Coronavirus and Global Tech Events

3 minute read

The world has faced yet another massive threat to the mankind in the recent history – Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Although the initial impact was mainly on China, now it has become a global threat as the virus has speared outside the Great Wall. The situation has created much concerns for all the countries and governments in the world.

Not like in the past, with the development of new technologies, we say that the world has become a global village, making everyone close to each other, not just using communication, but also making global travel easy. As a result, people travel more for different reasons.  Global events, especially the ones related to technology and telecoms are held in numbers around the globe all across the year. These include global events and regional events. 

While the coronavirus’s impact to the world is multi-fold, one of the areas relevant to the telecom and tech are the global events. There are many organizations in the world organizing annual and regional events and these events are important for the right balance of the ecosystem. Some key examples are GSMA, PTC, Terrapinn, Layer123, Informatech, Linux Foundation, MEF and TM Forum. These organizations produce many flagship events including Mobile World Congress (MWC)-Barcelona, MWC-Shanghai, Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC), Telecoms World, Next Generation Optical Networking & Data Center Interconnect (NGON & DCI) World, Broadband World Forum (BBWF), Network Virtualization, Open Source Summit (OSS) and Digital Transformation World (DTW).

Even though today's technologies and advancements in communications does not require us really travel to discuss and share knowledge, these events over the years have proved that the industry still like to meet in person at least once a year – for many reasons. This requires travel – mostly on air. One of the hardly hit industries with coronavirus is the travel industry. For example, take Singapore – a main travel hubs in the world and according to this report, it was empty few days back. Airports and airplanes, no matter how good you keep them hygienic and clean, are susceptible for the spread of the virus. Many people have cancelled their travels and many organizations have imposed travel bans for their employees. 

As a result, many global tech events have been cancelled or postponed, biggest news being the cancellation of the MWC 2020 – an event started in 2006. Another example is Telecoms World Asia 2020. Going forward, we may see many other events too will be either postponed or cancelled. After all, we all agree that the safety of everyone is paramount. 

As already mentioned, we can use technology like remote meetings, webinars, virtual reality, holograms etc., but they won’t be that effective compared to the overall experience you get in attending an event physically. While the world goes dark, the telecom and tech events landscape will also be dark, hopefully temporally. Till then let’s be patient and keep the industry moving.

Anuradha Udunuwara, ARC Tube | @AnuradhaU

Photo by Dimitri Karastelev on Unsplash