Another day passes with increasing cases of COVID-19 outbreak and another big technology conference gets canned amid chaos spread across the globe due to the coronavirus outbreak. Alike many companies, last week, Amazon also announced the cancellation of the annual conference – re:Mars 2020 which was scheduled to take place on June 16 – 19, 2020 in Las Vegas, USA.
Amazon declaring the cancelation said, “Thank you for your interest in re:MARS 2020. Our top priority is the well-being of our employees, customers, partners, and event attendees. We have been closely monitoring the situation with COVID-19, and after much consideration, we have made the decision to cancel re:MARS 2020. All guests who have purchased tickets will receive a full refund of registration fees. Hotel rooms booked through our conference website will be canceled free of charge. Over the course of the coming weeks, we will explore other ways to engage the community.”
Amazon organizes re:Mars AI Summit annually focusing on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and other futuristic technologies along with inviting leading experts to present insights and knowledge in the technological advancements across the world.
Recently big companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook have also either canceled their events or postponed to future dates. Amazon’s announcement of canceling the event comes after Apple’s decision to make its annual developer conference WWDC online instead of hosting it live with delivering a full program with an online keynote and sessions.
Although the company has announced that they will look for other alternatives to engage the technology community for knowledge sharing, networking, and innovation showcasing in the near future, there is a large uncertainty of when and how the events industry will restore its scenarios.
