Today is the deadline for entries into CMEpalooza Pursuit – forms must be sent to me before midnight ET. Don’t forget that we’re giving away $500 in Amazon gift cards and really only asking for 5-10 minutes of your time. You never know, you might learn something along the way too.

Here is a reminder of how to play:

Here are the rules of CMEpalooza Pursuit:

1. Call up the Sponsor page on the CMEpalooza website. You’ll need this for reference purposes to access our Sponsors’ websites.

2. Download the CMEpalooza Pursuit question form by clicking on this link.

You’ll see that questions are divided into categories that will be familiar to anyone who has ever played Trivial Pursuit – Geography, Entertainment, History, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, and Sports & Leisure. There are three questions within each category, the answers to which can all be found on the sponsoring company website.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to answer every question – just one per category. If you want to be the teacher’s pet, of course, you can answer every question, though you get no formal extra credit, just that all over warm feeling for a job well done.

3. Download the CMEpalooza Pursuit answer form by clicking on this link. This is where you will enter in your answers – remember, only one answer is required per category. I promise that none of the questions are tricky or difficult. If it takes you more than 10 minutes to complete the entire challenge, you are doing something wrong.

4. Email me your completed answer form. It’s scott@medcasewriter.com. All completed forms will be entered into our drawing. One entry per person. Perhaps you make this a company-wide challenge and have your entire team enter individually. Perhaps you keep this a secret so that your chances of winning improve. Whatever. Just make sure that your entry is submitted by the deadline of midnight ET on Thursday, April 6.

This is the blog post where I remind all of you that you could be doing this, too. Not literally sitting in a coffee shop at 21st and Walnut Sts. in Philadelphia typing a blog post while you wait for your 10-year-old daughter to finish orchestra practice (she plays the violin. I am easily the least talented person in this family…), but you could be using the same tools that Scott and I use to run CMEpalooza. This is what we use:

• WordPress for our website/blog
• YouTube Live (née Google Hangouts) to stream presentations
• WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for promotion

That’s basically it. Yes, there’s a little bit of a learning curve for using these things, but less than you might think. Every year the technology gets better, the video quality improves, and it gets easier for people to use. We have far fewer tech issues now than when we first started doing CMEpalooza (OK, yes, the first session of CMEpalooza Fall 2016 went completely offline for a few minutes, but that was because my stupid laptop crapped out, which was my own dumb fault) and the majority of our faculty are able to come right onto their session Hangouts with little difficulty. The technology works. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty dang well.

Now here’s the kicker. Do you know how much it costs for us to produce CMEpalooza? Any guesses?

$25.

I pay 25 bucks for the CMEpalooza.com URL (which I pay all on my own. Do I ask Scott to chip in? I do not, because that’s the kind of guy I am. I’m a giver.) That’s it. Everything else is free. I’m not including the hours Scott and I put into it, but the website cost is the only monetary expense involved. This is definitely something you can afford to try.

In closing, let me remind you of a couple of upcoming CMEpalooza-related activities.

• Ask a question on the CMEpalooza QBoard for our  “What is Data Visualization and How Can I Apply It?” session
• CMEpalooza Company Spotlight with Global Academy for Medical Education on Wednesday, April 12 at noon ET
• Don’t forget to complete a CMEpalooza Pursuit form by the end of the day on April 6 (that’s tomorrow) to win free $$$

We’re all about innovation at CMEpalooza – heck, Derek broke every rule of common sense and ate his bowl of Lucky Charms at his desk this morning with a spork (he claims, “You need to try it, dude” but I remain skeptical).

Hopefully we have a few more interesting innovations for the CME community in the next few weeks. We’re rolling out one of them this morning.

Our friends at PlatformQ approached us a few weeks ago and asked us if we were interested in using their online “Q Board” during one of one Spring sessions. Never one to shy away from people offering him something for free, Derek quickly answered, “Oh my God, yes, yes. Thank you so much, thank you. I love you, I love you, I love you…. er, wait, what’s a QBoard?”

Being the more grounded and logical part of our duo, I was a little more circumspect, but nonetheless after taking the platform for a brief test drive, I thought it would be worth a try this Spring.

And so we’re making a special CMEpalooza QBoard available in preparation for our 2 p.m. ET Spring session entitled, “What is Data Visualization and How Can I Apply It?”

It’s a very simple platform. Here is how it works:

1. Take a look at the description for the “Data Viz” session on our Spring agenda page and think about anything specific you’d like to hear or ask about during the session
2. Click on this link to open the QBoard
3. Either type in a new question using the “Ask” button or up-vote a current question to make it a higher priority for our panel

That’s really about it. Our crack interns have pre-populated the QBoard with a few questions of their own, but feel free to contribute others. Our panel has promised to gear their discussion as much as possible to the questions that come in.