A number of major technology firms are canceling events and conference appearances, as coronavirus continues to spread. Facebook and Microsoft are amongst those who have decided to pull out of events instead of risk large groups of people travelling and congregating.
Facebook and Microsoft Cancel Appearances and Events
On Thursday, Facebook announced the cancellation of its F8 developer conference. Executive Konstantinos Papamiltiadis wrote:
This was a tough call to make — F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on. We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.
Meanwhile, Epic, Microsoft, and Unity have all pulled out of the Game Developers Conference (via The Verge). Microsoft said it will “move our presence to a digital-only event March 16-18th.” These cancellations follow the decision to not hold Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month. Speculation is mounting as to what will happen with WWDC, but it is still going ahead as planned at the time of this writing.
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