On the heels of another wildly successful CMEpalooza Trivia Night during the Alliance Industry Conference last month, we’re trying something a little different with our Fall Sponsor Event. No more forms to fill out, no more emails to send with attached entries, no more second chances for people who don’t get enough answers correct.

That’s right, we’re (finally) going digital as we debut a very special event I’m calling CMEpalooza Multiplicity. Before anyone gets nervous that you’ll need to do any math, I can assure you that that is not the case. I simply wanted to give this event a snazzier title than “CMEpalooza Multiple Choice Quiz.”

Here is how CMEpalooza Multiplicity works:

1. There are three separate multiple choice quizzes: Our Gold sponsor quiz, our Silver sponsor quiz, and our Bronze (and other) sponsor quiz. Clicking on each individual quiz link here will bring you directly to that quiz.
2. Within each quiz, you will find a series of multiple choice questions related to each of our CMEpalooza Fall sponsors. Sure, you can blindly guess at each answer if you want, but you’ll have a better chance at answering questions correctly if you go to our Sponsor page and do some very basic research. All of the answers to our multiple choice questions can be found either on the sponsor’s homepage or one click away from it. There is nothing should require more than a minute or two of digging.
3. Complete as many quizzes as you want. The Gold quiz is the shortest (but requires a perfect score) and the Bronze quiz is the longest (but gives the most leeway on incorrect responses).
4. If you want to be entered into our prize drawing for a $100 Amazon gift card (we’re giving away 5 of them), be sure to include your real name and your real email address at the top of each quiz. You only get one crack at each quiz, so don’t squander your opportunity.
5. Be sure to click the “Submit” button at the bottom of each quiz. If you don’t, your responses won’t be recorded.

Seems simply enough, right?

You have until 5 pm ET on Friday, October 10 to complete your entries. We’ll compile all of the correct entries, put them into one of those giant Bingo hoppers with the crank, and pull out five winners.

Once again, here are the links to our three quizzes:

• Gold sponsor quiz
• Silver sponsor quiz
• Bronze (and other) sponsor quiz

Good luck. Go Phils. (note from Derek: Go Phils.)

 

I know that many, many of you are worried that the current government shutdown will impact the delivery of the daily mail. Sorting through all of the valuable brochures, flyers, and random other knickknacks that arrive at our homes or apartments on a daily basis (except for Sunday) remains an exciting part of life. I, for one, have a Pavlovian response every time I hear the mail slot open and shut on our front door. It’s usually a race between the wife and I to see who gets there first.

OK, fine, this is all a bit of sarcasm. I receive maybe 2 or 3 items in a given month that don’t go straight into the trash. And you don’t even have to worry about interruptions to mail service once the government shutdown begins — the postal service operates independently of the feds, so you’ll still get your daily deliveries. Phew.

It didn’t use to be this way, of course. I am currently reading a biography focused on the scientific discoveries of Benjamin Franklin (Derek isn’t the only one who can bore you with tales of his latest literary adventures), and there is a short section of all of the ways that everyone’s favorite founding father revolutionized the mail service during his time as our Postmaster General. Two days to deliver a letter from Philadelphia to New York City? Preposterous!

Because so many of you miss the days of writing love letters to your beau overseas, the big brains at CMEpalooza started our Ask Us Anything advice column at the start of the year, giving our community a chance to regale us with their latest professional (or personal) challenges and invite Derek and I to chime in with our thoughts to help rectify the situation.

I can’t tell you how many times this month I have been on a call with a colleague and they said, “You know, this would make a great Ask Me Anything submission.” (OK, I can tell you. It’s 3. I’m terrible at keeping secrets.)

Of these 3 individuals, I can’t tell you how many actually went onto our online portal and wrote up their submission. (OK, I can tell you. It’s zero. I won’t shame the perpetrators publicly, but they know who they are.)

Because of their laziness, that means that our virtual mailbox is not exactly overflowing with advice seekers. In past months, we refereed accreditation oddities, funder conundrums, and other professional miscellany. Surprisingly, we are still awaiting the first person who wants us to chime in with parenting or dating advice or simply wants our opinion on the best Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor (I won’t tell you – you’ll just need to ask.) (note from Derek: I’ll tell you. It’s Peanut Butter Half Baked.)

So, c’mon everyone, don’t be shy. We won’t bite.

Click here to go to our Ask Us Anything submission portal

We have had a number of new subscribers to the blog over the past couple of weeks (I’m not sure why. Maybe our billboard advertising campaign is finally paying off?), so I thought this might be a good time to review some of the core tenets of CMEpalooza as a courtesy to those of you who are new to the program or may have simply forgotten. In order to do so, we first need to talk about the Ship of Theseus.

The Ship of Theseus (a.k.a. Theseus’s Paradox) is a thought experiment about, to quote Wikipedia, “whether an object is the same object after having all of its original components replaced over time.” If I have a boat and, over time, I have replaced the rudder, the sail, the deck, the anchor, etc., is it still the same boat? If not, when did it stop being the same boat? (Before I am accused of once again making an obscure reference to something I read in a book recently, I’d like to clarify that my first exposure to the Ship of Theseus was through a podcast called The Rights to Ricky Sanchez which is, of course, a Philadelphia 76ers themed podcast. Apologies to all you Thomas Hobbes podcast fans out there.)

The Ship of Theseus paradox is relevant here because, in order to conduct this thought experiment, we must first break down the object under consideration into its essential components that could theoretically be replaced. What makes the object the object? What makes CMEpalooza CMEpalooza?

There are three core tenets of CMEpalooza:

1. It should be educational, but fun
2. It should be easy to access
3. It should be free

These are the rock-solid pillars of CMEpalooza that have held it up ever since the first palooza in March of 2014. We have other traditional elements that have become synonymous with CMEpalooza, such as:

• Scott’s biannual sponsor event/game, which will be coming next week
• The CMEpalooza STEPtacular Challenge (sponsored by Talem Health), which will take place the week of October 13
• My CMEpalooza Haiku blog post, coming October 15, unless I get a wicked case of writer’s block, which is always a possibility

But you can remove all three of these elements, and CMEpalooza will still be CMEpalooza.

CMEpalooza will always be fun, easy, and free. We have had different faculty, different topics, different formats, and a different platform. but because those three core tenets remain, the Ship of CMEpaloozeus sails on.