Coronavirus, dubbed COVID-19 had led to significant travel restrictions for impacted regions. This has resulted in rescheduling and in most cases, cancellations of major tech events across the globe with many shifting their events online, including tech giants such as Google and Facebook.

As the death toll from the virus surpasses 3000 with over 90,000 confirmed cases reported worldwide, experts have recommended people to refrain from public gatherings to curb the spread of the virus.

In a bid to curb the spread of the outbreak, tech companies have taken multiple steps to ensure employee safety including withdrawal of participation from major conferences and summits scheduled in the upcoming months as well as cancel/reschedule flagship events, moving them online.

From Google’s I/O developers conference to MWC 2020, here’s the list of major tech events which have been impacted due to the outbreak:

MWC 2020

GSMA, the organisers of the world’s largest mobile industry exhibition, the Mobile World Congress 2020 announced the cancellation of the event on February 13 after a large number of sponsors and exhibitors withdrew from MWC 2020 citing health concerns The event was slated to be held from February 24-27 in Barcelona, Spain. Exhibitors such as LG Electronics, Sony, Ericsson, Amazon, Nokia, Nvidia, among others, had decided to skip the event.

Game Developers Conference

The mega0gaming event, Game Developers Conference 2020 witnessed the same fate as the MWC 2020 after almost all major developers including Sony, Facebook, Epic Games, Amazon, Unity, EA, Blizzard, Microsoft, Iron Galaxy Studios, and Activision pulled out of the event which was scheduled to be held in San Francisco from Mar 16-20. The organisers had announced earlier this month that they would be attempting to reschedule the event to sometime “later this summer.”

Google events

Search giant Google recently announced the cancellations of multiple in-person events, moving them online including one of its biggest events of the year, the Google I/O developers conference scheduled to be held in California from May 12-14. The company had also announced that it would be shifting its Cloud Next conference online between April 6 and 8 cancelling all in-person aspects of the event.

Facebook events

Social media giant Facebook also cancelled its annual F8 developers conference, which was scheduled to take place on May 5 and 6 in California. The company may retain some online elements of the meeting, hosting a few small local events instead.

Facebook has also called off its global marketing summit which was scheduled to begin on March 9 in San Francisco as a cautionary measure to curb the outbreak.

Microsoft events

Microsoft as well announced the cancellation of two of its events including the Microsoft WSLConf to be held between March 10-11 in Redmond and the

Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Bellevue & Redmond, Washington scheduled for March 15-20. Both of these events will be held online.

Nvidia

Graphics company Nvidia earlier this month announced the cancellation of its Nvidia GTC - GPU Technology Conference to be held from March 22-26 in San Jose, moving it online following suit.

Adobe

Adobe also called off all of the in-person events of its Adobe Summit 2020 in Las Vegas. The event will now be an exclusive event held online from March 29-April 2.

Cisco

US-based tech giant Cisco has also cancelled its Cisco Live event in Melbourne which was scheduled for March 3-6. The company will, however, be going ahead with its US event planned for May 31- Jun. 4 in Las Vegas.

Shopify Unite 2020

Shopify has transformed its Shopify Unite 2020 developers conference to ‘digital-only’. The event was supposed to be held in Toronto from May 6-8.

Salesforce

Software giant Salesforce cancelled its Sydney event which was part of the Salesforce World Tour Sydney. The event which was to be held in Syndey on March 4 will now be held virtually.

Domapalooza

Domapalooza

, a major tech event for businesses which was scheduled to be held from March 18-19 in Salt Lake City, Utah has cancelled all of its on-ground events, taking the online route instead. The event was supposed to see participation from big names including Uber Domo, ESPN and more.

ICANN67

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organisation that oversees domain names and numbers for sites earlier this month announced its decision to hold its ICANN67 Public Meeting online making it the first remote public meeting. The organisation released a public statement announcing that the meeting which was to be held in Cancún, Mexico from March 7-12 will be held virtually.

India events

E-commerce giant Amazon’s Cloud arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Wednesday announced that it had cancelled its flagship event, the AWS Summit in India owing to the coronavirus outbreak. The AWS Summit 2020 was scheduled to be held in Mumbai from April 7-9.

Chinese phone-maker Xiaomi on Tuesday announced that it would be calling off its on-ground launch events in New Delhi for its Redmi Note 9 and Redmi Note 9 Pro launch scheduled for March 12 and will instead be live-streaming the event across its social media platforms.

Realme as well announced that it would be holding a ‘digital-only’ launch for its Realme 6 and 6 Pro series on March 5.

In February, organisers of the India Fintech Festival (IFF 2020) postponed the event which was scheduled be held on March 4 and 5, 2020.

Apart from these, Apple is also likely to follow suit, shifting its WWDC 2020 event online. The US tech giant is yet to make an official announcement regarding the status of the event.

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