Announcement #1: Google Hangouts On Air Is Dead But CMEpalooza Is Not

Here is an abbreviated version of my email exchange with Scott yesterday morning:

Scott: Google killed Hangouts On Air last month. It’s gone.

Me: Well…that’s not good.

Scott: Nope. We should probably find an alternative.

[googles “Google Hangouts On Air alternative”] 

[clicks first link he sees]

Scott: Problem solved. I found something.

Me: Great. Let’s use that.

And that’s pretty much how it all went down (minus a few swear words and inappropriate gestures.) Google did indeed kill Google Hangouts On Air (GHOA), which is the platform we have used to run CMEpalooza since it’s inception. And in about five minutes, we (Scott) found an alternative to use that is pretty dang close to the same as GHOA. We are still testing it out, but have been pleased with how it has performed during our trial runs. I really don’t think you will see much of a difference. With the certainty of death, taxes, and the Phillies bullpen blowing a 3-run lead, CMEpalooza will continue on.

Announcement #2: The CMEpalooza Archive Has Been Updated

I updated the CMEpalooza archive to include all of the sessions from 2019 CMEpalooza Spring. We now have a total of…I don’t know how many sessions. Honestly, it was sort of a stressful day and I didn’t bother to count them. It’s a lot. I’m going to guess it’s 97 sessions in the archive. Ninety-seven sounds like a good number. It’s also the same number of times I banged my head on my desk when I found out GHOA was gone.

Announcement #3: Send In Your Questions For The CMEpalooza Grants Hotline

Yes, they’re not due until September 13, but why wait? Click here and send them in now!! 

The following is a factual statement: the #1 requested topic for CMEpalooza (Every. Single. Time.) is “More content about grants.” It doesn’t matter how many times we do one, people want more. With that in mind, now is your opportunity to get all your grants-related questions answered. The Grants Hotline is officially open and operators are standing by!

Our Grants Hotline session is scheduled for 11 AM ET during CMEpalooza Fall (Wednesday, Oct. 16), and the concept is fairly simple. Submit your question via one of the methods listed below and our expert panel will answer it*. That’s it, that’s the session. The more questions you ask, the more content we have.

*I feel obligated to state that your question needs to be related to the grants process, panelists can opt out of questions they aren’t comfortable answering, and we might not be able to get to every question. So for all you wisenheimers who want to come up with a “hilarious” question that you think will “make our day,” I mean, go ahead, but you’ll be wasting some of your wonderful creativity on an audience of, maybe, two people.

How to submit your questions:

Option #1:

Option #2: Text your questions to the Grants Hotline at 267-666-0CME (0263)

We are going to leave the Grants Hotline open until September 13, so you have two weeks to get your questions in. After that, you will just have to wait until CMEpalooza on October 16. Rumor has it that our fearless moderator will be showing off his Hotline Bling dance moves at the end of the session. Tune in to find out! (note: he didn’t actually tell me that he would be dancing, nor did I ask him, but he also didn’t not tell me that he would be dancing, so who knows?)

When Derek and I flew down to our multi-day, tropical, semiannual CMEpalooza retreat earlier this summer, we spent many days thinking and strategizing about the future of our wildly-successfully extravaganza.

Me (said silently): “We’ve come so far in 5 years, but we could go so much farther. How do we expand our footprint and impact on this world so desperate for our education?”

Derek (said aloud): “I wonder how many more banana daiquiris I can consume before Happy Hour pricing ends?”

Yes, we all get there in our own ways, but once our focus sharpened (the answer, Derek tells me, was five. Five more banana daiquiris), we did indeed come up a lot of exciting and innovative ideas. Alas, all of those exciting and innovative ideas unfortunately were forgotten the instant that our kindly cocktail waitress told Derek after banana daiquiri number 4 that, “You look like you need a vacation.”

Thus was born the International CMEpalooza Summer Promotional Road Trip.

In early August, I spent several days lugging my family around Montreal speaking to countless potential CMEpalooza consumers about our event. I don’t speak a lick of French, but just kept saying “Mon dieu!” every time a question was asked of me. “Mon dieu!” just seems like a catch-all kind of phrase although I admittedly don’t really know what it means. I only got a few questionable looks.

Derek meanwhile took on the more difficult task of traipsing through the United Kingdom spreading the good word about CMEpalooza (note from Derek: this is true, though technically speaking I drove, not traipsed. Nothing like hurtling down the narrow streets of Cornwall at 55 MPH to make you feel alive!). His sullen, slightly disgruntled personality seemed perfect for the task, and I’m told by reliable sources that he fit in just fine. Alas, his introverted personality restrained him from actually, you know, trying to talk to anyone about CMEpalooza, but I’m assured that he used some sort of Jedi mind tricks to do what he promised.

And now we’re back again, settled in to domesticity in our homeland, with at least 2 new subscribers to our blog and 1 likely new viewer of our Fall sessions. That’s the owner of the ice cream parlor, or café crème glacee (see, I did learn some French!), around the corner from our Montreal accommodations who I saw, oh, every 4 hours for 7 consecutive days before he finally asked, “What the heck is this CMEpalooza think you keep talking about?” Mon dieu, monsieur!

You’ll be hearing much more from us in these next few weeks – we promise – about our Fall meeting coming up on Wednesday, October 16, as we ramp up our preparations and connect with our panelists to see what kinds of kooky ideas they have spun off of our original concepts. Meanwhile, enjoy your last few hours of summer this Labor Day. Derek suggests a banana daiquiri.