On October 22, 2013, I wrote the very first blog post on the CMEpalooza website. A whopping 529 posts and 10 years later, we’re still at it. I thought it might be a fun exercise to go back and pick some of my favorite posts from over the years…and it was, but it also took wayyyyyy longer than I anticipated. Scott can do the 20-year retrospective in 2034 (note from Scott: If we are still doing this in 2034, something is seriously wrong with us).

My challenge was to pick just one blog post for each year between 2013 and 2023. Sometimes, the choice was obvious; sometimes, it was a struggle to narrow it down. Below is what I came up with for my final list.

Welcome to CMEpalooza!
Date: October 22, 2013
Author: Derek
Why: This is where it all started, the first CMEpalooza blog post. I introduce the concept of CMEpalooza with a question: “What the heck is CMEpalooza?”
Favorite Line(s): CMEpalooza isn’t big on rules. (Still accurate!)

A Word From the Co-Coordinator
Date: May 23, 2014
Author: Scott
Why: Awww, it’s Scott’s first ever CMEpalooza blog post. It’s so cute!
Favorite Line(s): So while Derek will rightfully remain the primary face of CMEpalooza, I’ll be chiming in on the home page from time to time with some additional updates and perspectives as things begin to take shape. (Narrator: “…and that was the last time Scott was deferential to Derek in the history of CMEpalooza.”)

Archive Update & Something Weird
Date: October 29, 2015
Author: Derek
Why: In a random post announcing that the CMEpalooza archive had been updated, I also reveal a link for a 3,000-word, CMEpalooza-themed ghost story that centers on a haunted Google Hangout. It’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever written, and that’s saying something. It’s also probably the most annoyed Scott’s been about something I’ve written. Good times.
Favorite Line(s): Erek is a bit of a wacko and admits that this may not have been the best use of his time. Skott just thinks it’s weird. (Erek and Skott are the fake names I used to hide our identities. That’s not nearly the weirdest thing about the post.)

Harnessing the Power of Introverts
Date: July 27, 2016
Author: Derek
Why: One of the things Scott and I are most proud of in regards to CMEpalooza is its appeal to fellow introverts, which I summarize in this post. Also, I manage to work in a little jab at Donald Trump, Jr., which is always fun.
Favorite Line(s): One of the (many) things I love about CMEpalooza is that it is a haven for introverts. You can attend a day-long conference without ever leaving the comfort of your home, office, or home office. You don’t need to arrive early to grab a “good” seat (i.e. in the back) and then spend the next 15 minutes looking at your phone in order to avoid awkward small talk with the person next to you. No walks through the exhibit hall to refill your coffee, avoiding eye contact with any of the exhibitors you see watching you out of the corner of your eye. And no standing up in front of a crowd of people to ask a question. You can ask questions, sure – just not in the usual “stand-up and be recognized” manner.

(note from Scott: Alas, Derek missed my personal favorite here, entitled “Addressing the Controversy Head On.” It’s a spinoff of the infamous Access Hollywood tape. I have missed the mark on a few political spinoffs over the years, but this one is still rather funny if you compare it to the original transcript and shouldn’t offend anyone)

“The Dog Ate My Laptop?” You Can Do Better
Date: September 5, 2017
Author: Scott
Why: A master class from Scott on the art of lying, in order to help people get out of work and watch CMEpalooza.
Favorite Line(s): Me? I’m an excellent liar. While that may be hardly something you’d think someone would be proud of, I am. (I am unfairly pulling these lines from their surrounding context. Still though…lol.)

Embrace the Uncomfortable
Date: January 31, 2018
Author: Scott
Why: Scott absolutely nails the opening in this one. Really well done. I am jealous about how good it is.
Favorite Line(s): I hate cliches.

I mean, really, who goes around killing birds with stones?

I can’t remember the last time I was at the library and didn’t explicitly judge a book based upon its cover.

My son spilled a glass of milk at dinner just last night – did any of us cry over it? Of course not. We’re not idiots.

Choose Your Own (Alliance) Adventure
Date: January 22, 2019
Author: Derek
Why: As a courtesy to folks not attending, I attempt to re-create a typical day at the Alliance conference by using archived CMEpalooza sessions for the agenda. But everyone knows the real action is during the breaks and reception.
Favorite Line(s): Reception: Invite a bunch of people over to your house for drinks and light hors d’oeuvres. As they come in the door, ask each person for I.D. in order to verify it is the person you invited. Give them each two tickets they can redeem for drinks and glare at them if they ask for another. Make sure you have a giant cheese ball, because a reception just isn’t a reception without a cheese ball. Walk around for 10 minutes, pretend to get an urgent phone call, and stride quickly out the door with the phone to your ear. Leave. Hopefully, when you come back home in 4 hours, everyone will either have left or passed out in the loo.

