This post is also available in: Italian

Eith the COVID-19 pandemia, the 2020 is the year of conferences cancellation of a new brand of conferences 2.0.

All the big conferences have been cancelled, postponed or transformed in virtual events, starting from mid February.

I’m not a huge fan of the virtual conferences or virtual events, especiallywhen they try to match exactly the on-prem conference format. You lost a lot in virtual form compared with the physical one. But virtual format can provide new opportunities and of course it can be a great opportunity for other people, outside the conference area, to attend easily at the event with no cost. And it can reduce the pollution and the traffic… so should be definitely considered also for the future.

In the USA, this is a partial list of tech related conferences impacted by the pandemia:

• Intel Labs Day (12 – 13 March in San Francisco) – Postponed (new date not yet published)
• Nvidia GTC (22 – 26 March in San Jose) – Converted to a free online event
• Adobe Summit (29 – 2 April in Las Vegas) – Converted in an online event on demand
• Google Cloud Next (6 – 8 April in San Francisco) – Postponed (new date not yet published)
• RedHat Summit (28 – 29 April 2020) – Converted to a free virtual event
• Dell Technologies World (4 – 7 May in Las Vegas) – Converted to an online event (October 2020)
• Veeam ON (4 – 7 May in Las Vegas) – Converted to a free online event (June 17-18)
• Facebook F8 (6 – 8 May in San Jose) – Cancelled
• Google I/O (12 – 14 May in Mountain View) – Cancelled
• Microsoft Build (19 – 21 May in Seattle) – Converted to a free online event (same dates)
• VMware Carbon Black Connect – Converted in a virtual event (May 13-14)
• Recode Code Conference 2020 (26 – 28 May in Beverly Hills) – Postponed to September 8-10
• Cisco Live (1 – 4 June in Las Vegas) – Converted in a virtual event (June 2-3)
• E3 (9 – 11 June in Los Angeles) – Cancelled
• HPE Discover (23 – 25 June in Las Vegas) – Converted in a virtual event
• VMware EMPOWER (20 – 23 April 2020 in Dallas) – Converted in a free virtual event (May 27)
• Apple WWDC (June 2020) – Converted to a free online event
• Nutanix .NEXT (June 30 – July 2, 2020 in Chicago) – Converted to an online event (June 29 – July 1, 2020)
• Microsoft Ignite (September 2020) – Converted to a digital event experience
• VMware VMworld (Aug 30-Sep 3 2020 in San Francisco) – Converted to an online event
• All VMUG UserCon and meeting worldwide have been cancelled or postponed or converted to online events

In USA, one of the first company that decide to cancel its event, was Dell Technologies, before that the COVID-19 become officially a pandemia… and before lot of other companies with some events in the same period. A really smart decision, followed by all the other big companies.

There still some USA events planned for this year, just because they are at the end of the year and maybe the organizers think that the pandemia will totally resolved. For example:

• Oracle OpenWorld (Sept 21-24 2020 in Las Vegas)
• Storage Developer Conference (Sept 21-24 2020 in Santa Clara)
• NetApp Insight 2020 – (October 26-28 in Las Vegas)
• AWS re:Invent (Nov 30 – Dec 4 2020 in Las Vegas)

In Europe, this is a partial list of tech related conferences impacted by the pandemia:

• Mobile World Congress (24 February to 27 February in Barcelona) – Cancelled
• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe (March 30 – 2 April in Amsterdam) – Postponed to August 13 – 16
• VMware EMPOWER (27-30 April 2020 in Lisbon) – Converted in a virtual event (9 June)
• VMware VMworld (3-6 November 2020 in Barcelona) – Converted to an online event
• All VMUG UserCon and meeting worldwide have been cancelled or postponed or converted to online events

In Europe, one of the first conference to be postponed was the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, but there was a big delay on those kind of choices, considering that intially (late January) on Italy was affected.

Also in Europe some conferences remain planned for the last part of 2020, but lots will depends on how the pandemia will evolve.

Andrea Mauro

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.