As even casual fans of the CMEpalooza blog know, Derek and I are big fans of ‘80s nostalgia.

If you need someone to tell you the name of the actor who starred alongside Anthony Michael Hall in Weird Science, Derek’s your guy (it’s Ilan Mitchell Smith). If you can’t remember the name of the 49ers receiver who started that team’s ‘80s dynasty with The Catch, I can help (it was Dwight Clark). And if you keep scratching your head trying to figure out just how many licks it takes to get the center of that Tootsie Roll Pop, well, that we can’t help you with (Derek has gotten to 4, so at least he beat that wise owl).

Yet as much as we love remembering the decade of our formative childhood, what we enjoy even more is coming up with new ways to make CMEpalooza valuable to our audience and our sponsors. In response to feedback from our audience, we’ll be making a few tweaks to the way we develop and present our Spring and Fall events in 2018 – you may have seen our recent post announcing that CMEpalooza Spring is being split into 2, half-day broadcasts instead of the previous full-day marathon – that we hope will help us continue to grow.

Our growth, of course, translates into improved visibility for our sponsors. In the 4 years since CMEpalooza began, more than 50 organizations have wisely chosen to align themselves with us and support all of the top-notch education that we provide the CME community.

CMEpalooza sponsorships start at the low, low price of $600. As usual, there are a few new things we’re offering our sponsors this year (gotta love the free add-ons). You can check out everything we have thought up in our Sponsor Prospectus – and we’re open to other creative suggestions (we say that every year, but you can still be the first ever to take us up on it).

We make the sponsorship process as easy as possible. You send us an email saying, “CMEpalooza is the best thing since New Coke. Of course we want to be a sponsor,” we collect some basic information from you, and PRESTO! up you go on the CMEpalooza Sponsor page. You get in on all of our promotions and special events, and as much exposure as we can possibly offer.

If you want some hard numbers on our events, you check out the CMEpalooza “By the Numbers” page within this prospectus. We crunch data throughout the year and have pulled out some of the most impressive numbers here, but we can give you whatever else you may need. Just ask.

Still not sure? Maybe a few testimonials will convince you. Such as these, for instance, courtesy of the Way Back Machine:

• (Speaking really fast) “CMEpalooza is doing it again. Yes that’s right, doing it again with the lowest sponsorship prices under the sun. We’ve got bronze sponsorships, silver sponsorships, and, whoa, whoa, whoa, even 2 gold sponsorships ripe for the pickings. But don’t take your time and dawdle because the lines are already forming at our doors right now. I’m Crazy Derek, and if you don’t sign up for a CMEpalooza sponsorship tooo-day, you must be INSANE…”
• (Speaking really slowly, perhaps from a porch swing) “Hello. There are many ways to calculate the value of a CMEpalooza sponsorship. Mabel from Decatur, Georgia says that she has decorated the walls of her kitchen with the hundreds of ways she has thought up. We’d suggest just one – driving attention and traffic to the great work your company does. We hope you take this suggestion to heart… and thank you for your support.”
• (With a banging drum in the background) “For years, you’ve heard other CME-focused meetings claim that spending money on an exhibit booth or exclusive sponsorship at their event is the best investment any company involved in our industry can make, so you may have assumed that their sponsorship has more value than a sponsorship of CMEpalooza. Fact is, CMEpalooza wasn’t even included in their analysis. And we won’t be included next year either. Why? Because they know they can’t match our reach, our value, and our wit. CMEpalooza… it keeps growing and growing and growing…”

Maybe you have another question or concern we haven’t thought of. Just email us (that’s thecmeguy@gmail.com for Derek and scott@medcasewriter.com for me) – we promise we’ll respond to you quickly, like within 10 minutes or so (note from Derek: I’m gonna be 100% honest with you…if you email me, I probably won’t respond within 10 minutes. As hard as this may be to believe, I do have other things that I do during the day besides sit around waiting for CMEpalooza email. Quite a few things, actually. I do promise to respond to you as soon as I can, though.)

Derek and I will both be down in Orlando at the ACEHP meeting later this month, too, in case you want to chat, even if it has nothing to do with CMEpalooza sponsorship. For instance, you can ask Derek about the time he asked Tina Yothers to marry him. Or the time he plastered a Tiffany poster to his bedroom door. Or the time he begged his parents for weeks to let him take breakdancing lessons. Or something else just as embarrassing – be creative!

We’ll leave the light on for you.

Oh the weather outside is frightful
Might as well write a proposal
For the palooza of CME
An RFP! An RFP! An RFP!

That was…truly awful.

Honestly, I only write these ridiculous things because I make Scott review all my blog posts before I post them and it makes me laugh just thinking about him rolling his eyes and muttering expletives under his breath as he’s reading what I’ve written. Good times! (Note from Scott: Pretty accurate assessment)

On to more important matters.

