A month ago I wrote a blog post announcing that we were accepting abstracts from people interested in presenting a Puntua Lortu session at CMEpalooza Fall. I established a due date of July 1…and then proceeded to not mention it again for the next four weeks. Really dumb.

I’ve done this enough now that I know how it works. You have to remind people of deadlines with the frequency and intensity of my dog (Barkley the Labradoodle. No, he’s not named after Barkley from Sesame Street. Yes, he’s named after Charles.) watching me eat pizza.

ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT? ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT? ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT? ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT? ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT? ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT? ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT?

The deadline came and went, and we still have some openings for the Puntua Lortu. We still have plenty of time until CMEpalooza Fall (Wednesday, October 19 in case you forgot), so I’d like to try this again. The new deadline for submitting an abstract for our Puntua Lortu session is July 29. We are looking for at least three more people to do a Puntua Lortu, so if you have any interest, go ahead and submit an abstract or contact me with any questions.

Here are the details:

1. What is a Puntua Lortu? It is our version of a Pecha Kucha. You can read more details about the format and the name here. My fake Basque grandfather implores you.
2. No really, what is it? Sigh. It’s a presentation format where you get 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, and the slides automatically advance. You can see some fantastic examples from CMEpalooza Spring 2016 and Fall 2015.
3. What do you need from me? If you are interested in presenting a Puntua Lortu at CMEpalooza Fall, we need you to submit an abstract here.
4. What topic should I present on? Anything related to CME. The more creative the better.
5. When is it? CMEpalooza Fall is October 19 (another reminder) and the Puntua Lortu session will begin at 4 p.m. ET. You can view the full agenda for our Fall event here.

These sessions are always a lot of fun and you can be as serious or as silly as you want (I’m not kidding. Last time we had someone who did part of his presentation in the voice of Yoda and another person who ended his presentation by flicking on his lighter and raising it in tribute like it was 1990 and Poison had just started playing the opening notes to Every Rose Has Its Thorn. It was great.) If you want to run your idea past me before submitting an abstract, feel free to shoot me an email.

Click here to submit a CME Puntua Lortu abstract. Click here to submit a CME Puntua Lortu abstract. Click here to submit a CME Puntua Lortu abstract. Click here to submit a CME Puntua Lortu abstract. Click here to submit a CME Puntua Lortu abstract.

For those of us who live and die by the fickle nature of grant applications/approvals/rejections, designing potential educational initiatives is both an exciting and frustrating endeavor.

Exciting because we get to put on our creative hats, map out new approaches to educating healthcare providers, and collaborate with colleagues to come up with innovative solutions that (hopefully) will improve patient care.

Frustrating because if these proposals are not funded, well, we all know what happens. The ideas die on the vine, never to see the light of day. There are few things more frustrating in our industry than proposals which take weeks to put together, all amounting to nothing. My virtual trash can is full of these.

And then there are simply some ideas that are “not fundable” either because they focus on an educational area that is too niched and for which funding is unavailable, or because the design is so unique that no one would take a chance on funneling money into something whose outcome is largely unpredictable.

This isn’t me whining (OK, maybe just a little), but rather a little bit of insight into why serving as the co-producer of CMEpalooza is so professionally energizing.

My proposals always get approved! I can implement every new idea I want to!

As long as I make sure to ply Derek with his monthly supply of Fifth Avenue bars, I always get the same reply to every kooky idea I come up with – “Well, if you think it will work, I guess it’s fine with me.”

Those of you who have looked over the Agenda for CMEpalooza Fall that we first put out earlier this week were presumably dazzled with the variety of approaches we’re trying out (and if you weren’t, just pretend please). Really, there are currently only 2 “traditional” CMEpalooza sessions on the agenda with a moderator and a group of panelists, and even these have unique twists. For the others, we’re either trying out something new or improving upon something previously piloted in earlier Paloozas.

This is the kind of stuff that makes our careers interesting. I mean really, after maybe 3 times of getting a group of faculty together to talk about “New and Emerging Therapies for Treatment of Disease XX,” the same old/same old can get pretty dull.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing with everyone more details on some of our new educational designs for CMEpalooza Fall, giving insight into what we were thinking when we came up with each idea and how we envision things playing out. Undoubtedly, the vision in our mind isn’t exactly how each session will truly come together – that’s the unpredictable nature of education – but we’re hopeful that we have the right people in place to make everything work and keep people interested in watching.

A few months before every iteration of CMEpalooza, Derek and I organize a brainstorming session in a secret location a few miles off the Amalfi Coast. It’s in a cave. Underwater. You’d never find it in a million years.

But I digress.

Our agenda during this session is rigorous – we each bring mounds of spreadsheets, cases of 5-Hour Energy shots, and enough technological might to power a small country (like Liechtenstein, for example). By the end of the day, we’re both exhausted, but during these powwows, we’ve always managed to accomplish what we intended to and put in motion the plans for our next event.

Subsequently over the course of the next few months, things start coming together. Emails are sent, invitations are proffered, negotiations are carefully massaged with agents, sponsors, and all of the major networks. It’s a full-time job (and yes, we have other full-time jobs, too)

I won’t lie – planning for this fall was perhaps the toughest challenge yet. With a variety of new session formats and twice as many faculty as we’ve ever had for a previous Palooza, there were a lot of bumps to overcome.

But overcome we did. Overcome we did.

And so without further ado…

(Clearing throat) Hear ye, hear ye… On behalf of the esteemed CMEpalooza planning committee, we are proud to present the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall 2016 (click the link, dummy).

You’ll be hearing more about each of our sessions in the coming weeks, including what we were thinking when we chose the topic and format, who the people are that you’ll see in front of the camera, and all the way that things might (but won’t) blow up in our faces.

Needless to say, we’re excited about the Fall meeting. It could either be really cool and interesting, or it could totally blow up in our faces (but it won’t).

Just in case though, I’m going to start pushing #Liechtenstexit.