On Thursday, Microsoft announced that its biggest event of the year, Microsoft Build, is going to be a digital conference, a decision made in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In an attempt to avoid unnecessarily spreading the coronavirus among its employees and customers, Microsoft announced that its annual developer conference will be held completely online.
Last year, Microsoft Build drew in about 5,000 participants, an amount far over Seattle's newly imposed 250-person event size limit. Though no information has been disclosed by the company about how converting the conference to an all-digital event instead of an in-person event will change their attendees' experiences, it's still expected to be held on the predetermined dates: May 19 to May 21.
Typically, the event provides participants with interactive sessions and hands-on experiences which will be more challenging to implement virtually; however, Google announced that its now-digitalized Cloud Next developer conference will also host break-out sessions and interactive learning sessions online. We'll have to wait until next month to see how comfortable and able such a large number of attendees can participate and engage simultaneously online.
While cancelling in-person conferences as such doesn't prevent the spread of the infection, the decision can potentially help keep the outbreak to a more manageable size.
