Next up on our 10 Years in 10 Minutes interview series is my friend and former colleague from two different stops on our CME journey (Thomas Jefferson University and Pfizer) Beth Brillinger. Beth’s presentation at the first CMEpalooza was on Activity Planning: Improving the Process to Align with Accreditation Criteria and wrapped up in a crisp 16 minutes. While I would never go back to the days of letting presenters choose any random length of time for their presentations, there definitely is something to be said for the type of short informative sessions that Beth and a couple of others did. Maybe instead of eight 1-hour sessions we should do thirty-two 15-minute session? I can hear Scott grinding his teeth from here…

We cover the standard topics during the interview, along with a quick career check-in. Anyone who knows Beth knows she is longtime motorhead, so I couldn’t help finishing up the interview with a little Formula 1 talk. Check out the full interview below.

Today, we continue our special Tin Anniversary “10 Years in 10 Minutes” feature by catching up with Dr. Erik Brady. Erik is one of the lucky/unlucky ones (depends on your perspective) who escaped the clutches of CME and now serves as the Chief Operations Leader of Biomedical Graduate Programs at Wake Forest University.

Back in the early days of CMEpalooza, however, Erik was entrenched in the world of outcomes and data mining. His initial CMEpalooza contribution was entitled “’Excel’lent Tricks for the Non-Expert: Exploring the Beauty of the Cells.” What an incredibly witty title.

In today’s interview, Erik returns to his CME roots by reflecting on his initial meeting of the introverted minds with Derek, his curious love of all “black and gold” colleges, and how he still points colleagues to his initial CMEpalooza session as a learning tool. Some things just never go out of style (please ignore my fancy hoodie here – my stylist took the day off).

As I mentioned in Wednesday’s post, over the next few weeks we will be highlighting 10 years of CMEpalooza through an interview series we are calling 10 Years in 10 Minutes. Today, I am happy to share the first in this series, my interview with Brian McGowan, Chief Learning Officer  Co-Founder at ArcheMedX (side note: he will also be playing the role of Coach Beard in the Ted Lasso-themed session Be Curious, Not Judgmental of Your Data at CMEpalooza Spring on April 24. Don’t miss it!)

It was an easy decision to run Brian’s interview first as he was the very first person to ever present at CMEpalooza, covering the topic of Why Adult Learning Theory Is Insufficient to Drive Learning. We talk about his original session, its relevance today, his experience presenting at the first CMEpalooza and, of course, what he’s currently binge watching. I’m impressed we kept it to 15 minutes.

While we discuss it during the interview, I also wanted to highlight here the first words Brian spoke when beginning the first presentation at the first CMEpalooza.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing this. I really think that we’re going to look back a few years from now and realize you’re doing something that adds so much value to what this community needs.

Inspiring words that I needed to hear at that moment. Brian is the best. I hope you enjoy the interview.

(Note: During my introductory remarks I mention that the first CMEpalooza was in May. That is obviously incorrect since the first CMEpalooza was in March, a fact that I am well aware of. Why did I say May? I have no idea. Let’s all chalk it up to a brain fart and move on with our day, OK? OK.)