The Colbert Report: Going Out With a Bang

Stephen Colbert finally put his namesake character and show out to pasture last night, and he did it with the help of a shocking number of friends.

Nine years in, the The Colbert Report ended its run with a singalong of “We’ll Meet Again,” complete with dozens of celebrities wildly varying in fame, popularity, and notoriety. This was a stage where Willie Nelson and Andrew Sullivan were standing five feet away from one another. The departure of Colbert was something that two notably strong political personalities—Keith Olbermann and Grover Norquist—could agree on. Senators (Cory Booker and Claire McCaskill), Muppets (Big Bird and Cookie Monster), billionaires (Mark Cuban), legendary rock stars (Cyndi Lauper and Michael Stipe), and even a former president (Bill Clinton) got a moment in. And that’s only scratching the surface when it comes to this list  (opens in a new tab).

Colbert will be back soon enough—he’s going to be on CBS, hosting The Late Show starting sometime next year. But with 1,447 episodes of the show that made him famous at his back, it only makes sense to go out big.

Events should be the same way—especially when it’s an end-of-the-road moment like someone making a big exit. People will be talking about The Colbert Report‘s final episode for weeks on end. Don’t you want to create a big moment like that for your own organization?

New Association of the Day

Health information exchanges form national trade group, look to joint ventures http://t.co/TNKBvRG5ks  (opens in a new tab)

— Modern Healthcare (@modrnhealthcr) December 16, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

Earlier this week, a coalition of health information exchanges launched a new national group meant to help boost the industry’s advocacy prowess and messaging efforts.

The group, the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC), will bring together the efforts of 20 such exchanges throughout the U.S. The exchanges, which help enable secure sharing of vital medical data between facilities, are a relatively new phenomenon, and the coalition will help make it easier for the regional exchanges to work with one another.

“One of the things that we need to be able to do is create joint ventures so that multiple HIEs can come together to do business with national and regional organizations,” Quality Health Network Executive Director Dick Thompson told Modern Healthcare  (opens in a new tab). The Colorado-based Quality Health Network is one of the coalition’s founding members.

SHIEC will appoint an executive director next month.

Other Links of Note

Need a new web design tool? Good news: The online typography tool Typecast, which used to carry steep monthly fees, is now free to use  (opens in a new tab).

The cloud is getting cheaper, thanks in part to big price drops by Amazon and Google, CMS Wire reports  (opens in a new tab).

Making Reddit work for your association isn’t exactly easy, but Recruitment Advisor has some association-specific tips  (opens in a new tab).

Can you name all the celebs in this screenshot? (Comedy Central)