Everything In Its Right Place
Date: January 31, 2020
Author: Derek
Why: A combination of my CME story, early career angst, and love for Radiohead. My favorite post that I’ve ever written.
Favorite Line(s): And so I go to the Radiohead concert, paying way too much for my ticket, and have an amazing time. Towards the end of the concert, the opening beats from “Idioteque” – my favorite song from the Kid album – start up and I realize to my embarrassment that I have tears streaming down my face. I know this sounds rather mawkish and trite, but all I can think about is how lost and overwhelmed I felt while listening to that song over and over again as Secretary B and how far I have come since then. The moment got to me.

Why Do Some Things Succeed and Other Don’t?
Date: August 12, 2021
Author: Scott
Why: Scott writes about his love of books and libraries and explains why there are no longer any comfy chairs at Barnes & Noble (it’s his fault.)
Favorite Line(s): There were many times where I took dates to Barnes & Noble to sit and read (even women I liked!). Alas, I wasn’t exactly the leading Casanova of my day, though to my defense, this was in central Illinois where there wasn’t exactly a plethora of entertainment opportunities.

The Secret Life of CME Professionals
Date: March 25, 2022
Author: Scott
Why: We had better blog posts in 2022 — particularly What You Can Learn From a Tour Guide About Quality Education, where Scott compares the qualities of a good tour guide and a good CME faculty member and provides some legitimately helpful takeaways — but I selected The Secret Life of CME Professionals as my favorite. As part of a CMEpalooza promotional event, we required people to “tell us a secret” in order to qualify for a $15 Grubhub gift card. The Secret Life of CME Professionals is the blog post where Scott anonymously reveals some of those secrets…and the last one is a doozy. I’m still thinking about it.
Favorite Line(s): This is not so much a secret but just something interesting that has been on my mind recently. We, as humans, can only experience time linearly (back to front, past to future). But, considering our range of experiences, knowledge, and the theory of interconnectedness, we could in theory be thinking about multiple points at once. With onset of AI and considering the ~ get ready for it ~ ability for continuing education to teach humans how to perceive current time, we can in theory be learning at multiple time points. I know this sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, and I am just a pharmacist interested in medical writing, but the ideas of learning on an interdimensional plane has the ability to reshape teaching, communication, and learning.

The Archive
Date: December 13, 2023
Author: Derek
Why: For reasons that are still unclear to me, I decided to write an announcement about the CMEpalooza Archive being updated in the style of a 1940s French noir mystery.
Favorite Line(s): I knew him only as Marcel, though I doubted that name could be found on any birth certificate he owned. He was hatless, wore a frayed and wrinkled fawn London Fog, had at least three days’ worth of stubble on his face, dark purple crescents under his eyes, a half-smoked Gauloise in his hand, and four more stubbed out on the tin ashtray in front of him. The only light at the booth emanated from a candle jammed in the neck of an old wine bottle, fresh wax dripping down to obscure the label, but that was all I needed to see that Marcel was as tense as an overtuned cello.

When you’ve been doing something for a while — beekeeping, beer making, basket weaving, something else that starts with the letter B — you can sometimes take things for granted. “Surely, everybody knows the four things that beehives need to flourish! Why would I waste time telling anyone about that!”

(In case you are interested, those four things apparently are sun [or afternoon shade], access to fresh water, protection from the wind, and privacy. I am neither a beekeeper nor particularly interested in bees, but that’s what the Google tells me.)

You may have heard that we are celebrating our 10th anniversary at CMEpalooza here in 2024, which may not sound like a really long time in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not nothing either. So yes, there probably are some things that Derek and I took the time to explain in the early days of CMEpalooza that we simply assume everyone knows by now. And you know what they say about people who assume…

So this one is for you, the CMEpalooza newbie.

How do I get updated information about CMEpalooza? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an email from you, and I don’t feel like going to your website every morning to see if you have posted something witty.

It’s true that we don’t have any sort of mailing list that we’ve painstakingly accumulated over the years to jam your inbox with useless information. So unless you want the latest CMEpalooza updates, you won’t hear from us. But let’s assume you want to know every time there is a new blog post that has come out. All you need to do is scroll down to the bottom of our homepage and click the “Follow” button. There, you will join the 967 other lucky folks who get that periodic morning ping to get their day started (note from Derek: Yes, you read that correctly. Almost a thousand people intentionally follow the CMEpalooza blog and voluntarily receive our blog posts in their inbox. It’s crazy. I try not to think about that too much whenever I am writing a new post.) You could also choose to follow our LinkedIn page — we typically will post something to notify people when a new blog entry is available there as well.

I saw you published your CMEpalooza Spring agenda last week. Looks great, though I’ll ignore the fact that half of the sessions have some “TBA” fields. I desperately want to tune in on Wednesday, April 24. Is there anything I need to do? Someone I need to pay?

It’s true that there isn’t much in this world that is free. There was a guy outside my house this weekend who was trying to charge me a dime to “breath the air.” I bargained him down to a nickel. Shrewd, I know. But CMEpalooza indeed is one of those rare freebies that requires almost nothing (and $0) from our audience, thus proving accurate the old axiom that the best things in life are free. On the day of our live events, you don’t have to register and you don’t have to pay anything. You simply go to our Live page and click on the link to the session you want to view. They aren’t there yet, but they will be. Patience, please.

