The company hasn’t said anything about its signature June developers conference, but…
From Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ “Why coronavirus will mean no Apple WWDC 2020” posted Wednesday on ZDNet:
Apple doesn’t usually announce the date for WWDC until April (last year’s March announcement was usually early). This means that the company has time to assess the situation, and that could mean it will be a few weeks before we know for sure that WWDC 2020 is going to be canceled. But given the size and scale of the coronavirus/COVID-19, it seems unlikely that Apple will choose to bring thousands of people from all over the world and put them in a room with a good chunk of the company’s high-level staff.
My guess — and it is a guess — is that Apple has already canceled the physical meet part of WWDC 2020, and is now putting together secondary plans, which will likely consist of a streamed keynote and developer sessions, and possible virtual development labs.
And who knows, coronavirus could pave the way for more virtual conferences, which from an environmental standpoint wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
Apple could find itself reinventing tech conferences.
My question: If it’s a virtual WWDC, will the entry fee still be $1,599? I’ve asked Apple PR. (UPDATE: Apple PR had nothing to add.)
Below: ZDNet’s running list of bans and cancelations…
- Adobe Summit (Mar. 29-Apr. 2 in Las Vegas) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Apple WWDC (June) – TBD no announcement as yet
- Aruba Networks Atmosphere 2020 (Mar. 23-26) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Atlassian Summit 2020 (Mar. 31-Apr. 2 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Black Hat Asia 2020 (Mar. 31-Apr. 3 in Singapore) – Postponed until Sep. 29-Oct. 2
- Cisco Live (May 31- Jun. 4 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Cisco Live Melbourne (Mar. 3-6 in Melbourne) – Canceled
- Dell World (May 4-7 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- DocuSign Momentum (Mar. 4 in San Francisco) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Domopalooza (Mar. 18-19 in Salt Lake City, Utah) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- EmTech Asia (Mar. 24-36 in Singapore) – Postponed to Aug. 4-5
- Enterprise Connect 2020 (Mar. 30-Apr. 2 in Orlando) – Being held as scheduled
- F5 Agility 2020 (Mar. 16-19 in Orlando, Florida) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Facebook F8 (May 6-8 in San Jose, Calif.) – Canceled
- Facebook Global Marketing Summit (Mar. 9-12 in San Francisco) – Canceled
- Game Developers Conference (GDC) (Mar. 16-20 in San Francisco) – Postponed to Summer 2020
- Gartner CIO Symposium/ITxPo (Oct. 18-22 in Orlando) – Being held as scheduled
- Gartner Data and Analytics Summit (Mar. 23-26 in Grapevine, TX) – Being held as scheduled
- Google Cloud Next (Apr. 6-8 in San Francisco) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Google I/O (May 12-14 in Mountain View, Calif.) – Canceled
- Google News Initiative Summit (Late Apr. in Sunnyvale, Calif.) – Canceled
- HPE Discover (Jun. 23-25 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Infor Inforum 2020 (Sep. 14-16 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- IoT World Developer Conference (Apr. 6-9, 2020 in San Jose, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- Kaspersky’s Security Analyst Summit (April 6 – 9 in Barcelona) – Postponed until Fall 2020
- Microsoft Build (May 19-21 in Seattle, WA) – Being held as scheduled
- Microsoft Ignite (Sep. 21-25 in New Orleans) – Being held as scheduled
- Microsoft WSLConf (March 10-11 in Redmond) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Microsoft MVP Global Summit (Mar. 15-20 in Bellevue & Redmond, Wash.) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Mobile World Congress MWC Barcelona (Feb. 24-27 in Barcelona) – Canceled
- MSPWorld (Mar. 15-17 in New Orleans) – Being held as scheduled
- MWC Americas (Oct. 28-30 in Los Angeles) – Being held as scheduled
- NAB Show – National Association of Broadcasters (Apr. 18-22 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Nvidia GTC – GPU Technology Conference (Mar. 22-26 in San Jose) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- O’Reilly Strata Data & AI Conference (Mar. 15-18, San Jose, Calif.) – Postponed; Merged with Strata Data & AI (Sep. 14–17)
- ODSC East 2020 – Open Data Science Conference (Apr. 13-17 in Boston) – Being held as scheduled, offering virtual option.
- OFC 2020 (Mar. 8-12 in San Diego, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- Oktane Live – (Mar. 30-Apr. 2) Online-only event
- Oracle Code One (Sep. 21-24 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Oracle Modern Business Experience (Mar. 23-26 in Chicago) – Postponed until Sep. 21-24 to coincide with OpenWorld
- Oracle OpenWorld (Sep. 21-24 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Paris Blockchain Week Summit (Mar. 31-Apr. 1 in Paris) – Postponed until Dec. 9-10
- Percona Live Open Source Database Conference (May 18-20 in Austin, TX) – Being held as scheduled
- Recode Code Conference 2020 (May 26-28 in Beverly Hills, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- RSA Conference (Feb. 24-28 in San Francisco) – Held as planned (IBM, AT&T, Verizon, and other vendors withdrew)
- SaaS Connect – Cloud Software Association (Apr. 15-16 in San Francisco) – Being held as scheduled
- SaaStr Annual 2020 – (Mar. 10-12 in San Jose, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- Salesforce World Tour Sydney (Mar. 4 in Sydney) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- SAP SAPPHIRE NOW (May 12-14 in Orlando) – Being held as scheduled
- SAS Global Forum (Mar. 29-Apr. 1 in Washington, DC) – Being held as scheduled
- Shopify Unite 2020 developers conference (May 6-8 in Toronto) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- SXSW (Mar. 12-22 in Austin, Texas) – Being held as scheduled (Twitter has withdrawn from SXSW)
- TNW Conference (Jun, 18-19 in Amsterdam) – Postponed until Oct. 1-2
- VMworld (Aug. 31-Sep. 3 in San Francisco) – Being held as scheduled
That’s an excellent question! If they lower the entry fee price, then think of the precedence lowering the price says, and does!
“…. And who knows, coronavirus could pave the way for more virtual conferences, which from an environmental standpoint wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.”
Agree, but I question it happens!
I was a Staff Development Officer for a federal agency working in the Dallas Regional Office with State agencies, universities and NGOs in a geographic region covering a five State area that was fairly dispersed: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. It was my job to hold small planning conferences for planning seminars, workshops, meetings and conferences where we would bring selective State agency staffs and others together from the five states. Governmental and NGOs’ travel budgets often are vulnerable to budget cuts, especially in dire times where the governor would put a freeze on State agencies’ out-of-state travel. Not so much a problem with universities and NGOs.
With the advent of video conferencing I thought, wrongly, that I could reduce costs and save time away from one’s job by instituting this new format. It felled flat! Participants complained that they desired “face time,” and that much communication and learning went on “after hours” during the social interactions.
Video conferencing never succeeded at that level. Of course today, we have come so much farther in the use of modern video technology and if anyone could pull it off, it would be Apple.
No matter, I believe the same here exists in that Developers attending the conference will complain that so much is lost in “face time” with one another and in the social interactions with one another during evening hours.
A single chance meeting could be worth the costs of attendance (including travel, lodging, and meals).