No More Large Conferences and Trade Shows This Year

Don’t delude yourself. The likelihood that we attend large conferences and trade shows this year in the same way as before is slim to none.

1 minute read

May 5, 2020, 12:00 PM PDT

By PabloValerio @pabl0valerio


2019 National Planning Conference

The Photo Group / Courtesy of the APA

TRADE SHOWS AND LARGE CONFERENCES NEED TO EVOLVE

The consequences of the disruption caused by the pandemic are of particular concern to organizers of large conferences and trade shows.

Starting with the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, almost all events have been canceled or postponed, all over the world until the Fall.

Large corporate tech conferences, such as VMworld (both US and European), Amazon’s European Summit, and Apple’s WWDC, have been converted into online-only events. Google I/O, the popular developer conference for all things Google, will not happen in any capacity this year, and the GSMA already announced the cancellation of Mobile World Congress Shanghai

Collision, the Toronto-based companion event of Lisbon’s Web Summit, has been renamed Collision From Home, and organizers expect over 30,000 people to attend online, paying $79 for over 100 hours of talks.

MWC Los Angeles, scheduled for October, hasn't been cancelled yet, but no speakers have been announced, and the organization is not providing any more details of the show.

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