Hey, you know who is annoying? No, not the barista at the coffee shop yesterday who gave me a condescending look when I ordered a macchiato and sniffed, “Just so you are aware — we make a true macchiato here, which means a properly pulled shot of espresso and a dash of foamed milk. It’s not like something you would get at…[sigh]…Starbucks.” Uh, yeah, no duh, coffee-dude. Who doesn’t know that? I mean, really.

No, I’m talking about those annoying people who get to know a little something about something and suddenly they’re a “marketing guru” or a “social media ninja” or some other term that tries to emphasize expertise. I mean, I guess those things sound cool or whatever, but just because you’ve figured out how to use SnapChat to share a tweet about your most recent TikTok, it doesn’t make you some kind of masked avenger. Looks pretty rad on a business card, though.

Over the course of the past 6 years, I have probably run, I don’t know, 50 or 60 CMEpalooza sessions. We have more than 100 sessions in the Archive, so probably somewhere right around there. Multiply that by however many presenters we get for each session — usually at least 2, if not more — and I think it’s fair to say that I have a reasonable amount of experience working with faculty. I haven’t given myself a neat title like “Faculty Wrangler” or “Speaker Swami,” but I have made a few observations about some common trends among our faculty. Maybe you have noticed something similar.

Faculty, I have found, can often be grouped into three categories, similar to chocolate. Let’s take a look:

Dark Chocolate: The best of the best. Without question, dark chocolate is the superior form of chocolate. It presents with a much more complex and grown-up flavor profile than other forms of chocolate and provides a more exquisite overall tasting experience.

Faculty who fall into the dark chocolate category are easy to pick out. They don’t need the voice of a professional voice-over artist, but they are confident, well-prepared, and speak with ease. When I have my A/V test with them (as Scott and I do with all our faculty), they show-up on time, frequently have their own headset ready to go, catch on quickly, and we’re done in five minutes. It’s a joy to work with them

Not all dark chocolate is created equal, though. The Hershey’s Special Dark (sorry guys, it’s not good) faculty of the world give all the appearances of a smooth 80% cocoa, but once the spotlight is on them, they’re staring at their notes and talking in a droning monotone. The packaging is nice, but the actual taste is a disappointment.

Milk Chocolate: Milk chocolate is…good. It’s not the best, but it’s not terrible, either. Sometimes, it can even be really good, especially when it is combined with something like peanut butter. There’s a lot you can do with milk chocolate, and I think all of us are happy to have it in our lives. Milk chocolate is certainly better than no chocolate, even though it’s not as good as dark chocolate.

Milk chocolate faculty are critical to any conference. We can’t all be the best speakers in the world (I certainly am not), but we can be pretty good. Some of us, like a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup, are improved when we are combined with something else, like participating on a panel. It makes everyone a little bit better. It’s one of the big reasons that we try to encourage panel sessions when planning the agenda for CMEpalooza. Do milk chocolate faculty sometimes show up late for A/V tests, not have headphones, and take repeated instructions to understand what is going on? Sure, and that’s fine. We like milk chocolate a lot.

Side note: How is a Snickers bar like our faculty from last year’s Jake Powers, CME Detective session? They both contain nuts. HEY-OOOO! And thus ends this episode of Terrible Dad Jokes. (Note from Scott: Wait, now we’re doing episodes of Terrible Dad Jokes? I am giddy with excitement. Just wait for my next blog post…)

White Chocolate: Awful. It is true that I have been known to refer to white chocolate as the secret spawn of Satan, which is perhaps a little harsh. But as Verbal Kint taught us in The Usual Suspects, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. So, I might be on to something. Anyway, white chocolate is horrible, and you should never ever eat it, especially this abomination M&M’s created combining the flavors of white chocolate and candy corn. Why would you do this M&M’s?? WHY???

I don’t think I need to go into much detail here about white chocolate faculty. We have all had the dreadful experience of working with faculty who just aren’t very good. It’s a bad time for everyone involved. Fortunately, we have had very little experience with this type of faculty during CMEpalooza. In fact, I can really only think of one…and I’m not telling. Am I saying that just so you will have to go back through every session in the Archive to try and figure out who it is? Maybe…maybe not. (Note from Scott: I remember this person very well. Let’s just say it’s a bit awkward when we cross paths at live conferences.)

We are working diligently to finalize the agenda for CMEpalooza Spring and should have something for all of you to see fairly soon. I think I can confidently say that we will have a pleasant mix of dark chocolate faculty, milk chocolate faculty, Reese’s Peanut Butter cup faculty, and hopefully a few Snickers faculty, too.

 

It seems as if this is the week that we’re all writing about our “CME origin” stories — Derek led us off last week and Intern Katie followed him a few days ago — so I guess I’d better share mine. It’s equally riveting.

As a 16-year-old high school junior, I remember completing an assignment where we had to write a letter to ourselves 25 years in the future. You probably had to do it too – seems like one of those things every high school English teacher in the country would have conspired to assign to their students.

The assignment was given right about this time of year, so I wrote something like, “I assume you are at the Super Bowl getting ready to cover the game for Sports Illustrated.” (Keep in mind that Sports Illustrated was a big deal back then. Now? Not so much.) The details of my essay are a bit hazy, but I definitely remember writing, “I’ll be very disappointed if you aren’t doing something related to sports.”

Sigh.

Yes, 16-year-old Scott would not be particularly impressed with my career path, but as with many of us in our little CME niche, it’s actually turned out quite nicely, thank you.

Unlike Derek, I did actually find full-time work in my initial chosen field — sportswriting — spending 5 years toiling away in the glamorous “not-Phoenix” part of Arizona and the equally-glamorous “not-Chicago” part of Illinois before becoming frustrated enough with my lack of professional progress and walking away.

