Should you list acceptance of an abstract to a prestigious conference on CV when unable to attend due to personal reasons? I've been just had an abstract accepted to one of the top conferences in my field, but I'm cancelling my participation for personal reasons (short story: my wife is going to give birth to our first child a couple of weeks before the conference, and at that point I'd rather stay at home than spend several days in a different continent; this happened because I neglected to check the actual conference dates when I submitted the abstract; let that be a lesson for all of us). When I informed the organizers, they suggested that I still should add the conference to my CV, with an indication that I didn't actually present, i.e., under "Peer-reviewed conferences", I would write something like:


"A genius solution to an insanely difficult problem". Conference Everybody Wants To Attend XXIV, May 2014, Prestigious American University (unable to present).


What are your thoughts about this? If the organizers hadn't said anything, I would have left it out of my CV; but then, the particular organizer I corresponded with is a big name in the field and way more senior than I am, and she didn't seem to have any problems with it.
As it is a peer-reviewed conference, I think it is OK to mention it the CV. 

I am not sure about your particular conference, but in such conferences the biggest step is to get accepted (extended abstract/paper) and you did. So you did the job, they liked your idea and in normal situation you would present there.

It can happen that you are not able to present and you cannot find anyone to do it for you. However, you met all the requirements to be there, so it has its place in your CV.

If you want to be more correct you can mention the abstract as well because not everybody can know if the abstract or whole paper is required.


  "A genius solution to an insanely difficult problem". Conference
  Everybody Wants To Attend XXIV, May 2014, Prestigious American
  University (accepted abstract, unable to present)