CEwire2025 Open Thread and Q&A

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Hi everyone, please use this thread to ask any pre-registration questions you might have about CEwire2025. Or if you don't want to ask publicly, feel free to send me a private message with your questions.

(Once you've registered for the event, the private CEwire2025 forum will be available to you. You can ask questions of individual speakers about their courses in that space, as each course will have its own discussion thread.)



I'd like to take a minute to share some thoughts about the conference.

This is CEwire's 10th anniversary, and I'm amazed by how the show has evolved in that period of time. At this point, CEwire is the largest CE conference in eye care. (For instance, we had about 2x the number of participants in 2024 as Vision Expo West did. My expectation is we'll have 5,000 to 6,000 ODs at the 2025 event.)

The number of credits we offer has dramatically expanded as well. I remember when we started out we struggled to produce a show with 30 hours of education, now we're doing 75 or more with the same manpower required (chalk it up to experience.)

CEwire2025 Registration is finally opening on Black Friday for ODwire.org members and prior CEwire attendees.

As mentioned, we've got an all-new slate of 75 COPE-Approved hours for 2025. These are talks that you won't see anywhere else -- we task our speakers to come up with new content for everyone each year. 'Same-old, same old', recycled and rehashed talks are verboten. I personally usher all the material through COPE approval each year, so you can be sure when you take a course you won't be re-taking something you've already gotten credit for or seen somewhere else.

And unlike literally every other CE conference, CEwire2025 is NOT substantially underwritten by industry. It is by docs, for docs, with minimal outside influences dictating what we can and can't do. Which gives us the greatest degree of flexibility and freedom to give you the talks you want (vs. what industry wants you to see, which is the business model of 'free' CE... with all the potential ethical complexities that brings.)

We take all the course feedback we get from you, the attendees, to create the course roster for the subsequent year's event. Again, it is important to understand our laser-like focus is on attendees -- not on any other outside influence. We have the luxury to do this because CEwire isn't a "free" conference. That is one of the major benefits of paying a nominal fee for your CE directly vs. relying on industry to solely subsidize education.

More importantly, we've done our best to combat inflation over the 10 year run of CEwire. We've held the price essentially flat since the pandemic, even though our costs have risen.

We are able to do this (while offering even more education hours) because we've kept the organization relentlessly lean. ODwire regulars know how 'hands on' I tend to be operationally, this is partially for practical reasons, but mostly because I'd rather allocate as many dollars as possible to our speakers and the tech underlying the conference (ie, those things which directly impact user experience) vs. spending on marketing, or managing an army of people.

We're a small organization, and we probably always will be -- and that's just fine by me. As long as we can continue to make a decent service that people like, that's OK. I have no desire to build an empire. That way lies madness....

In fact, CEwire is 100% marketed by word-of-mouth (!) [well actually -- our external marketing budget this past year was $300 -- Gretchyn insisted we make CEwire lapel pins for our speakers to wear, we hand them out when we run into them at in-person events! :) ] Thus we rely on our attendees to help us get the word out, which keeps costs down. Which lets us keep prices down. This creates what business types call a 'virtuous circle'. And frankly, it is how things should be -- this conference is for you and your peers. The fewer extra layers we add, the better it is for everyone.

Enough of my blather -- if you've got questions, feel free to ask!

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Adam said it all or almost all. We are aware of the individual state board/national organizations' requirements for ODs and try to meet the major ones including
1). 8 CE Narcotics credits to meet your relatively new DEA requirements
2). 10+++ Glaucoma hours to meet the requirements of many states including the largest, California
3). Enough Oral CE to meet the requirements of other states such as NJ
4). Massive amount of TPA CE courses should satisfy any state requirements

We also do it all such as getting you complete transcripts in a timely manner as well as submitting the same to ARBO when a tracker number is provided.

As Adam said, we also vet every course submission to ensure the course was not given on another platform, whether Live, Synchronous, or Asynchronous, and reject content that was. This is a timely task, as you can imagine!!

Enjoy the shows WWW.CEwire2025.com
 
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Adam said it all or almost all. We are aware of the individual state board/national organizations' requirements for ODs and try to meet the major ones including
1). 8 CE Narcotics credits to meet your relatively new DEA requirements
2). 10+++ Glaucoma hours to meet the requirements of many states including the largest, California
3). Enough Oral CE to meet the requirements of other states such as NJ
4). Massive amount of TPA CE courses should satisfy any state requirements

We also do it all such as getting you complete transcripts in a timely manner as well as submitting the same to ARBO when a tracker number is provided.

As Adam said, we also vet every course submission to ensure the course was not given on another platform, whether Live, Synchronous, or Asynchronous, and reject content that was. This is a timely task, as you can imagine!!

Enjoy the shows WWW.CEwire2025.com
It should be a fun event this year!

For many people, they meet their entire CE requirement with the conference. Or at least use it to supplement the live events they attend (remember, with CEwire you register once and can come back any time, all year... so it is always there for you.)

Everyone can explore the course list here. (You can filter and search the list to make finding what you like easier)
 
I am busy pounding out my CE hours for 2024 on CEwire 2024, and I expect to rely on CEwire more next year.

