DISCLAIMER: This is the annual post where Derek warns me, “Do you really want to post this? Some people might get angry with you.” Oh well, you got to break a few eggs sometimes. And I’m used to people being angry with me. Please feel free to disagree with me in the comments or just by grumbling under your breath.

Every year as Father’s Day approaches, I have the same conversation with my wife.

ME: Please don’t get me anything or do any out of the ordinary for Father’s Day. It’s a silly, made-up holiday. I don’t need another coffee mug recognizing me as the “World’s Best Dad” or a flimsy “Father of the Year” award for our mantle. It’s just another Sunday.

WIFE: You’re sure? This isn’t some sort of “hah hah, just kidding” joke that I am supposed to magically unravel where you’ll be grumpier than usual if we don’t plan something?

ME: Yes, I’m sure. For real. DO. NOTHING.

(Now, God forbid if I fail to go out of my way to acknowledge Mother’s Day. I half-assed it one year and still haven’t heard the end of it. I would blame my 13-year-old son, but he’s kind of useless when it comes to helping out with this sort of stuff. So I receive various warnings to “get it right” once May rolls around.)

Apparently, I am in the vast minority when it comes to celebrating faux holidays or “days of celebration.” On January 24, 2025, alone there is Beer Can Appreciation Day, National Compliment Day, Macintosh Computer Day, National Lobster Thermidor Day, and (my personal favorite) Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day.

Aren’t prospectors “grizzled” by definition? (Yes) Have you ever met a doe-eyed prospector who didn’t have remnants of last night’s dinner in his untrimmed beard? (Me neither)

Now, sadly, it’s time to throw away all those “10 years for $10” calendars you bought way back when, because we’ve got another day of celebration to throw on the old datebook next January 24 — that’s right, the first National Continuing Education Professionals Day™ is officially an event, trademark and all. We’ll apparently be celebrating every year on the Friday of the third full week of every January (the fact that this is going require some figuring out is a tad bit annoying – some years, it will be the third Friday in January while others, the fourth Friday. I am sure people much smarter than me have a reason why this is so, but it just seems odd to me).

Look, I get it. Everyone feels professionally underappreciated and wants to be acknowledged and made to feel special. Plus, without even checking, I am quite sure that professions like jewelers, lumberjacks, and personal chefs all have “days of recognition” (OK, I just checked. Mark your calendars for March 13, September 26, and July 16, respectively). So I guess in the “welp, I guess since everyone else is doing it, so should we” category, National Continuing Education Professionals Day™ was inevitable.

To help us all celebrate, our industry-wide organizations have put out a preliminary playbook with ideas such as “Host an Awards Ceremony,” “Organize a Special Lunch Event,” or “Launch a Social Media Campaign” next year on January 24. I’ll take a pass on it all.

Maybe I’m being too much of a curmudgeon (OK, probably I’m being too much of a curmudgeon). Maybe this is something our industry needs for our colleagues around healthcare to recognize the value of the work that we do. You want to “Plan a team-building exercise or outing” (another suggested activity)? Go for it – you do you.

Honestly, though, these “special” days are one of my recent pet peeves. There is now a day for everything — don’t forget about International Eighties Day on February 6 (it’s both Ronald Reagan’s and Rick Astley’s birthday. I’m not even kidding, that’s the reason for the date) — and at some point, when everything and everybody has their “day,” it ceases being unique or special. What’s wrong with, as Derek wrote me in an email yesterday, being a little more appreciative of those we interact with on a daily basis, rather than setting aside a particular day to show that appreciation?

You know what, though? Maybe it’s time for me to put away the snarkiness and get on board. So feel free to join me next Jan. 24 to celebrate us — I’ll crack open a can of suds, tell you how snazzy you look in your new duds, play some tunes on my Macbook, help you put on your lobster bib at lunch, and, tell those varmints to let us be, dagnabbit!

We have a greyhound named Bardot. A popular myth about greyhounds is that they are high-energy dogs that need tons of exercise. That is false. While they are super fast, they are also incredibly lazy. They are the world’s fastest couch potatoes. They are basically just giant cats. Whenever I take Bardot for a walk, there is usually an initial burst of enthusiasm, but it quickly degrades into an annoyingly slow pace with frequent stops to sniff anything and everything of interest. Needless to say, this gives me plenty of time to listen to podcasts.

Over the weekend, I was listening to a podcast while walking Bardot that included a Gen-X host and a Millennial interviewee. The Gen-Xer made a joke about Millennials, to which the Millennial responded, “You guys used to put tinfoil on your rabbit ear antennas because you thought it improved the reception.”

“Hey!” I thought to myself, “We used to put tinfoil on our rabbit ears. What does he mean by ‘thought it improved the reception?’”

When I returned home, I did a quick google search for “does tinfoil on rabbit ears help” and…it does not. This is embarrassing.

Until the age of 12, I lived in the southern part of Delaware, affectionately referred to as “slower lower.” My Grandpa Warnick and Aunt Mary Kathryn still lived on the farm where my dad grew up, and we would frequently spend our Saturdays there helping out with various chores (picking lima beans, baling hay, tending animals, etc.) Once the work was done, we would all gather in the family room of the farmhouse for dinner. Since there wasn’t a table big enough for everyone to sit at, we usually would just spread throughout the room and eat off of TV trays. (note from Scott: Derek should explain here what a “TV tray” is since it is another Gen-X relic. It’s basically a standup version of an airplane tray table. It’s only slightly better than eating off your lap)

On the TV, we would watch NASCAR (We rooted for Bobby Allison [he was a Christian man] and frowned at Richard Petty [he cussed and smoked cigars]. I am not making any of this up.), The Lawrence Welk Show, and Hee Haw, often in that order. To this day, I was certain the only reason we got any kind of TV reception in that part of the country was because Grandpa Warnick had the foresight to cover the tips of the TV antenna with tin foil. I have been living a lie for 40 years.

