When Dr. Erik Brady stunned the CME world by announcing that he was moving to the ivory towers of academia (he is now the Director of Graduate Education Programs at Wake Forest University), we thought we had seen the last of him in the world of CMEpalooza.

No such luck.

(I kid, I kid)

One of the seasoned veterans of our events, Erik is back this Spring to lead a panel of 3 experts who will bring a variety of perspectives to the topic of “No Hail Mary’s Required: Novel Ways to Use Data for Continual Program Assessment.” Erik recently joined us – bow tie and all – to offer some brief insight into what learners can expect from the session in the video below.

Erik and his co-presenters are also hoping for some insight regarding program assessment from the broader CME community and have made a short, 5-question survey available for everyone here. Please help them out folks.

And don’t forget: For everyone attending this week’s World Congress on Continuing Professional Development, our #CMEpalooza Challenges start tomorrow (Thursday) morning! Follow Derek and/or I or Twitter (@thecmeguy and @medcasewriter) to follow along and win some money!

I like to joke with Derek that I am good for one new creative idea a year (really, it’s one idea every other year). Consequently, I think he knocked over the bowl of Cookie Crisp he was eating at his desk when my latest bit of creative genius slapped down into his inbox.

Nevertheless, I hope you will all enjoy it.

Here is the gist of it:

There are hopefully a few loyal readers of this blog who will be attending this week’s World Congress on Continuing Professional Development in San Diego (don’t forget to come to Friday morning’s 11 a.m. Innovation Lab in Cortez Hill AB where Derek and I will be doing some cool demonstrations).

In preparation for this event, we have been collecting “fun facts” from our CMEpalooza Spring sponsors, little Twitter-friendly tidbits that highlight something special or unique about each organization. We pretty much gave our sponsors carte blanche regarding what they wanted to say, so some of these tidbits are stone-cold serious, some are strange or silly, and some fall somewhere in the middle.

Starting on Thursday morning at 9 a.m. PT and running all the way through Saturday morning at 11 a.m. PT, we will be posting a variety of “#CMEpalooza Challenges” on our Twitter feeds (@medcasewriter and @thecmeguy), each of which will be tied to one of our sponsors.

These challenges will vary in nature – some could involve completing a certain task ( “Be the first to give @thecmeguy a piece of red paper”) or answering a trivia question (“Be the first to tell @medcasewriter who wrote the theme song to The Facts of Life“) or something else that is relatively straightforward. It won’t be anything too tricky or embarrassing… we promise.

But there will be a few tricks to winning:

1. You must be in attendance at the World Congress. We know this is a seriously limiting factor, so if you won’t be going, sorry, you can’t win.
2. You must follow us on Twitter (again, @medcasewriter and @thecmeguy). Since that is the only place where each challenge will be posted, that is the only way to find out about it.
3. You have to be smart and nimble to complete each challenge.
4. You have to figure out where we are sitting/standing/walking around (don’t worry, we won’t be hiding) to give us/tell us the solution.

And the best thing of all is that there is a reward tied to every #CMEpalooza Challenge! We have a fistful of $10 Amazon gift cards to give away to the first person to successfully complete each task. With (for now) 15 sponsors who have provided us with “fun facts” about their organization, that $150 up for grabs.

You can win once, you can win twice, heck, you could even win all 15 times if you follow both of us around like a loyal puppy dog (not recommended) and are really skilled .

And if no one wants to play? Well, that’s $150 in Amazon gift cards that Derek and I can spend on our wives ourselves. 

At the end of each day, we’ll post a summary on our blog of that day’s sponsor fun facts,  as well as the challenges and challenge winners.

And really, that’s all there is to it.