I am compelled to point out to everyone that at 3 pm ET on the day of CMEpalooza Fall (October 16), there is going to be a session that is essentially a dramatization featuring a CME detective named Jake Powers. I am not making this up. This is an actual session that you will be able to watch live, as it happens. Here is a sample scene:

Eddie Malone looks up from forging signatures on an LOA for a CME program that occurred 2 months ago and glares at his partner-in-crime, Frank Falco, who is pacing a hole in the already threadbare burnt orange rug in their fifth-floor walk-up.

“Sit down, you friggin’ lunatic,” Eddie growls around his unlit Cuban. “You’re makin’ me seasick with all the back and forth. You want me to yack all over these papers?”

Frank glaces at Eddie with the uneasiness of a terrier after two bowls of water and throws himself into a ratty yellow Lay-Z-Boy, dirty stuffing trickling out of the split seams.

“We shouldn’t a dunnit, Eddie! We shouldn’t a dunnit! It was too risky, and they’re on to us. I know it! We shoulda just gave ’em the buffet dinner like we said we was!”

“Shut your yap, you dang fool. It’s the perfect crime. We say we’re havin’ dinner, get grant moneys for it, don’t have the dinner, pocket the moolah, and no one’s the wiser!”

Frank shakes his head and takes a slug straight from the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam he’s been cradling like a baby.

“Somebody’s gonna snitch.”

“Yeah, well, snitches get sti-“

A pounding on the front door causes Frank to drop the bottle, amber liquid gurgling between cracks in the decrepit floorboards. He looks wildly at Eddie, eyes wide with fear. Eddie holds up a finger to shush him and reaches for the top drawer of his desk.

“Who is it?” he barks out, slowly removing his cellphone from the desk drawer.

The gravely voice that answers sends a tremor from the top of Eddie’s greasy head to the base of his scoliosic spine.

“It’s Powers. Jake Powers. I’m a CME detective, and you two rats are coming with me.”

Eddie begins thumbing a number into his phone while Frank babbles incoherently into his hands.

“Powers,” Eddie mutters. “Why did it have to be Powers?”

OK, I totally made that up. I have no idea what they’re actually doing, but it’s still intriguing, right? I mean, c’mon, a CME detective? What could be better than that? (Don’t answer that.)

The point is – and the point Scott made with yesterday’s post – you should definitely try to tune in for the afternoon sessions during CMEpalooza Fall. All the sessions are going to to be great, but the last two of the day, I think, are particularly creative and fun. You won’t want to miss them.

As a side note, for anyone wondering where the heck the idea of a CME detective came from, I am somewhat chagrined to admit it comes from an unfinished story I wrote on my old blog back in 2011. A period of time when I clearly had too much time on my hands. But if you are a sucker for original source material, feel free to give it a read.

I loved game shows as a kid, even a really young kid. While everyone else was outside playing fun preschool suburban games like “Put This Stick Up Your Nose” and “Run As Fast As You Can Into the Pricker Bush,” I spent every weekday morning from 11 am-noon watching The Price is Right. The good version. Back when Bob Barker was hosting it. Yes, he’s still alive. He’s 95. I looked it up.

There were others I liked too. Card Sharks was good (I watched the recent reboot for about 5 minutes. Terrible). Joker’s Wild (didn’t watch the reboot). Sale of the Century.

When I was maybe 5 or 6, I decided that if I couldn’t co-produce a twice-annual meeting for CME professionals, then I wanted to be a game show host. The ones I admired were all skinny, gawky, white dudes, just like me. I was the next Bert Convy, a Bill Cullen just waiting to be discovered, a Wink Martindale with a normal name.

As I got older and school interrupted my game show habits (my elementary school nurse was partial to Password. Amazing how often I got a stomachache exactly at 10 am), I had to settle for those game shows that came on in the after school hours. They perhaps aren’t as well remembered, but there were lots of them and I loved (OK, liked) them all. Hot Potato had amazing graphics. That was my favorite.

