That's what Medical Meetings wants to find out with its first-ever compensation survey. Along with compensation trends among the different position titles and CME provider types, we hope to discover which segments of the CME enterprise are hiring, which are shrinking their staff, and what educational paths those who ended up in this field took to get here.

But we need your participation to get meaningful results—look for an invitation today, or take the survey now (it shouldn't take more than five minutes). And please feel free to pass along this link to your peers so they can participate as well.

Thank you in advance for participating in this important research. We will publish the results in the January/February 2012 issue of Medical Meetings. If you would like to discuss your views on careers in CME, please e-mail editor Sue Pelletier, tweet to @spelletier, or call her at (978) 448-0377.

The National Commission for Certification of CME Professionals, known as NC-CME, announced earlier this month that every member of the Certified CME Professional class of September 2008 had registered for a two-year Extension of Certification. The CCMEP Class of June 2008 did similarly well, retaining 89 percent of its members. NC-CME administers the certification program. Here are more details on the retention rate, and what it means for the future of the certification program.

“We need to lower the heat on the rhetoric,” said the Cleveland Clinic’s William Carey, MD, during his opening keynote at the American Medical Association’s National Task Force on Continuing Medical Education Provider/Industry Collaboration conference in Baltimore last month. He centered his talk around one of the key recurring themes when it comes to collaboration between healthcare professionals and industry: The perception that something fishy must be going on whenever there’s a financial relationship between industry and a healthcare professional.

Here's more from the meeting, including a look at some of the "myths" about the CEJA report that the AMA House of Delegates approved this summer, and the skinny on Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, also known as REMS.

Meeting professionals who work in the pharmaceutical, bio, or medical device field aren’t generally given many opportunities to socialize with—and learn from—their peers. One of those rare occasions is the 4th Annual West Coast Life Sciences Meeting Management Forum, to be held December 14-15 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront in California. Professionals in the pharma/bio and medical device fields will have their own sessions to discuss how to incorporate what they are learning about compliance, strategic meetings management, and the business of meeting planning into their daily work flow.

And, because mobile technology and social media are becoming increasingly important communication channels for when face-to-face meetings aren’t possible (and to augment them when they do occur), co-sponsors Medical Meetings and The Center for Business Intelligence asked technology guru and CEO of Pulse Staging and Events Midori Connolly to take attendees for a walk on the tech side. She’ll give tips on things like developing mobile apps for meetings, and optimizing social media reach to engage attendees.

Register now at PharmaMeetingPlanners.com/West to learn all you’ll need to know to be prepared to meet the life sciences meetings challenges of 2012 and beyond at the 4th Annual West Coast Life Sciences Meeting Management Forum.

I have always found the American Medical Association's National Task Force on Continuing Medical Education Provider/Industry Collaboration conference, held every year in Baltimore in September, to be a little frustrating. There are always really informative discussions on how CME providers and industry can collaborate safely and effectively to improve patient care, and great case studies on how it's currently being done.

Unfortunately, this year, as in years past, it seems like we're preaching to the choir. I want to get the doubters, the critics, the "it-can't-be-done" folks into the room with the true believers. Then we could have a meaningful discussion that will enable us to move out of the fog of controversy to where we can clearly see why, how, and when it's a good idea to collaborate across the fence—and when it's not.

Anyway, for those who couldn't make it to this year's Task Force meeting, here are some blog posts to give you a taste of what you missed:
From Medical Meetings' Capsules:
More on the Keynote Address (including a very funny video used by the speaker to illustrate a point)
Photos and Writeups From Day 2 of the Conference
Thoughts From the First Day of the Conference
From the Policy and Medicine Blog:
The New Myths of the CEJA Report Financial Relationships With Industry in Continuing Medical Education

From Confessions of a Medical Educator:
Thoughts From the First Day of #AMACME