Derek loves it when I give away our hard-earned money (or is it hardly earned money? I get confused sometimes).

But our CMEpalooza sponsor events are always a personal highlight. Yes, it’s nice to be the giver of good news to our winners, and it’s even kinda fun to put together the contest materials. But I also appreciate being forced to take time away from the day-to-day to see the varied kind of work that our sponsors are doing and to get my creative juices flowing.

Let’s face it – we all get stuck in a professional rut from time to time, churning out the same ideas over and over. Consider our Fall sponsor event your chance to take some time to do some professional research and maybe even win some money at the same time.

Starting today, CMEpalooza Bingo!! is back for the second consecutive year. We’re giving away $500 in Amazon gift cards (there are 13 total prizes — first prize is $100 with other prizes of $50 and $25). To win, you simply need to do some very simple research about a handful of our CMEpalooza Fall sponsors.

The rules are simple.

• There are a few documents you’ll need to download and/or print out — The bingo card, the question sheet, and the answer form. Don’t worry – we’ve compiled these into one document that you can print out or download. You can get everything you need by clicking on this link. If you want the CMEpalooza Bingo!! Answer Form as a Word document you can write on, we’ve got that right here for you.
• On the bingo card, you’ll see that each CMEpalooza Fall sponsor has been assigned a specific slot (there are a few slots with ’80 Trivia on there to fill out the card – you’ll have to excuse my odd tastes in some cases). Each slot has coordinates listed in the upper left-hand corner. This is important to note as you are filling out the Answer Form.
• To get the answer to the questions, you’ll probably need to visit some of our sponsor websites. You can find direct links to all of them on the CMEpalooza Fall sponsor page.
• We’re not cruel, so we won’t make you complete the entire card. Simply make one Bingo by answering 5 questions that complete either a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line (just like, you know, as in a Bingo game). Feel free to visit any additional sponsor sites if you really want to, but it’s not mandatory.
• Fill out the Answer Form and return it to me via email (scott@medcasewriter.com) by our deadline of Wednesday, October 11 at 3:45 p.m. Why 3:45 p.m.? I have no idea. Roll with me people.

We had a really good response to CMEpalooza Bingo!! last fall, but let’s face it, the CME community ain’t that big. If you successfully complete and submit a finished game card to me, your chances of winning are pretty good.

The answers to all of these questions can be found very easily on every one of the Sponsors sites. I didn’t come up with questions that will require a deep search – pretty much everything is 1 click away, at most. It takes, in all honesty, 5 minutes to complete a game board.

So get cracking.

Dear CMEpalooza Groupie,

Camp is great. I like my new friends. The food stinks. We threw our counselor in the pool today. I hit the bulls-eye in archery.

And now that you are paying attention, it’s your turn to write a letter to our CME Advice Columnists so that they can help during our CMEpalooza Fall session.

What has you corporately confused, confounded, or cantankerous?

Do you often find yourself professionally perplexed, perturbed, or petulant?

Perhaps you simply want to complement my awesome, amazing, and astounding use of alliteration this morning?

It’s all fair game (well, most of it is). Just submit your letter in the form below and wait until Wednesday, October 18 to get the answers from our expert panel. Deadline to send in your letter – no stamp needed! – is this Friday (September 29).

There are days — too many days — when we all come to work and have to bite our tongues or roll our eyes or slam our door in frustration when something happens that just MAKES US WANT TO EXPLODE.

Maybe it’s that co-worker who calls out “sick” for the 10th time this month, and every one of those days just happens to include a warm, sunny afternoon (and miraculously, she’s always better by the next morning). Maybe it’s that educational partner who refuses to answer email after email, forcing timelines to shift into summer, then fall, then winter. Maybe it’s that colleague who insists on writing a 25-page outcomes report for that 15-minute educational activity, squeezing out every last drop of picayune data because “it’s what funders expect.”

Sure, you could schedule time with a psychiatrist every week to talk through these issues, drop a couple thousand dollars each year, and perhaps get some clarity into how to deal with your professional nemesis. But in CMEpalooza land, as always, we have a FREE solution for you.

It’s our brand-new CMEpalooza Fall session – “The CME Advice Columnists.” What we’ve done is gather some of the smartest and most resilient people in our field, each representing a different specialty of the CME world — accreditation, outcomes, educational design, and grant development/partnerships — on an all-star panel to chew on that issue that is just really, really eating at you right now.

We all remember the dynamic duo of Dear Abby and Ann Landers. This is sorta kinda the same thing. You write us a short letter describing your issue, the mental gymnastics you are going through each day, and hopefully wrap things up with a question or two you’d like answered. Our panel then talks through their advice during our CMEpalooza Fall session.

Here is an example of a letter they might consider (as you’ll see, this clearly has no identifying elements that tie to any specific individual):

Dear CME Advice Columnists,

I have done a lot of work on this big event for a number of years in conjunction with another semi-prominent member of the CME community. Hmm, how do I put this gently? The dude is weird. He has this obsession with ’80s music, proudly and loudly tells everyone he meets that he’s “such an introvert,” and punctuates every conversation and email with the phrase, “Trust the Process.”

It’s not that this guy doesn’t have his redeeming qualities, but it’s becoming increasingly painful to have to suffer through his daily missives that clog my inbox. How do I politely tell him that he needs to keep our interactions more professional and focused on, you know, actual work?

Sincerely,

Trust the Results 

Of course, these letters can be (and probably should be) anonymous. If you want to fudge some of the facts, that’s totally fine as well. But we do truly hope our panel can be helpful in solving some of the common problems that plague CME professionals.

Now here comes the hard part – this session won’t be a success without your help (well, unless you all want to hear about all of Derek and my issues). We’re asking our CMEpalooza friends — that’s you– to write letters to our advice columnists regarding whatever professional issue you are currently struggling with. Note that we specified professional issues. Your problems with your meddling mother-in-law are for a different forum.

Our submission form is below – again, since this is anonymous, I don’t want anyone to feel that you need to list your name or even send me an email. Really, we don’t care who the letters come from, as long as they focus on real-world issues that would be interesting to discuss.

Our audience did pretty well submitting questions for our no-holds barred interview with Graham McMahon, so we’re hoping you can rally again this week. We’ll keep this open until the end of September (that’s Saturday the 30th).

Have fun with this everyone. And thanks in advance.