When the January weather turns harsh, our minds turn to thoughts of spring, which reminds us of CMEpalooza Spring, which reminds us that we need an agenda, which makes us smack ourselves in the forehead and wonder why we didn’t start thinking about this sooner (I kid, I kid. Scott and I actually had an official planning meeting about CMEpalooza Spring months ago [cough cough… December]. I even brought along a notebook. Did I fail to take any notes and then forget everything we talked about? Maybe.)

As always, our goal with the CMEpalooza Spring agenda is to have the CME/CE community intimately involved in its development. This year, we are releasing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for anyone to submit an idea for a CMEpalooza Spring session. This perhaps sounds more impressive than it actually is since the RFP being “released” is just this blog post, but work with me here.

We are going to try to keep the process pretty simple. If you have an idea for a session that you would like to lead at CMEpalooza Spring (don’t forget the change to a 2-day agenda, April 25-26), just complete the RFP submission form below by the end of the day on Friday, February 2. After February 2, Scott and I will review all of the proposals that we have received and select six for the agenda. We may ask a few others to help us decide, or we may simply wield our extensive power and make the choices on our own. Not sure yet.

Here are a few guidelines:

1. This is an online conference and all sessions are done via YouTube Live (Google Hangout). All presenters must have a computer, access to a decent internet connection, and a webcam. Most laptops produced after 2010 have one built in.
2. Proposals will only be considered if they are submitted via the RFP submission form below.
3. The deadline for proposals to be submitted is by the end of day on Friday, February 2.
4. We are open to pretty much any idea as long as it’s possible for us to do via YouTube Live and it relates in some way to CME/CE.
5. Interactive formats with multiple presenters, such as panel sessions and interviews, are encouraged. Single-person PowerPoint lectures are discouraged, unless you can convince us that it’s going to be really, really good.
6. Please verify the availability of all presenters for the dates of CMEpalooza (April 25 and/or 26) before submitting their name in your proposal. If you don’t, we won’t be happy. Scott will probably scowl at you when you email us to tell us one of your speakers is not available. You don’t want that. Trust me.
7. There are six categories we are looking to fill for a well-rounded agenda. They are: Outcomes, Educational Design, Technological Innovations, Commercial Support, Accreditation, and CME Potpourri (anything that doesn’t fit in the other five categories). Your proposal should align with one of these categories. Ideally, we will select one proposal for each category, but we might decide to choose multiple proposals for one category based on what we receive. It’s our conference and we can do what we want.
8. We don’t want to limit creativity, so there isn’t a limit on the number of proposals you can submit, but use common sense and be reasonable. We will likely only choose one proposal for which you are listed as the lead contact, so don’t submit ten proposals or something crazy like that.
9. We will try to notify you within a week of the deadline if your proposal has been accepted or not.
10. If you have any questions, feel free to email Derek (thecmeguy@gmail.com) or Scott (scott@medcasewriter.com) or find us at the Alliance conference in a couple weeks

I think that about covers it. I especially want to encourage people who have never presented at CMEpalooza to submit a proposal. We are always happy to have new presenters participate and now is as good a time as any. The RFP submission form is below. Have fun!

A few weeks ago, Derek posted a short poll based upon a conversation our team had during its Winter Retreat in Aruba. The poll essentially involved one key question – “Should we split CMEpalooza in half?” Essentially, do we mess with our usual formula of a full-day event to better serve our audience?

Knowing how much people generally like change (sarcastic rolling of the eyes), I predicted that “Keep CMEpalooza the way it is” would be a runaway winner.

Boy was I wrong. Overwhelmingly (like, 90%+ overwhelmingly), our audience expressed a preference for 2 half-day Paloozas. Some people even suggested separating half-day broadcasts a week or a month apart. One person even asked us to have a single, 1-hour broadcast each month. Logistically, those kinds of extreme ideas would have been too taxing for our crew to pull off, but nonetheless, we are prepared to listen to our audience and make adjustments.

And so, for the first time since the inaugural CMEpalooza in the spring of 2015, we’ll be offering a CMEpalooza as a two-day event this spring. It will be on Wednesday, April 25 and Thursday, April 26. We’re still working out some of the details (do we do the same times each day or do we make some modifications so that we may better fit everyone’s schedule?), but once we get everything hammered down, we’ll let you know. If it goes well this spring, we’ll consider keeping the format for the fall and beyond.

In the meantime, be prepared to hear about a lot of the other new features we’ll be adding to CMEpalooza this year  in the coming weeks. The blog will be pretty active for a little while as we start rolling out some of our new stuff. It’s all good, I promise.

Oh, and Happy New Year.