We’ve had some good blog posts and we’ve had some bad blog posts, but I’m not sure that we’ve ever had a blog post with a more riveting title than this. I mean, just take a moment and read it aloud. “Derek & Scott Chat About the CMEpalooza Agenda.” Wow. Can you feel the excitement?

I don’t have too much more to say about this, really. The title pretty much covers it. It’s a 12-minute video of Scott and I talking about the CMEpalooza agenda. Why are we talking about the agenda? Well, we have a number of sessions this time around that are weirder different formats than we have had in the past and thought it might be helpful if we gave a little more description as to what to expect. What is CME Mythbusters? What are Casual Conversations in CME (if you’re like me, you may be disappointed to find out that it does not involve people sitting around in smoking jackets with snifters of brandy, talking about which level of outcome they find most charming)? Tune in to the video to find out!

Folks, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s hot out there. I mean real hot. It’s so hot, I cracked an egg on my sidewalk and it jumped up and ran away. It’s so hot, planets are starting to orbit around us. It’s so hot, my pet camel asked to go back to the desert to cool off. It’s hot.

My advice? Just stay inside. Don’t even bother to go outside. What’s the point? You’ll be sweating so much, the sidewalk will look like a fire at Madame Tussauds. You’ll be sweating so much, Captain Ahab will shoot a harpoon at you. You’ll be sweating so much, the Coast Guard will put up “No Wake Zone” signs behind you as you walk. You’ll be sweating a lot.

What’s that you ask? What can you do with all your free time while lounging around inside in the cool A/C? Well, just mosey on over to the newly updated CMEpalooza archive, where you can find hours and hours of free (FREE!) educational (and entertaining!) videos that you can watch to your heart’s content. I suppose you could binge watch old episode’s of Bob Ross’s “Joy of Painting” on Netflix like Scott does every night (that dude loves painting happy little trees), but why do that when you can binge watch over 50 episodes of CMEpalooza?

Every session from every iteration of CMEpalooza is now available for your viewing pleasure. That includes 2 PechaKucha/Puntua Lortu sessions, 4 QI sessions, 13 sessions on educational design, and 18 sessions on outcomes! What more could you ask for? (Don’t say a pony. My daughter has already asked for one and those things are expensive. I have a small backyard. Where would I put it?)

So grab your favorite internet viewing device, mix up a tropical drink with a little umbrella in it, find the nearest chaise lounge, and prepare to spend a little quality time inside with the CMEpalooza archive. You’ll be so glad you did, you might even start painting some of your own happy little trees.

In this cycle of “he said/she said” divisiveness where tall tales linger around every corner, it can be extremely difficult separating truth from all the lies. Unfortunately, in recent weeks, Derek and I have been slandered with CMEpalooza sponsor-related rumor and innuendo, and much as we hate to rake muck with the dregs of society, we feel that’s it’s time to speak up. Most of this information you can find for yourself on our Sponsor tab, but to save you time and energy, I’ll do the dirty work for you.

Here is the truth behind the vicious lies:

1. You have one – and only one — sponsorship option. Baloney! There are three primary levels of sponsorship for CMEpalooza Fall – gold, silver, and bronze. As you move up the rungs, you get more for your money. We also offer sponsorship of our CMEpalooza text line and are always open to other innovative sponsorship suggestions (though we’ve never gotten one of those… yet). You can find out all of the specific details in our short Sponsor prospectus.
2. All of the premier levels of sponsorship are gobbled up quickly. Bollocks! While we have 1 Gold and 4 Silver sponsors locked in for CMEpalooza Fall, there are currently sponsorship opportunities at every level. It’s all there for the taking people!
3. No reputable organizations sponsor CMEpalooza. Poppycock! I guess it’s up to you to determine how “reputable” our sponsors truly are, but the 19 organizations who have currently aligned themselves with our Fall event come from a variety of different segments of our industry. They can’t all be flimflam artists, can they?
4. If you don’t sponsor CMEpalooza at least 3 months prior to each event, you’ve lost your chance at visibility. Malarkey! While the sooner you confirm your sponsorship with us, the sooner you get listed on our Sponsor site, we regularly attempt to drive traffic to all of our sponsors. Of course, the most eyes come on the day of our CMEpalooza broadcasts themselves, so even coming in the day before will give you plenty of visibility.
5. You guys don’t do anything creative to drive attention to your sponsors. Preposterous! Surely you remember our Fun Fact Challenge from the Spring where we gave away nearly $400 in Amazon gift cards. For the Fall (big announcement alert), we’ve got the Sponsor Scavenger Hunt coming up. Details coming later. It’ll be like that Pokemon thingie, but better (note from Derek: My 12-year-old strongly disagrees).
6. It’s too hard to sponsor CMEpalooza. Horsefeathers! In fact, nothing could be easier. Just send Derek or I an email indicating which level of sponsorship you are interested in committing to and we’ll let you know what information we need from you (ie, company logo, description, etc.). For many sponsors, they make the formal commitment and have their sponsorship up on our site the same day. Yeah, yeah, we’re good like that.
7. It’s too expensive to sponsor CMEpalooza. Rubbish! Our bronze-level sponsorships cost only $500 – that’s $1.37 a day for 1 year. I mean, really people.

I hope that was helpful. Naysayers, consider yourselves exposed.