TurningPoint^® Case Study

CME Outfitters

BACKGROUND

CME Outfitters, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, specializes in accredited professional development and lifelong learning opportunities for the medical community, particularly in the neuroscience field. CME develops and distributes live, recorded, print, and web-based educational activities to thousands of clinicians each year and offers expert accreditation services for non-accredited organizations.

One of CME's flagship projects is to host educational symposia at the annual American Psychological Association (APA) conference. At the 2006 May conference in Toronto, CME was looking for a way to make their sessions more interactive, and decided an audience response system was the perfect solution.

When it came time to select a system, CME's choice was TurningPoint - a solution that CME had already positioned far ahead of the competition. One of CME's managing partners had heard of Turning Technologies through colleagues, and was impressed with the company's service, attitude and eagerness to ensure event success. The expertise of Turning Technologies' team was put to the test in the marathon training sessions that the CME and Turning Technologies representatives conducted at the 2006 APA conference.

THE CHALLENGE

When training is required for maintaining professional credentials, participants and stakeholders especially appreciate gauging the immediate impact of the time and resources invested in any particular training session. Usually the paper-based feedback from participant evaluations occurs after the event is over when everyone has returned to their workplaces. Being able to establish a baseline by polling attendees at the event and then re-polling them again afterwards– still at the event – helped to ensure that any possible knowledge gaps were filled. This ability to see immediate and tangible results lends credence to the training and supporters are much more willing to repeat their involvement and cooperation. Gaining the goodwill of the many thought leaders who attend APA conferences is important for CME so that these high-profile spokesmen can act as ambassadors for the company at the next conference. Chris says, "We always work to assure their involvement is rewarding and we demonstrate to them that we are always continuing to innovate."

Because CME was a late adopter of audience response technology, there was no reference point they could use for gauging how successful the technology would be at this particular CME event. Chris Perez, a CME managing partner, says, "The polling we had conducted previously for webcasts was rudimentary. We had not used the technology before, so this was a learning experience – and a great one!"

THE SOLUTION

TurningPoint (as well as Turning's team) got quite the workout at the 2006 conference. CME set the record for conducting more symposia than any other vendor at any other APA conference. From Sunday through Wednesday, CME and Turning Technologies rental technicians worked at a lightning pace to assure that all nine of the back-to-back and simultaneous training sessions were delivered flawlessly. Chris says, "The Turning Technologies reps instantly bonded with us, our mission, and our desire for success. They not only shadowed us, but added their own expertise of PowerPoint® and broadcast production. They were fun to work with, and they knew what they were doing. They were a phenomenal team to work with in such a high-pressure atmosphere."

Chris sat at the command center, and even with changes on the fly with presenters' slides, the Turning Technologies team kept pace while orchestrating the audio-visual equipment. They maintained version control of presentations as last-minute changes were made, and also performed custom work for speakers, embedding questions at appropriate points within the presentation decks. This was no small undertaking with four to seven speakers in each of the nine sessions. Nearly 24,000 neuroscience professionals attended the 2006 conference, and for the nine sessions, CME rented 750 ResponseCards^®.

CONCLUSION

Chris says, "When the Turning Technologies rental staff brought their knowledge, experience and Class A professionalism with them, they represented the competence of the entire company. The culture of Turning Technologies is to go above and beyond what was originally asked and make on-the-fly executive decisions as scope and costs change. The folks we worked with offered decision-making authority as well as an instant feeling of ownership, which helped CME achieve great success."

For more information about purchasing or renting Turning Technologies' audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.