It should surprise no one that Derek is a natural pessimist. Virtually any time I ask him a question where he has to guess a number that speaks to the popularity of CMEpalooza (ie, “How many people do you think will watch our live sessions?” or “How many sponsors do you think we’ll get this year?”), he usually predicts some ridiculously low number that causes me to roll my eyes. Fortunately, he’s been wrong far more often than he’s been right (note from Derek: this is accurate.)

And so when we set on a search for our CMEpalooza Fall intern – mind you, even after a successful kickoff of our Spring internship program —  his prediction on the number of applicants we’d get was roughly equivalent to the number of Pulitzer Prizes this blog is bound to win in the future (that would be “Zero.” OK, maybe he predicted “1.”).

Fortunately, Mr. Pessimism was wrong once again and the applications came in waves, despite the challenge we posed to our prospective interns to write us a haiku (for those who botched it, it’s 5-7-5. Probably good to remember for the future).

Of the many worthy applicants, we both picked the same person, meaning that there would be no virtual arm wrestling match to figure out who would be chosen. And so with that, let’s all welcome our Fall intern to the mix.

Hello CMEpalooza Family!

My name is Tejuana Moore, but everyone calls me TJ. I’m beyond thrilled to be the Fall intern for CMEpalooza! I’m working on having my business cards printed right away.

Tejuana (TJ) Moore
CMEpalooza Fall Intern

I think it has a nice ring to it! I’ll admit that when I received an email from Scott and Derek on Monday, I was reading it thinking that I had not been selected. I read the email at least three times before it sunk in that I had in fact been chosen for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

So a little about myself. When I was younger, I used to pretend that I was a CME professional for all types of medical specialties. I imagined reading through disclosures to make sure that faculty members were in fact eligible to present or plan the content. I pretended to write out designation and accreditation statements on activities that had CME credit attached to them. I especially loved pretending to calculate how many hours of CME an activity received. And now, I’m living my dream.

…Just kidding of course.

Like all of you, I literally stumbled into the CME world. I started my career as an annual meeting coordinator for a nonprofit organization. Although the work was daunting and repetitive, I soon realized that this work was the stem to the core of the organization’s success. The core of the annual meeting was the education sessions. This intrigued me, so I moved on to governance and education, since 98% of the sessions at the annual meeting were selected by committees. Once I realized the important role of the education created by specialty societies in the careers of their members, I understood why CME was such an intricate piece of the puzzle. And, so here I am, having served in my current role as CME Manager at the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology for a little over a year.

My ultimate professional goal, at least for now, is to become a CME guru, which is why I applied to be the CMEpalooza Fall intern. I hope to learn as much as I possibly can during my internship and glean valuable experience from these two talented and witty gentlemen (Scott, of course, is the more talented and wittier of the two) (note from Scott: I don’t write this stuff. Honest. I just confirm its accuracy) (note from Derek: This is an outrage! Scott is brainwashing the interns before I get a chance to brainwash the interns!)

I have followed the CMEpalooza blog for some time now and have had the opportunity to tune into four live CMEpalooza events. I can say with confidence that working with this team is a “CME Dream come true.”

 

Hey gang! Derek here. I wanted to have a little chat with all of you about CMEpalooza (Yes, again. I originally posted this in 2017, then again in 2018, but some people never learn.) Not the actual Fall event, mind you. Until we have the agenda totally set (we’re working on it), we don’t have much more to tell you about it, though Scott will undoubtedly have an update on our intern search soon (note from Scott: He’s right. I will).

No, what I wanted to chat about today is the continuation of a disturbing trend, and one that I want to try and bring to an 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 “CMEpallooza” 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 ever he 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: Fair point.

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

As someone who has his name misspelled more often than it is spelled correctly (Derek, Derik, Derrick, Dereck, Derick, Darek, Darik, Deric, Derk), I am perhaps a little oversensitive to the incorrect spellings. Still, CMEpalooza is my baby and a little piece of me dies inside every time I get an email asking me a question about “CME palooza.”

The moral of the story is this: it’s “CMEpalooza.” All one word, no capital “P.” The next person to write it wrong gets banned. From something. Not quite sure what, but I’ll figure it out.

Last week, we announced the opening of the application process for our CMEpalooza Fall intern. You may have seen the news on the ticker of one of your favorite cable news stations (alas, we were not deemed important enough for those hard-hitting news anchors to actually discuss and debate. Their loss).

I suspect, however, that many of you dismissed the news without giving it a second thought. “Why would I want to be an intern? I have 15 years of experience in CME, I work full time, and I am just barely surviving being cooped up at home for the foreseeable future with my spouse, our two bratty kids, and a cat with bladder issues. An internship? No thanks.”

Look, I get it. You think of an intern and you see a 20-something year old right out of Hollywood casting ready to take on the corporate world and get a leg up on the rat race.

But that’s not what a CMEpalooza internship is. For starters, there is only one intern for each of our meetings so you are special right from the start. Secondly, you aren’t getting us coffee (no matter how many times Derek may ask you to), you won’t be making hundreds of copies of our Fall agenda (there is no copier), and you won’t even need to tweet to your friends and colleagues how great CMEpalooza is (though that would be nice). There is no mindless busywork because “we don’t have time to spend with you.” This is actually something that will be fun.

As the CMEpalooza Fall intern, you’ll get to do basically whatever you want to do. You get to tap into your creative side that has been beaten down these last few months. Your name gets out to the CME community as someone who cares about our industry and has something important to say. And hey, you get to work with Derek and I (OK, let’s ignore that one as a perk).

There are many more details about the nuts and bolts of this internship on last week’s post that I’m not going to rehash here. If you are interested in applying, you have until the stroke of midnight ET on Friday, July 3 to submit your application. There isn’t much to it, but you should probably be familiar with the structure of a haiku (it’s 5-7-5 people).