Facebook cancels F8 conference due to virus

Company will donate $500,000 to tech industry organizations

Facebook on Thursday cancelled its annual F8 conference because the potential spread of coronavirus raises too much of a risk to hold such a large gathering of attendees both from the Bay Area and beyond.

The F8 conference, which is typically one of Facebook’s most-prominent annual events, was scheduled to be held May 5- 6 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s director of developer platforms, said the decision to cancel F8 more than two months in advance of the conference was made around “growing concerns about COVID-19 (coronavirus)” and wanting to reduce the risk of people’s possible exposure to the respiratory disease.

“This was a tough call to make,” Papamiltiadis said, in a statement announcing the conference’s cancellation. “F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on.”

Last year, more than 5,000 people attended the F8 conference.

Papamiltiadis said that despite cancelling F8, Facebook remains “committed” to the city of San Jose, and that the company would donate $500,000 to organizations working to diversify the tech industry, with priority going to groups that serve San Jose residents.

Facebook also said that instead of the the full F8

conference, it will host smaller events, videos and live-streamed content during the period around when F8 was to be held.

This is the second conference Facebook has cancelled due to coronavirus concerns. Earlier this month, the company pulled the plug on its marketing summit, which was set to be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, in March.

Facebook’s cancelling of its F8 conference comes amid growing concerns about the spread of coronavirus outside of China, where the majority of the more than 80,000 cases of the disease, and almost 3,000 deaths from it, have occurred.

In the Bay Area, attention was focused upon the case a critically ill Solano County woman who is the first person in the United States to have contracted coronavirus from an unknown source. The woman spent 11 days in the hospital before healthcare workers were made aware of her condition.

Facebook’s decision to not hold the F8 event is likely to raise the question of whether or not other large- scale tech conferences will still be held as schedule.

The IoT World conference, which 12,500 attendees are expected to attend at the McEnery Convention Center from April 6-9, remains on the schedule. Event organizers said in a statement that they will put enhanced cleaning measures in place, and also offer badges to attendees that will say they don’t want to shake hands with others at the conference.

“We are currently confident that the event will follow in the footsteps of other large and successful international events taking place across the Bay Area,” said IoT world, in a statement.

This week, more than 40,000 attendees went to the RSA security conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. However, while the majority of attendees went to the show as planned, some companies, including IBM, AT&T and Verizon pulled out of the event because of concerns about exposure to coronavirus.

And Facebook, Sony and some other video game developers have cited coronavirus fears as the reason why they have withdrawn from the Game Developers Conference (GDC), which is still set to be held at the Moscone Center from March 16-20.

When reached for comment on their conference plans, officials with GDC referred to a statement on the event’s website that as of Feb. 25 said, “We are moving forward as planned.”

At the Moscone Center, which hosts more than 50 conferences and 900,000 attendees every year, general manager Bob Sauter said that aside from Facebook’s cancelling its marketing summit, no other companies or organizations have said they intend to not hold their already scheduled events at the San Francisco conference complex.

While the Moscone Center has had discussions with conference organizers about the coronavirus situation, Sauter said, “We have had no other cancellations.”

Sauter said the Moscone Center has enacted its health protocols for flu season, installed more hand sanitizing stations and increased the use of cleaning products that the Environmental Protection Agency has approved to control the spread of coronavirus as part of its efforts to ensure the safety of its event attendees.

“Everyone is being cautious, and we’re certainly doing risk assessment,” Sauter said. “So far, no one has panicked or had a knee-jerk reaction to the situation. Everyone has remained calm.