Next year I will not wait until November!
Great to hear it! We always encourage people to sign up earlier in the year, because it gives you much more flexibility to just log in whenever you feel like over the course of the year, and attend as many of the "live" events as you feel like going to.

The 2024 lectures will come down on Monday, so definitely finish watching what you can! (we end the conference by early December each year b/c that gives us time to send the final batches of credits into ARBO well before the holidays. We want the year-end period to be as drama free as possible for people!)

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By the way, I'm currently putting together the actual schedule for the 2025 live events right now. Should be posted by next week. The full course list is here. Classes run typically from around 10 am ET to 8pm-ish ET on both Saturday and Sunday.

The idea is that all 4 of the live events will have the same, full 75 hours of courses (running in 4 rooms). The courses will run at approximately the same time at each of the 4 events, so you can come numerous times and take different classes each time.

A few people each year take all 75 live! Which is quite a feat of endurance :)

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Adam also designs the tracks to be convenient for individual needs. For the whole day usually he has all the Glaucoma courses end to end as well as the Narcotics courses in the same track. Stay there all day or hop around for the diversity. Enjoy and learn
 
Adam also designs the tracks to be convenient for individual needs. For the whole day usually he has all the Glaucoma courses end to end as well as the Narcotics courses in the same track. Stay there all day or hop around for the diversity. Enjoy and learn
Thanks Steve, totally forgot to mention that!

We try to line up those courses into continuous tracks. I'm going to try to do the same this year with anterior seg / kcn / CL -- you can see we have a ton on those topics this year.

Scheduling all these hours into two days though is like an awful game of tetris. Some speakers have time constraints as to when they can be there, so we have to work around them. Others - like me - are on the west coast, so I don't want to torture them with 7am lectures, etc ...
 
I especially like the ability to ask the presenter questions during the talk. I always do the first session. Live it!
You can even ask the presenter questions any time in the year on their unique thread for their lecture residing in ODwire. They will get an email and should get back to you in a timely manner
 
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We try to line up those courses into continuous tracks. I'm going to try to do the same this year with anterior seg / kcn / CL -- you can see we have a ton on those topics this year.
I especially like the ability to ask the presenter questions during the talk. I always do the first session. Live it!
You can even ask the presenter questions any time in the year on their unique thread for their lecture residing in ODwire. They will get an email and should get back to you in a timely manner

The CEwire2025 convenience and and low cost combined with world class speakers and quality presentations should make it the "go to" continuing education for all ODs.

Want your optometry state board to approve more hours? Encourage more ODs in your state to sign up for CEwire2025. When a large enough group of colleagues in your state have signed up, that adds an argument for your state board to follow states like Oregon and all Canadian provinces to allow all courses to be taken this way, utilizing the four weekends with live courses to count as if attending Brick and Mortar classes.

This strategy is most important to press the small number of state boards such a Florida which allow minimal online hours. ODwire.org is the "Gold Standard" most important for recent graduates where high cost of travel and attending live courses is a great financial sacrifice.
 
Repetition is helpful to help answer question...

Thank you for registering for CEwire2025!

Please keep this e-mail for your records, it will serve as your receipt.

You will also receive a separate email receipt from our credit card processor, Stripe.

Please note your credit card statement will show a charge from "Proactive Optometric Physicians, LLC", ODwire.org's parent company.

Next Steps:

  1. The LIVE conferences are scheduled for January 25-26, 2025, April 5-6, 2025, June 7-8, 2025 and September 6-7, 2025, starting at 10:00am ET / 7:00am PT
  2. Visit https://www.cewire2025.com and click "LOG IN" to enter the conference at any time after January 20, 2025. You may browse the course schedule and download handouts before the live event, and plan your weekend!
  3. Lectures from the event will be available ON DEMAND for COPE ASYNCHRONOUS/ENDURING Credit, starting on January 27, 2025.

    Log in then to watch the lectures on demand any time through December 1, 2025. Just click on the "On Demand Videos" link once you're logged in. Remember ARBO requires you to pass a quiz to get on demand credit. Also remember we pull down the On Demand videos during the live shows.
  4. If you signed up during the early bird phase, your Starbucks eGiftcardwill be delivered to you via email by January 24, 2025. Be on the lookout for it! (If you don't see it, check your SPAM box for an email from "starbucks.cashstar.com")
  5. Some browsers (notably Apple products) MUTE auto-playing videos by default.

    If your sound is OFF when watching a video, move your cursor over the lower right-hand corner of the video window and click on the volume icon (it looks like 5 vertical lines.)

    If you are using an iPad, also make sure to use the physical volume buttons to raise the volume. You can learn more about this issue by clicking here.
  6. Please visit the CEwire2025 PRIVATE Discussion Forum on ODwire.org now, to interact with other conference participants before the event begins.

    We will also post the latest news about the conference at the discussion forum
  7. Help us by Referring a Friend!

    Click on this link to send a referral email to friends, and receive a $10 Starbucks eGiftcard for each signup.


If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at support@cewire2025.com


Please keep this information handy before using support@cewire2025.com






Thanks again!
Your CEwire2025 Staff