My very first job in CME was at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia in the early 2000s. The Internet was advancing beyond its toddler phase, and more and more organizations–TJU included–were adapting on the fly to utilize this untapped resource. One of my first big projects at TJU was to turn our CME webpage from nonexistent to useful for our learners. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job with it, but I definitely had a couple tinfoil-on-the-antenna ideas that, in hindsight, were not nearly as helpful as I thought they would be at the time.

For instance, I thought it would be an amazing idea if we recorded all of our grand rounds sessions and posted the raw video on our website for people to watch. It was not. I also thought that people would love sitting in front of their desktop computers reading 15-20 page journal articles in PDF format instead of settling into a comfy chair with a hardcopy journal in hand. They did not.

The funny thing is, it’s 20 years later and I am still seeing these types of antiquated CME programs. Live symposia that are recorded and converted into online programs with little additional formatting. Journal articles or monographs that are posted online in big blocks of text or not optimized for mobile devices. While the intent is valid, there is little actual value added.

If you ever find yourself stuck in a rut with CME program design and needing a spark to modernize, may I humbly suggest that you head on over to the CMEpalooza Archive? (note from Scott: Did anyone else read on and on and on wondering what the heck this all has to do with CMEpalooza? I’m glad Derek finally got here — well, sort of glad). We have an entire section of the archive that focuses specifically on educational design, with more than 40 different sessions to choose from, all free. Hopefully you can find something there that will help you get rid of the tinfoil and throw away the rabbit ears for good.

I’ll let everyone read today’s blog headline and ponder for a moment.

I can see the wheels spinning in your head now. “Hmm, CMEpaTrivia? TriviaPalooza of CME? Lotsa Looza Trivia? OK, I give up. Surely, you guys are more creative than I am and have come up with an incredibly creative and witty solution to this challenging conundrum.”

While that is very kind of you, you give us too much credit. In fact, we were unable to come up anything more creative than “CMEpalooza Trivia Night” for what is bound to be one of the most memorable evenings in CMEpalooza history. True, our live broadcasts always end at 5 p.m. ET so there have been few evenings in CMEpalooza’s history, but this one will be memorable nonetheless.

Here are the important details:

• WHO: Derek and Scott will be your hosts (duh), with some special guest contributors
• WHAT: CMEpalooza Trivia Night
• WHERE: Philadelphia Free Library’s Central Branch (1901 Vine St, Philadelphia, PA 19103), Skyline Room. We’ll have someone in the library’s lobby to show you how to get up to the event.
• WHEN: Tuesday, September 17, from 6-7:30 pm ET
• WHY: This event is being held in conjunction with the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS), which is being held only a 5-minute walk from our event.
• HOW: This event is being supported by a generous anonymous donation in memory of longtime CME professional Jason O’Grady, who passed away earlier this year

There will be Philly-themed snacks and drinks (note: the Free Library is an alcohol-free venue, so you’ll need to get your craft cocktail fix either before or after trivia, We are happy to provide recommendations.), as well as generous cash prizes for the winners. There will be mostly CME-themed trivia questions (many based on AIS presentations), but we’ll have plenty of pop culture and other quirky topics to ask about as well, so don’t feel like you need to study in advance or anything like that.

This event, as with everything CMEpalooza-oriented, is free to anyone who wants to come along. Please note that you do not need to be in town for the AIS conference to attend — this event is open to anyone and everyone in the CME world. While no one expects you to fly in from, say, Sri Lanka, especially for this event, if you do live in the Tri-State area and want to sashay in, you are certainly welcome.

To get a sense of overall attendance, we have created a very short registration form that you can access by clicking this link. While it is not required that you register to attend this event, it will be helpful for our planning. Plus, there is a clue to one of the questions on the form.

Before I wrap this up, I wanted to leave you with a brief story from my family’s recently-completed vacation to Italy. I won’t write 1,000 words like Derek did about his family summer vacation, but since we’re talking about libraries here, this is tangentially relevant.

I have written plenty about my love of libraries in the past, and I usually carve out time in whatever city I am visiting to check out their biggest and best library. Consequently, on our last day in Naples, I set aside time to walk to the Vittorio Emanuele II National Library, which was only a 10-minute jaunt from where we were staying.

Here is what happened when I walked in the doors.

Snooty Italian Library Guy: “Ze library is not open during the summer. You can only see it during our daily tours at 10:30.”

Me (Checks his watch): “Yes, I saw that on the website. It’s 10:27 right now. So I’m ready whenever you are. I love libraries – super excited to see this one. I bet it’s amazing – it was built in 1700, right?”

Snooty Italian Library Guy: “Zere is no tour today.”

(Snooty Italian Library Guy turns his back, walks away, and mouths to his friend — “Silly American”)

Me (Shouting and flailing my arms): “I won’t let you get away with this! I flew thousands of miles for the sole purpose of seeing this library. You are crushing my soul! Please, please let me in!”

Snooty Italian Library Guy (slowly closing the door to his office): “Arrivederci, Rocky Balboa.”

Grrrrrrrrrr

(note from Derek: I like this Snooty Italian Library Guy!)