Even as most conferences, summits and expos are being cancelled because of the pandemic, the organizers of the IFA 2020 has announced that the upcoming event in Berlin will go ahead as planned, but not in the same way it has in the past. In a tweet earlier today, the official Twitter account of IFA Berlin said that the event will have an “innovative concept designed for unprecedented times”.
The IFA announcement follows a decision by the local administration in Berlin to ban all large events with more than 5,000 participants until October, 2020. It will be interesting to see what this so-called ‘innovative new concept’ will be, but it’s very likely that it will be some kind of an online event along the lines of WWDC 2020 and Microsoft’s Ignite 2020 that were also moved online because of the pandemic.
According to Hans-Joachim Kamp, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of GFU Consumer & Home Electronics, the company that organizes the IFA: “We expected this development given the constantly evolving pandemic and appreciate that we now have a clear regulatory framework that enables us, our partner Messe Berlin, and our exhibitors to make detailed plans for IFA 2020”.
The coronavirus outbreak has resulted in the the cancellation and postponement of several tech expos over the past few months. While some, like MWC 2020, Google I/O, SXSW and Facebook F8, have been cancelled completely, others, like Apple and Microsoft’s aforementioned events, as well as E3 2020, Gamescom, Oculus Connect, to name a few, have moved online in light of the pandemic.