My first healthcare job was at a medical publication company, where they apparently churned through people like me who didn’t know the difference between a myomectomy and a myeloma every couple weeks. I was told that one recent hire started on Monday morning, went to lunch, and didn’t come back. Great. That was reassuring.

What came next was even worse. As a “Welcome to our new employee!” gesture, the team I was working with said they’d take me to lunch.

Great, I love a free meal!

I sat quietly in my corner cubicle waiting for someone to come get me “around noon.” Noon came and went. 12:05. 12:10. I didn’t want to be the annoying newbie interrupting busy people, so I waited until 12:15 to stand up and see what was going on.

The department was empty. Everyone else had gone to lunch but no one had thought to take the new guy along. Was it a hint? (Yes Derek, you can insert your snarky comment now) (Note from Derek: Too easy. I’ll let it slide.)

Anyway, I survived the day after profuse apologies (“Oh, we all thought someone else was taking you.” Sure, sure) and kept plugging away. I could talk about the intricacies of Temple basketball’s 1-2-2 zone press for hours, but now I had learn about the ABCs and XYZs of bulk allograft transplantation for osteochondral lesions of the talus. It was not easy. There were many days when I felt way, way over my head. Katie wrote about how she was overwhelmed by all of the jargon and abbreviations at her first CME department meeting. We’ve all been there.

Within a year or so, I transferred over to the medical education group and found my home. This was back in the “Wild Wild West” days of CME where supporters were typically very much involved in the development of content. I remember numerous lavish dinners the night before a live program where the “supporters” (these were all marketing folks back then) would drop lots of money on food and drink and then sit side-by-side with you the next morning at the actual program offering their thoughts or commentary to be shared “during a break.” It was certainly different.

I was likely a bit of an arrogant, self-absorbed 30-year-old know-it-all (things haven’t changed very much) as I meandered about professionally over the next decade, wondering why no one realized how brilliant I was (Note from Derek: Again, too easy.) I finally started making some real progress about a decade ago, making enough friends that striking out on my own as a freelancer back in 2014 wasn’t quite as risky as it might have otherwise been.

I’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to partner with some really talented and kind people over the last several years. I am not naturally a particularly nice person (I was quite proud of my last professional nameplate where we all were assigned a cartoon doppelgänger. I was Oscar the Grouch), but I like to think the CME world has made me a bit more well rounded. I make fun of Derek a lot – you know you love it!! – but it’s OK because he is truly one of nice guys. I think that people like me more just because I’m tied with him through CMEpalooza. I tell my son all the time, “Surround yourself with good people. That way, everyone else will think you are a good person too, even if you aren’t.” It’s good advice for you too.

(Note from Derek: Well, crap, I wasn’t expecting that. Does this mean I need to go back and delete the jokes I made about Scott?

[thinks]

Nope. Nice try, Kober.)

We’re joined again today by our CMEpalooza Spring intern, Katie, who brings her cheery, sunny personality back to the blog. Needless to say, you don’t get that from either of us, so enjoy the respite!

Hello CMEpalooza groupies — hope you are having a great day! I wanted to share with you what happened on my first day in CME and how I’ve learned the ins and outs of our little nook.

So one day while I was in a different sort of role at Memorial Sloan Kettering, I had just gotten back from going out to lunch (which I rarely do) and got a message that the vice president of human resources was looking for me.

Oh no! Did I do something wrong? Was I about to get fired for taking a 1-hour lunch? Stupid, stupid, stupid!!

So I enter her office and see that my manager is also sitting there… and now I’m really scared! Fortunately, they weren’t there to fire me, but rather to tell me that there was a department that needed some help and they both thought I would be the perfect person to assist them with a current project. I forget whether I said anything, but I guess I must have said, “OK,” because 30 minutes later, we were walking over for a 2 p.m. meeting.

I arrived and sat down with a room full of people I didn’t know throwing around a bunch of cancer terms I had never heard of, with one dizzying acronym after another. I wrote as many down as I could, planning to look things up later. At the end of the meeting, the woman sitting next to me asked nicely, “Please let me know if there is anything I can help with.” It’s one of those throwaway lines that you are supposed to say to people to be polite, right? I mean, I probably mean it, but Scott and Derek? Eh. (Note from Scott and Derek: She’s right. We don’t mean it.)

Anyway, instead of pretending I captured everything perfectly, I looked at her and asked, “WHAT DO ALL THESE LETTERS MEAN?” She kindly talked me through a few, but I was still left with a lot of research to do. The most important abbreviations that stood out for me, the ones I heard over and over, were  “ACCME” and “AMA PRA Category 1 Credits.” So I took to the ACCME and AMA websites and read through them multiple times.

That’s how I’ve primarily learned about CME – it’s been self-taught, on-the-fly education through reading, asking my peers (they should know by now not to say to me, “Please let me know if there is anything I can help with,” right?), and engaging with the CME community. I’ve also learned a lot from attending live meetings. My first was the annual ACCME meeting where I took the pre-conference session that discussed the basics of CME. I learned about the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions, became a member, and have gone to their annual meeting for the last two years. I attend the local CME meeting for providers in the northeastern United States. I learn so much from attending these meetings, not just at the sessions, but also at the networking opportunities where I have the chance to discuss my day-to-day struggles and learn best practices.

I participated in my first CMEpalooza during the Spring of 2019. I love going to the Archive page and being able to view any one of the 100+ previous CMEpalooza sessions if I’m curious about a topic or need a fresh perspective on something. Where was Jake Powers when I started in CME?!

I’ve learned when I feel puzzled about something, I’m never alone, and that no one should be afraid to ask questions. So if you’re new in the CME community, don’t be afraid to speak up when you don’t understand something — we’ve all been there!