We’re back! Did you miss us? No? I’ll rephrase: Did you miss me? Yes? Awww, thanks!

Anyway, I’m here to announce two things (drumroll…)

1. CMEpalooza Spring is going to be held on April 6, 2016
2. The opening of the CMEpalooza Spring abstract submission process is going to be…now (deadline is Feb. 1)

As you may recall from last year, CMEpalooza Spring is a bit different than CMEpalooza Fall in that instead of Scott and me picking the agenda, we let you pick the agenda. We do that through an open abstract process where anyone is welcome to submit their idea for a CMEpalooza Spring session and then we post all the abstracts online and ask the CME/CE community to choose the five sessions they are most interested in. We had over 800 votes last year and we’re hoping for even more this year!

How do you submit an abstract for CMEpalooza Spring you ask? Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezee. It’s only takes 5 steps:

1. Come up with an good great amazing idea
2. Go here and complete the form
3. Make yourself a cup of coffee. I recommend using an AeroPress. If you’re going to use a Keurig, I suggest just boiling water and adding brown food coloring. Pretty much the same thing.
4. Twiddle thumbs
5. Click the submit button

And you’re done!

I should add that, based on the success of the CME Pecha Kucha at CMEpalooza Fall, we are planning to bring it back for CMEpalooza Spring. We’ll have a separate application process for that, which we’ll announce later on, so keep that in mind while you’re brainstorming abstract ideas.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to let Scott or I know. Below is a picture of our new intern triaging all of the CMEpalooza questions that flood in every day. He’s waiting for your call/email now!

This is a tale of two men.

One of the men — let’s call him, oh, how about…Skott? — used his downtime after CMEpalooza Fall to do something productive. Skott was a busy beaver and updated the CMEpalooza archive by taking all of the new CMEpalooza Fall sessions and adding them to the archive page by category. Good job, Skott!

If you’ve never had a chance to check out the archive page, you really should, especially if you have a particular topic you’re interested in. Need a refresher on educational design? There are eleven sessions you can watch. Suddenly thrust into the role of “outcomes expert” at your organization? Get a crash course in outcomes from the fourteen(!) sessions housed in the archive. It’s a pretty handy resource.

The other man — let’s call him Erek for anonymity’s sake — used his extra free time to write a 3000 word CMEpalooza-themed ghost story supposedly based on the events that transpired the night before CMEpalooza Fall. Erek is a bit of a wacko and admits that this may not have been the best use of his time. Skott just thinks it’s weird. In his defense, Erek would like to point out that he once wrote an even longer story about a hard-boiled CME Detective, so this should come as no surprise to anyone. He has posted a link to it here for those bored enough to take a gander.

Both of these men would like to once again thank everyone who participated in last week’s successful CMEpalooza Fall and wish you all a Happy Halloween!

Would you like to take a survey?

Please?

If you watched any of our CMEpalooza Fall sessions yesterday and haven’t yet taken our survey/evaluation (64 people have done it so far), we would really really appreciate it if you would take 60 seconds, click the TOTALLY AWESOME SURVEY link (now with even more awesome!!!), and fill it out: TOTALLY AWESOME SURVEY

It helps us get a better idea of how many people participated and we really do use the comments to guide our planning process. And if you have taken our survey, then thank you, thank you, thank you!