Fast forward to 2019. No, I am unfortunately not going to be the next Bob Eubanks, but when it came time to figure out a session to anchor CMEpalooza Fall 2019, I figured it was time to live out my boyhood dream. And so was born The Great, Big, Play at Home in Your Jammies CME Quiz. It’s from 4-5 pm ET on Wednesday, October 16.

This session has everything a good game show needs:

• Competition – everyone can play, for free, using the Poll Everywhere app or by going to a URL we’ll provide before the session (it’ll be http://www.pollev/cmepalooza). You need to be smart and answer quickly to rack up the points.
• Catchy theme music — Derek has promised to sing “Edelweiss” at the start of the session
• Really cool celebrity guests — If you liked Nipsey Russell or Soupy Sales popping up on every single game show in the ’80s, you’ll love the celebrities joining us for this session (they are also known as “faculty”). Each of our “celebrities” has been integrally involved in developing questions and/or serving on the planning committee for the CCMEP/CHCP exam so they know their stuff.
• Prizes – Yes, even better than a year’s supply of Turtle Wax. There will be at least $500 in prize money to be given out. Medscape is currently our sole prize sponsor, but if your organization wants to join in, shoot me an email and we’ll figure something out.

Now, go away. The Game Show Network is doing a marathon of Supermarket Sweep reruns starting in 5 minutes.

That shriek of terror you heard a few weeks ago at 9:15 am ET? Yeah, that was Derek when I emailed him to tell him that Google Hangouts On Air (GHOAs) were officially, finally, kaput. It was something that had been rumored for a while but frankly, we don’t listen to rumors (well, unless it’s a rumor about the Philadelphia 76ers trading a 2023 second-round draft pick for a third-string center. That we are interested in. [note from Derek: this feels like Scott is challenging me to work current 76ers third-string center Kyle O’Quinn into my next blog post. Challenge accepted, Kober!!).

As you may be aware, we’ve been using GHOAs (or its more recent incarnation, YouTube Live, which was the same thing with a different name) since the very beginning of CMEpalooza. It was technology that was predictable, reliable, relatively easy to master, and, of course, free. Being a Google product, it automatically linked to YouTube, making it easy for us to embed broadcasts on the CMEpalooza website and then archive. The technology wasn’t perfect, and we learned a lot about troubleshooting problems over the years, but all in all, it worked well enough and we knew how to use it for our needed purposes.

So then you can imagine there was good reason Derek began shrieking like, well, this when I broke the bad news to him. Truth be told, I was panicked a bit myself as I quickly searched the Interwebs for “Replacement technology for Google Hangouts.” I figured it would take a while – a day, maybe two – before we found something that might, maybe, work as a platform for CMEpalooza.

Happily, it took all of about 15 minutes before we stumbled onto a website called StreamYard, which has a broadcast platform that was developed by two millennials who look like they graduated high school one night, rolled out of bed the next morning, and threw something together before heading to Taco Bell for a 4 pm chalupa. Here they are (I won’t even try to pronounce “Geige” but I will steal his hair. Heck, I’ll steal anyone’s hair):

Derek and I did some initial testing of the StreamYard platform, and found it intuitive, relatively easy to master, and, of course, free (for now). Like GHOAs, Streamyard also links directly to YouTube. It looks slightly different than GHOAs from a viewers perspective, but it’s a pretty decent facsimile. In some ways, it’s even better than GHOAs. They don’t have a lot of useless bells and whistles, they added some useful screen sharing features, and other small stuff that you probably don’t care about.

We wanted to wait until we had done a few AV tests with our Fall panelists before crowing about our sleuthing, but now that we have several behind us that all went smoothly, cock-a-frigging-doodle-doo. Yeah, that’s a rooster and not a crow. I know. Move along.

So here are today’s takeaways:

1. Derek panics easily (another note from Derek: Am I worried that Scott just jinxed us by bragging about how great this new technology works? Of course I am!!)
2. There are young people who are really good at technology and can create stuff in their sleep (as long as they are still living at home and don’t have to pay rent)
3. CMEpalooza is saved.

And oh yeah, it’s a month(ish) away from our broadcast date of CMEpalooza Fall (Wednesday, October 16). Don’t forget.