I spent my Saturday morning watering the plants in the backyard and listening to podcasts.

(A brief digression, if I may. When I think of great opening lines in literature, some of the first that come to mind are from Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities [“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”], Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow [“A screaming comes across the sky.”], and King’s The Gunslinger [“The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”] Unlikely to be included in that group in the future is “This past weekend, I spent my Saturday morning watering the plants in the backyard and listening to podcasts.” Maybe next time!) (Note from Scott: Someone needs to be reminded what the word “brief” means)

The host of the podcast was moaning about fans of the Philadelphia Eagles (who won the Super Bowl in February, in case you hadn’t heard) and their penchant for never missing an opportunity to remind you that they won the Super Bowl this year (touché). I admit to chuckling a bit over his laments and then mumbling to myself that the same can probably be said about fans of any team who have just won a championship of some sort. Then I went inside to make myself an iced coffee and noticed the following on the back of the bag of coffee beans:

For those who may not know, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots 41-33 in the Super Bowl. Also, Tom Brady dropped the football. Perhaps the podcast host was on to something.

Now you may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with CMEpalooza? Well, I will tell you, but first please watch this very important video clip.

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CMEPALOOZA I JUST WANTED TO RUB IT IN ONE MORE TIME BEFORE THE SEASON STARTS THURSDAY HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Also, I updated the CMEpalooza archive with all of the Spring 2018 sessions. We now have over 80 archived sessions, so head on over and take a look. And please share with anyone you think might would benefit from these FREE sessions.

Go Birds!

Hey gang! Derek here. I wanted to have a little chat with all of you about CMEpalooza (Again. I originally posted this in 2017, but some people never learn). Not the actual Fall event, mind you. Until we have the agenda totally set (we’re almost there), we don’t have much more to tell you about it. No, I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend lately, and I wanted to bring it to a quick end. I’m here to talk to you about the word “CMEpalooza.”

Here’s the thing — it’s”CMEpalooza.” It’s not “CMEPalooza” or “CMEPALOOZA” or…(ugh)…”CME palooza.” It’s one word with the first three letters capitalized. It’s a mash up of “CME” and “palooza.” It’s a palooza of CME. It’s CMEpalooza.

In one of the first emails Scott sent me when we first started working on CMEpalooza together, he referred to it as “CMEPalooza.” I responded to him with a threat of fisticuffs if he ever spelled it that way again. It’s one of the few arguments I’ve ever won with him. To be fair, most of our arguments rarely extend beyond this exchange:

Me: Hey, should we try this?
Scott: No.
Me: Why not?
Scott: Because it’s dumb.
Me: Good point.

So, winning this argument was no great feat. Still, I even had “CMEpalooza” t-shirts made. See?

What I’m trying to-…wait a minute. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That’s right — CMEPALOOZA T-SHIRT CANNON AT THE NEXT ALLIANCE CONFERENCE!!! I can see it now. The first day’s keynote speaker finishes up and we’re just about ready to break for the first round of plenary sessions, when all of a sudden a loud siren begins to sound, I run onto the stage with a massive t-shirt cannon while Scott grabs the microphone and yells out “WHOOOOOOOOO WANTS A T-SHIRT?!?” The crowd goes wild as  Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It”  blares overhead and I begin firing t-shirts left and right. Man, that would be great.

Where was I? Oh, right — just remember: If you’re writing it out, it’s “CMEpalooza.” All one word, no capital “P.” Now, does anyone know where I can rent a t-shirt cannon for cheap?