During our brief spurts of creativity and in between bites of cinnamon cronuts, Derek and I sit down periodically and try to come up with ways to improve the quality and value of CMEpalooza to the broader CME community. As much as I would like to take credit for it, a few months ago, Derek came up with what I thought was a good idea. I know, I was as surprised as you are.

But let me tell you about it…

Everyone knows that companies of every type — be they pharma, MECCs, hospitals, associations, service providers, etc. — have a story to tell, but it’s become more and more difficult to get anyone to listen to it. People simply aren’t interested in a “capabilities presentation.” And hey, I’ve been in them (Note from Derek: “Me too!”). From both sides of the fence. They are booorrring.

Some companies and organizations use the exhibit hall to get their message across. Problem is that fewer and fewer people are attending live conferences, and those who do may never set foot into the exhibit hall.

It’s not that there is a limit on innovative and interesting people in our field – we interact with many of them both through CMEpalooza and our “other” lives (indeed, Derek and I both actually have “real” jobs) – but there are not many innovative and interesting ways we have seen to allow these people to reach their prospective audience.

So, we thought, is there a way we can help? Nods yes.

So, we thought, do we want to help? Nods yes.

So, we thought, will anyone be interested in having us help? Shrugs shoulders and mumbles “Uh, I dunno.”

But we’re going to give this a try and see what happens. It’s called CMEpalooza Company Spotlight, and here is how it’ll work:

1. You go to this link and complete the form expressing interest in being a “spotlighted” company (alas, these are not free, though they can be! – more on that later)
2. We work with you to come up with a focus for your spotlight. Seeing as we are an external audience of sorts, hopefully we’ll be able to help you come up with issues that our broader Palooza audience would be interested in learning about. The last thing anyone wants is a snoozer presentation.
3. You can have up to 4 people from your organization participate as panelists. You can create slides if you want. We’re flexible.
4. We’ll schedule a time for your 30 minute spotlight. We’re planning on holding these from noon-12:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday afternoons. How many will we schedule? No idea. Could be 1, could be 10. Won’t be 500.
5. We’ll use our social media channels to build interest and an audience. I will “moderate” the session based on a jointly agreed-upon discussion guide that highlights the value of your organization/company and is of prospective interest to our viewers.
6. As with all CMEpalooza sessions, anyone can watch live. For free. Anyone can watch after the broadcast is over. For free. As an added bonus, you can take the video and embed it onto your website if you want. We’ll have a special tab set up on the CMEpalooza website so that people can watch these easily on our site whenever they want.

And because this is something new, we want to do something special and have the first ever CMEpalooza giveaway. So call right now and get this FREE set of Ginsu knives. You can use it to cut through a lead pipe and then cut a tomato, LIKE THIS.

Oops, sorry, wrong promo.

If you are interested in being considered for our inaugural CMEpalooza Company Spotlight, send me an email with your name and contact info by Friday, May 15. Everyone who “enters” will be assigned a number, and we’ll use a random number generator to pick one organization for a free broadcast. We’ll even broadcast the “lottery” live so that no one accuses us of any shenanigans (time and date TBA).

Anyone can enter, but only one entry per organization. If you aren’t selected, you aren’t obligated to purchase a later broadcast, though we certainly hope you will.

Will we get 5 entrants? Maybe. 10? Hopefully. 500? No chance.

And if this doesn’t work at all? Remember, it was Derek’s idea.

er…what?

That’s what I imagine 99% of you saying when you read this title. Either that or “What the heck’s a pecha kucha?” In a nutshell, Pecha Kucha is a lean, mean, fightin’ machine presentation method. It has three core concepts:

1. 20 slides. Not 19. Not 21. Exactly 20.
2. 20 seconds per slide. Same deal as above. Exactly 20. How many of you are already feeling squeamish? Just wait…
3. Slides automatically advance. I love this!

That gives you a total presentation time of…um…6 minutes and 40 seconds? Something like that. Basically, the goal is to force presenters to strip down their presentations to their core essence and cut out the endless blabbing. Count me in!

The inventors of the Pecha Kucha format are two architects who developed it because (and I quote) “architects talk too much!” Sound familiar? It sounds gimmicky, but the streamlined format is an attempt to make presenters tell a story rather than just throw up some bullet points and talk at length about their data. Ultimately, they are supposed to be fun. They’re supposed to be both entertaining and informative. Kind of like CMEpalooza.

 

 

I have done three CMEpaloozas (CMEpaloozi?) now and it never fails to amaze me how exhausting they are. It’s not as if they’re physically demanding or anything, but at the end of the day, I feel completely spent. I just want to sit on the couch in a stupor and watch Sex in the City Game of Thrones reruns. But now that Scott and I have had some time to recover, we want to give a big thank you to everyone who contributed and participated in CMEpalooza Spring. Here’s a brief list of thank yous:

• Thank you to our presenters who were fabulous. Whenever someone offers me a compliment on CMEpalooza, I always tell them we’re only as good as our presenters. Fortunately for us, they’ve been great.
• Thank you to our sponsors (all 19 of you!) who make producing CMEpalooza much easier. A special thank you to our gold sponsors ArcheMedX and Intelligent Medical Decisions, Inc. for putting together two really excellent sessions.
• Thank you to all of you who watched a CMEpalooza Spring session. We had a very nice turnout (more details below) and good interaction during Q&A time.
• Thank you to my wife for making me a sandwich and coffee and sliding it to me off-screen. She’s a keeper!

So, how may people actually watched CMEpalooza Spring? Good question, Derek — I’m so glad you asked. YouTube has developed a nice analytics platform for the Hangout videos, both live and “on-demand”, which makes determining participation much easier. Below is the amount of Live Views for each session in the order they were presented (the amount of views each session received while it was “live”):

• Bridging the Knowing-Doing Gap: Quality Improvement as a Path to Change – 147
• Let the Sun Shine In: Perspectives and Insights on the Implementation of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act – 151
• Secrets of CME Outcome Assessment…Revealed – 151
• Data-Driven and Agile Educational Design: Ensuring Your Courses Intelligently Evolve – 134
• Achieving Level 7 Outcomes: A MEC Perspective – 72
• 5 Tips to Make You a Survey Measurement Rock Star – 86
• Revamping the Satellite Symposium: Enriching the Learner Experience – 142
• Style and Substance: The Evolution of Content Presentation in Medical Education – 123
• Why We Matter: Successful Strategies for Demonstrating the Value of CE within Your Own Organization – 104

I’m always thrilled that anyone watches, so, yes, I’m happy. The most disappointing thing about the entire CMEpalooza Spring experience was that we only received one joke on our survey :-(. Here it is:

A little boy wasn’t getting good marks in school. One day he tapped his teacher on the shoulder and said, “I don’t want to scare you, but my daddy says if I don’t get better grades, somebody is going to get a spanking.”

Hmmm…maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t get more.