| Good morning, Marketer, come fly with me, The recent edition of our Event Participation Index showed around half our audience writing off the in-person option for the rest of 2022. I turned out to be one of the minority “extremely likely” to return to in-person events before year end. I have just finished a conference spree (am I done for the year?) and I have the following observations. Based on my tiny sample, flights are on time (lucky me). Boston is colder than New York in the fall. Chicago is much, much colder than New York in the fall (windier too — who knew?). Sliders remain standard conference food. Airline safety announcements have not changed except for additional announcements about masking requirements. When I boarded my domestic flights last week, masks were optional; but the adjacent gate to my final flight was being used by a Japanese carrier that still considered masks mandatory. And with what Professor Peter Hotez has brilliantly dubbed “the scrabble variants” (because they’re tagged with high value scrabble letters like Q) on the horizon, who’s to say they were wrong? Kim Davis
Editorial Director | 