No Mo’ FOMO: Using Social Media to Avoid Missing that Conference after All

Abstract

FOMO. I learned this one from my kids. It stands for “fear of missing out.” As a scholarly publishing professional, I do love me a good acronym. This one is particularly apt when it comes to describing that nagging feeling that plagues all of us. We all have our favorite conferences and meetings: CSE’s Annual Meeting, the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s Annual Meeting, the annual and section meetings of our own societies, regional industry happy hours, vendor-sponsored user groups, and the list goes on. In a non-COVID year, it is impossible to attend every meeting I want to go to. There are travel budgets, my job duties, my family, and other responsibilities to consider. I’m forced to evaluate very carefully which meetings I will attend and why. Now, since March of 2020, we all have the opposite problem. Suddenly working from home 100% of the time. Because travel is out of the question, I am faced with a different dilemma. Budget is no longer as much of an issue—many conferences are free or greatly reduced in price. The most knowledgeable and renowned scholarly publishing speakers are suddenly tantalizingly within my reach. In theory, I could attend exponentially more conferences than I ever have before. But… I just don’t. Like all of you, I work really hard all day and spend a lot of time on GoToMeetings, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, you name it. The rest of the time I am staring at my screen and trying to make deadlines. […]