Coronavirus Impact on Tech Conferences

The impact of the novel coronavirus is continuing to grow, as tech giants are cancelling/postponing major tech conferences, including Google I/O, Facebook's F8 event, the Mobile World Congress, Shoptalk (world's largest retail and e-commerce conference) and the Game Developers Conference, among many other conferences and trade shows. Given the importance of these tech/trade conferences to drive awareness and buzz around the latest products and innovations, the cancellation of these events - on top of the impact of the coronavirus on employee productivity and supply chains around the world - it may depress media coverage and slow down reporting and adoption in the near future.  However, one interesting consequence may be the rise of more digital/virtual conferences, with more limited physical presences going forward.  It will be interesting to see how these major tech conferences evolve as a result of the disruption this year.