The coronavirus has made a new victim in high-tech events. Facebook has just announced the cancellation of F8, its annual developer conference. This was to take place on May 5 and 6, 2020 in San Jose.
Coronavirus: Facebook cancels the F8 developer conference
“F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook (…) but we must give priority to the health and safety of our developer partners, our employees and all those who help in the realization of F8”, explains Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, director of partnerships at Facebook, in a blog note.
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Each year, the F8 conference is an opportunity for Facebook to present new products, technologies and, of course, development tools. This cancellation is therefore a loss of valuable information. This is why Facebook is looking for alternatives.
“We are planning other ways to allow our community to come together, organizing events at the local level, both delayed and live videos,” said the director. The company will announce more details on this organization in the coming weeks.
What about Microsoft and Google?
Facebook F8 is not the first high-tech conference to be canceled. Due to the coronavirus, the Mobile World Congress has also been canceled. The Game Developers Conference, to be held in San Francisco from March 16 to 20, remains maintained for the moment, but a series of major brands have already canceled their arrival. Namely: Microsoft, Facebook, Unity, Sony and Epic Games.
It remains to be seen whether Google and Microsoft will maintain their developer conferences, I/O and Build 2020. They too are in plans for the month of May.
It is worth mentioning that recently, an American laboratory has announced that it has created a vaccine for Coronavirus ready to be tested on humans. The first experiments could start as early as April. This is an encouraging first step towards the eradication of Covid-19. At the same time, a vaccine in development by a Hong Kong team could also start testings in China at the end of April.
