As everyone knows, the best way to convince someone to do something they may not want to do is to guilt them into it. And so, when I met Sara Miller at January’s Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions annual conference (at the bar, of course), it is possible that I may have casually said something like, “So, how is your abstract for CMEpalooza Spring coming along?” And Sara, who is apparently too nice, may have responded with something like “Uh, good, good. Just fine.”

Lo and behold, a week later, it was apparent that my strategy worked, as an abstract with Sara and her co-presenter Heather Guerrero from Gilead Sciences showed up. They will be presenting a session during CMEpalooza Spring entitled “Kwahl’i-tē im-prūv’mĕnt: You Can Say It, But Can You Do It?”

We recently caught up with Sara, who daylights as the Director of the QI Institute, CE Strategy and Content at Med-IQ, to talk about her upcoming session. Consider the video below as your guilt-free pleasure of the day.

Last week, Derek and I gave what I thought was a pretty successful series of presentations about CMEpalooza and our use of Google Hangouts On Air during the World Congress on Continuing Professional Development in San Diego.

We participated in one of the conference’s two “Innovation Lab Demonstrations” where session attendees were split into groups of approximately 10-15 individuals, rotating between each station for a 15-minute presentation.

Kudos to the conference organizers and especially Tym Peters from the University of California at San Francisco (our moderator and timekeeper) for being willing to try a new format and adapting between Day 1 and Day 2 to make a better experience for learners. Essentially, they turned the tables around so that each presenter didn’t have to raise his/her voice to be heard over the noise in the room – an easy fix, perhaps, but it made a big difference.

My rough estimate was that about half of the attendees had heard of and/or were familiar with CMEpalooza – not bad for an international audience. There were a variety of questions about our events and the potential use of Google Hangouts On Air (GHOA) for accredited educational activities. It was nice to see the wheels in the minds of some of our attendees churning as they thought about how to leverage the platform for their own purposes.

While there are certainly some nuances that take some getting used to as a regular moderator of the GHOA platform, both Derek and I have found it to be a very user-friendly platform that simply requires some experimenting and testing to master.

As part of our World Congress presentation, we developed a handout that walks through the basics of how to set up a GHOA session – basically, it’s your beginner’s guide. You can access the handout by clicking on this link. If you want to start tooling around, this should hopefully get you started. We’re always interested in hearing from others who are dipping their toe into the GHOA waters and answering any questions you have about it, so feel free to reach out to either of us if you really get stuck.

 

Six more #CMEpalooza Challenges on day 2 of the World Congress on Continuing Professional Development and a bunch more winners of $10 Amazon gift cards. We’ll figure out some sort of adapted promotion next week for any challenges that go unclaimed, if only to give people who couldn’t be in San Diego a chance to share in the loot.

Today is the final day of the Congress, with three final challenges on the docket, so still plenty of reasons to watch us on Twitter.

CMEpalooza Challenge #1
Challenge: 1st to attend the 9:30 a.m. generational talk and define “millennial” for presenters wins
Sponsor Fun Fact: Be the first to define “millennial” at the generational learning session led by Clinical Care Options at 9:30 am Friday
Winner: Someone one, but Derek was not nosy enough to get her name. His pay will be docked accordingly.

CMEpalooza Challenge #2
Challenge: 1st one to find @MedCaseWriter and give him a high five wins
Sponsor Fun Fact: With over 25 years in medical education, RMEI saw the Sunshine regulations on meals coming. Our wall of vintage “boxed lunches” proves it!

Winner: Ronald Murray

CMEpalooza Challenge #3
Challenge: 1st to come to our 11 am session and ask a question using the word “aardvark” wins
Sponsor Fun Fact: With 3 out of every 4 employees women, at ACHL, CME stands for “Continual Maternity Exoduses”
Winner: Derek Dietze

CMEpalooza Challenge #4
Challenge: 1st to find @MedCaseWriter and have him sign your name badge wins
Sponsor Fun Fact: For Audrie Tornow of Paradigm, irony is having been a hospital volunteer filing medical records as a teenager, and working in CME now
Winner: Jeanne Cole

CMEpalooza Challenge #5
Challenge: 1st to tell @thecmeguy the name of the first “Survivor” winner wins
Sponsor Fun Fact: Global Academy for Medical Education, sister company of Frontline Medical Communications, has been a developer of CME/CE activities for 20 years
Winner: Still up for grabs

CMEpalooza Challenge #6
Challenge: First person to give @MedCaseWriter a piece of candy wins
Sponsor Fun Fact: At the end of 2015, mobile devices finally overtook the desktop as the predominant mode of clinician access to @PeerView‘s online educational activities
Winner: Still up for grabs