Hey gang! Derek here. I wanted to have a little chat with all of you about CMEpalooza (Again. I originally posted this in 2017, but some people never learn). Not the actual Fall event, mind you. Until we have the agenda totally set (we’re almost there), we don’t have much more to tell you about it. No, I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend lately, and I wanted to bring it to a quick 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…(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 he ever 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: Good point.

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

What I’m trying to-…wait a minute. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That’s right — CMEPALOOZA T-SHIRT CANNON AT THE NEXT ALLIANCE CONFERENCE!!! I can see it now. The first day’s keynote speaker finishes up and we’re just about ready to break for the first round of plenary sessions, when all of a sudden a loud siren begins to sound, I run onto the stage with a massive t-shirt cannon while Scott grabs the microphone and yells out “WHOOOOOOOOO WANTS A T-SHIRT?!?” The crowd goes wild as  Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It”  blares overhead and I begin firing t-shirts left and right. Man, that would be great.

Where was I? Oh, right — just remember: If you’re writing it out, it’s “CMEpalooza.” All one word, no capital “P.” Now, does anyone know where I can rent a t-shirt cannon for cheap?

Yes, we are still having CMEpalooza Fall (October 17, if you don’t already have it written in red Sharpie on your calendar) and yes, we will have an agenda for it soon…ish. We’re working on it, I promise. I made this handy little infographic to help explain why it sometimes takes us a while to get moving. [Side note: Our friends at infograph-ed have little to fear from my infographic creation skills.]

CMEpalooza Fall 2018: Come aboard…we’re expecting you! (Note from Scott: I’m Isaac, Derek is Gopher [Note from Derek: this is an outrage! Clearly, I am Doc.])

We’re always trying to add something new and fresh to the CMEpalooza experience, so as we prepare for Day 2 of CMEpalooza Spring, we’ll going to be piloting the Poll Everywhere audience response system during a handful of our sessions. Many of you have likely seen this app-powered technology in use in the live setting, and I really like it.

It’s a little tricky embedding Poll Everywhere into the Google Hangout platform, but our crack interns swear to me that it’s going to work (and if it doesn’t, sweet little Fiona Lamorello in cube 3D is fired. Fired, I tell you!)

So if you want to interact with some of today’s selected sessions, you will need to do one of two things before we crank up the CMEpalooza engine this morning:

1. Download the Poll Everywhere app to your phone or tablet. When our sessions begin, you’ll just need to fire up the app and enter in “cmepalooza” as the Username for the presentation you want to join. The questions will pop up as they are being asked in the presentation.
2. Don’t download the Poll Everywhere app and simply point your browser to pollev.com/cmepalooza. Same thing – questions will pop up as they are being asked.

Either approach works equally well. You can do it people – be brave!