One of the biggest mysteries in the conference world surrounds the selection of abstracts. You spend hours coming up what you think is an interesting topic, coax some of your more intelligent professional colleagues to add their name to your proposal, write up a few sentences describing your proposed session, and then “Poof!” Off into the selection vortex.

“Where does my submission go? Who exactly is reviewing it? Are they going to notice that I misspelled ‘CME’?”

For weeks, you wait, never quite sure when you are going to hear whether your proposal was accepted, with no idea what reviewers are saying about it. All you get is the eventual, “Congratulations!” or “So sorry!” email, usually at 4:59 p.m. on the Friday you are leaving for a week’s vacation.

One of the nice things about the public voting for CMEpalooza is the mystery is only somewhat limited (we considered letting people see the running vote totals for each session but decided against it for several reasons), and we’re not going to be spending weeks sitting on the results. Once the polls closed on Monday afternoon, Derek and I went down the list, starting with the top vote getter and working from there, until we filled the CMEpalooza Spring allotted time slots.

This morning (Tuesday), we’ll begin contacting all of the winning and almost winning presenters (there are no losers in CMEpalooza), and begin to put the official time schedule together. From there, it’ll take a few days to figure out everyone’s availability and to cement each session into the agenda. Hopefully, we’ll have it available in a week.

A few interesting facts to keep everyone titillated while you wait:

• There were a total of 802 votes cast (you could vote for up to 5 sessions), which means that approximately 160-175 people participated in the selection process. Awesome. And thank you.
• There will be seven 1-hour sessions and two 30-minute sessions.
• There will be a few sessions with a single presenter, though the majority will include multiple panelists.
• Not a single person will be appearing more than once. This could change if faculty are added/dropped to specific sessions or as our Gold Sponsor sessions are formalized, but for right now, you’ll see different faces in every session. Kind of fascinating considering there were quite a few people whose names were included in multiple abstracts. Just a quirk of the voting process, but great to promote diversity in our event.

Every once in a while, something works out much better than you ever expected – and no, I’m not referring to ELO’s appearance on the Grammys last night, though Mr. Blue Sky was totally awesome (note: I’m old). I’m talking about our decision to post all the CMEpalooza Spring abstracts online and ask people to vote on their favorites. I admit that I was a little worried about it. What if everyone else thought it was a stupid idea and nobody voted?

But that didn’t happen. Not even close. As of Sunday night, we had over 730 total votes submitted, which roughly translates to approximately 150 voters.  I never imagined we would get this kind of a response, and it delights me to no end.  To me, CMEpalooza will always be the little conference that could, so to have this many people expressing an interest in determining the agenda for CMEpalooza Spring is both overwhelming and gratifying. Thank you all so much for making this work!

And if you haven’t yet had a chance to have your voice heard, you still have time. We will officially close the poll at 5 p.m. ET, so go to https://cmepalooza.com/poll/ now (1 vote per device). We’re coming down to the wire and the tally is still very close. I have no idea what the final agenda will be, which is a tribute to how many great abstracts we had submitted. Go vote now!

Here at CMEpalooza headquarters (12-story building, 1,000 employees, 4 full-service restaurants, and free valet parking for all staff, in case you want a mental picture), we’ve been counting down the days.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to brainstorm topics and gather colleagues to submit an abstract for CMEpalooza Spring. There are some really interesting proposals that came in, and both Derek and I are humbled by all of the creativity we are seeing.

Today, we turn things over to you. If you click on the Poll tab, you will see the list of titles and lead presenters at the top, followed by a full description of each proposed session, full faculty, and the marketing pitch. Some are serious, some are silly, some are a little bit of both.

You can vote for up to 5 presentations. You can vote only once per device (so if you have an smartphone, tablet, and laptop, you can vote 3 times).

Voting will stay open for one week, closing at 5 p.m. PT on Monday, Feb. 9. Those abstracts with the most votes get on the Spring agenda. It’s that simple.

It’s hard to say exactly how many abstracts will be included since some submissions were for 30 minute sessions and some for 60 minute sessions, but our guess would be somewhere around 10-12. Once the final vote is done, we’ll sit down and figure it all out before reaching out to those lucky individuals to schedule the specific time for their presentation.

Hopefully by the end of the week (a special Valentine’s Day present for everyone), we’ll be able to announce the official agenda.

Let the voting begin!