- Feb 24, 2001
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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!
-- ad
(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!
-- ad
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