As I am sure everyone remembers — or at least the 12 of you who tuned in — a few weeks ago we had a suspense-laden drawing to coincide with the launch of the latest addition to our online family, the CMEpalooza Company Spotlight. At the headquarters of Educational Measures — our winner — we’re told there were champagne corks a-popping, fireworks a-bursting, and high fives a-slapping (or was it just a muted “Oh goody”? I can’t keep these things straight).

Anyway, we’re excited to announce that we’ve agreed upon the date and time for the first of hopefully many Company Spotlights… Wednesday, June 24 from noon-12:30 p.m. ET.

I am sure a lot of you are scratching your heads wondering why exactly you’ll want to tune in and what exactly we’ll be talking about. And while I won’t give away too many secrets, as with all of the Company Spotlights we’ll hopefully be broadcasting (your organization can get one of your own by going here), the focus will be on the cool kinds of things our featured company is involved in. So for Educational Measures, you’ll probably hear about how audience response technology is evolving, the right way (and the wrong way) to take advantage of the technology they provide, and how they are changing to meet the shifting needs and wants of today’s learners.

Rest assured this is not a capabilities presentation. While there surely is a promotional element to it, our goal is to highlight the cool and interesting things Educational Measures is involved in and not to bore anyone with slides and numbers and company-speak. I’ll be moderating (Derek will probably be there in the background looking like a schlub, as usual) to make sure we touch upon topics that our community will be interested in hearing about. There will be opportunities for our audience to ask questions as well, just like in our other CMEpalooza events.

While we hope you can join us live, each Company Spotlight will also endure on our website, as well as YouTube for anyone who wants to check it out once the camera lights blinks red (ie, I hit the “End broadcast” button).

Wednesday, June 24. Noon ET. Tell your friends.

Yay, data!!!

[does “Happy Data” dance]

[looks around]

[realizes he’s the only one doing a “Happy Data” dance in the coffee shop]

[sheepishly sits back down]

Now that we have that out of the way…hey, check out our new CMEpalooza Spring Infographic! Am I thrilled beyond words that 7 of 8 sessions have received over 150 views in the first month? Yes — yes I am. Am I a little disappointed that we only got 71 responses to our viewer survey? Meh — I’m not surprised. As always, I’m just thrilled that people take the time from their busy schedules to watch our sessions. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

A huge thank you to infograph-ed for once again putting this together for us. If you have a moment, please stop by their website to check out all their fantastic work.

And now, on to the infographic.

In 1982, a 9-year-old Derek liked nothing better than piling into the back of my family’s ’79 gray Mercury Cougar and heading out to the Milford Shopping Plaza, where I could buy a pack of Fleer baseball cards for a dime at Ames (RIP). [Brief side note: the 1982 Fleer set has some of the worst lighted cards of all time. Just check out hipster-Mike Schmidt’s card]

As soon as we came home, I would rip open the pack, throw out the bubble gum, and immediately file each card behind the appropriate team index card in my baseball card shoe box. That single shoe box turned into two shoe boxes, and then a 3-ring binder, and then multiple binders, and then boxes and binders, and eventually an entire closet in my bedroom (where they still are today. I promise to pick them up soon, Mom!) I spent hours and hours going through those cards, sorting and organizing, organizing and sorting. I was a little obsessed.

These days, I channel my organizing itch into other things, like categorizing our 300+ books by genre and author’s last name (I was not aware that other people don’t do this). Last week, I set my sights on the CMEpalooza archive, which I’ve never been very satisfied with. Now that we’re approaching close to 50 archived presentations, it seemed like we should have a better way of organizing them than just by date. I thought that stratifying the sessions by topic might make the archive more useful and beneficial to those not looking for one specific session.

In the end, I came up with eleven different topic areas, from Accreditation to Technology. Some sessions are listed under more than one area and some areas only have one or two sessions. Take a look and let me know what you think. Am I missing any topics? Do the names I gave the different areas make sense? Are there any sessions that are misfiled or missing from a topic area? I’m hoping this organization of sessions makes the archive a more valuable resource to all, so please feel free to tell me any way that it can be improved. All feedback appreciated!