An Anniversary Letter

Abstract

Face-to-face meetings and networking opportunities are the secret sauce of professional associations, and this evaporated over the past 18 months. At INFORMS, it vanished along with nearly 30% of our revenue and a significant decline in our membership. Moreover, our academic members have shared with me how stressful it was when they were required to teach online, juggle their research programs, and, of course, their own families while worrying about COVID-19. Our members from industry worried about their own jobs being cut (especially those who work in the travel industry) and having to lay off their employees. INFORMS' own staff stressed about delivering the best experience to our members (you!) and customers from their home offices while juggling their own families and worrying whether INFORMS would need to lay off staff.