You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.  All that I see CE as being is deciding that we have to be forced to go to a particular set of water troughs to drink from.  If you are thirsty or in need of knowledge you will find the right water trough and fill up.  If the horse not thirsty, all that CE amounts to is forcing the horse to a particular water trough and making him put his nose in it.  If the horse does not want water all he is getting is a wet nose. 

Most of us that want to be good at what we do are always on the prowl for relevant knowledge anyway, and will learn and improve.  Those that are not interested in improving will go to the courses, get the appropriate certificates and really be no better off than they were before.  They may even be worse off, as some of these courses done by people that are pure academics or have particular axes to grind contain erroneous information. 

Now, with the internet and emails, it is much easy to search out information on your own than ever before.  It is easy now to go directly to the source for information through emails, even to people in other countries, and the information will be much fresher and closer to the reality that anything that you find in a canned presentation.

The concept of formal continuing education I regard as at best near useless, and in many cases counterproductive.