O’Reilly’s events business - O’Reilly Media

O'Reilly hosts some of the most revered technology conferences that exist. This announcement by them is both difficult because of all the people that just lost their job, but also setting the tone for what I think may be the future for events like this.

Today, we’re sharing the news that we’ve made the very difficult decision to cancel all future O’Reilly in-person conferences and close down this portion of our business. Without understanding when this global health emergency may come to an end, we can’t plan for or execute on a business that will be forever changed as a result of this crisis. With large technology vendors moving their events completely on-line, we believe the stage is set for a new normal moving forward when it comes to in-person events. We also know we are poised to accept that challenge, having already delivered a version of our Strata event on-line to over 4600 participants last week.

Technology events make sense to go this direction first. Their audience is equipped, and adept at using the tools to have this experience. There will need to be innovation on things like the "hallway track", where you just see people you know, but I for sure know that I would probably attend some of these events if they were virtual as opposed to requiring me to fly there and take all that time.