But April 24 is my wedding anniversary and my spouse will kill me if I plan anything that doesn’t entirely revolve around them.

You sound just like my wife (she’s the best, even though she never reads our blog and will never see that I just complimented her). You don’t have to have a good excuse to miss our live broadcasts. Life happens. The good news is that you can watch all of our sessions from CMEpalooza in our Archives. It’s pretty much updated as soon as each live session wraps up.

I’m bored, but I’m on the clock so I need to do something that is related to my job. You got anything for me?

Of course. We’re happy to help. For starters, you can mosey on over to our Archives, where you can watch any session since our meager beginnings. Yes, yes, I know, I used to have hair. That’s what a “Decade of Derek” does to you.

If you want to check out what some other CME-related organizations are up to these days, you can peruse our current Sponsor listings. It’s basically a who’s who of everybody who is anybody in our industry. If you are bored at work, maybe you are also looking for a job. Can’t hurt to see what sorts of options may be out there for you. We won’t even take a finders fee.

Wait, you guys have sponsors? That’s cool.

Isn’t it though? Yes, there are currently 29 organizations who have sponsored CMEpalooza in 2024. It’s a lot of medical education companies, but there are some other folks sprinkled in there as well. Maybe you even want to talk to your boss about becoming a CMEpalooza sponsor (note from Derek: Smooth, Scott. Very smooth.) We accept new sponsors all the way up to our live broadcast days. Just point your boss to our Sponsor Prospectus where we have lots of lots of cool opportunities available. That’s sure to help your upcoming performance review, so go for it!

One of my co-workers said something about how we can win money through certain events you guys have. She’s kidding, right? (But I am behind on my rent)

Nope, not kidding. We’ll have a special event for our sponsors sometime in early April along with the CMEpalooza STEPtacular Challenge, sponsored by Talem Health. You can win money through both of those events. There may be other fun opportunities that pop up, too. Just tell your landlord to be patient.

Is there any way you can reference something from like, within the last 30 years in your blog? You do realize that I have never watched Happy Days or Hoosiers, I don’t know who Dr. J is, and I wasn’t alive to watch the Berlin Wall fall. For the love of Olivia Rodrigo, please make it stop.

Sorry, this one you’ll have to live with.

Ugh, fine. At least it gives me something to talk to my grandparents about.

Low blow.

Sorry not sorry. Anything else you forgot to mention? 

Hmm, blog subscription, no registration, free to watch, April 24, archives, sponsors, the ’80s were the best. I think that covers it. You are now a CMEpalooza veteran. Congratulations.

 

 

The first time that Derek and I kicked around the idea of having our community submit abstracts to us for potential inclusion in the CMEpalooza Spring agenda maybe 6 or 7 years ago, there was no grand plan that this would be the permanent path forward. In fact, I’m fairly certain that after our first or second try, we temporarily shelved the idea because there simply weren’t enough people willing to step forward and try something bold.

Our initial plan was that the abstract submission process would give us a little bit of a break from having to come up with ideas for sessions twice a year. The reality was that we ended up with maybe 3 or 4 viable ideas that we’d then need to supplant with whatever else we were able to cobble together. Don’t get me wrong, everything always worked out just fine (and often, though I’m biased, better than fine) but it wasn’t exactly executed the way we drew things up. We were Norman Dale putting everyone in place to run the Picket Fence, only to watch Ollie dribble the ball off his foot, have it ricochet to Jimmy Chitwood, who then promptly hit the jumper at the buzzer for the win. The final score was all that mattered, though getting there took some doing (note from Derek: While Norman Dale was the head boys basketball coach of Hickory High in Hoosiers, it was drunken assistant coach Shooter who ran the Picket Fence. Scott got caught watching the paint dry on this one.)

After benching the abstract submission process for a year or two, we eventually circled back to it because, well, coming up with an agenda on our own twice a year was hard. And yes, slowly but surely, people began to get it. A CMEpalooza abstract is not your traditional meeting abstract. First of all, you don’t have to have a fully formed concept or title. You may have some “TBA” panelists joining you. You don’t need to list learning objectives, or experience levels, or expected outcomes. Yet though we ask for very little, we often get quite a lot.

Our longest abstract submission this spring clocked in at a whopping 386 words. That’s not an abstract, that’s a senior year English thesis! But it was funny and creative and really interesting so, yes, it made the cut.

We’re proud to unveil the working agenda for CMEpalooza Spring this morning. There are still some Ts to be dotted and Is to be crossed (strike that… reverse it), but the gist of things is here. I am not entirely sure what some of these sessions are going to look like or how our panelists are going to pull things together, but it’s those unknowns that we hope makes CMEpalooza something to look forward to. If you like NPR shows, or Ted Lasso, or Disney rides, we’ll be riffing off of each of those this spring. If you like always hot topics such as outcomes design, or the future of AI in CME, or the dreaded “another year of overcoming funding challenges,” we’ve got that as well.

Whatever else you have to do this morning as you celebrate Leap Day, please take a minute to peruse our Spring agenda and put a circle around every “can’t miss session” (again, I’m biased, but that should be all of them). We’ll see you on Wednesday, April 24.