IT Conference Rescheduling Sees Light of Day

The IT industry is slowly getting a handle on the many conferences that were set to take place though the first half of the year but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were canceled. Many event sponsors are announcing rescheduled events.

In some cases, conference sponsors canceled conferences outright; in other cases, they postponed them or set out to create virtual events for attendees. Clearly everyone – conference sponsors, vendors, industry speakers, partner organizations, attendees, venue facilities and a multitude of workers – have been thrown off course by current events.

As we all do our best to forge on and stay healthy, here’s what we’ve gathered about how and where some shows are going on.

Beginning with our own, we’re excited to announce the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, scheduled for Sept. 8-11, at the Venetian & Sands Expo in Las Vegas. The colocated event includes our fall show, Channel Partners Evolution.

Cisco Live is relaunching as a complimentary, full-scale digital worldwide event, June 2-3. Watch the event site for continuous updates.

Dell Technologies has created a Dell Technologies World virtual experience scheduled for October. The vendor noted its intentions to stay engaged with customers, partners and all stakeholders through smaller virtual meetings, gatherings, briefings, webinars, podcasts and town halls.

IBM announced early on that it’s taking IBM Think 2020, a client and developer conference, and PartnerWorld, for business partners, virtual, May 5-7. There’s still time to register for the Think Digital event. The company has already lined up an impressive guest speaker roster, including Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and CEO – soon departing; Arvind Krishna, incoming CEO; Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat, soon to be president at IBM; Amal Clooney, barrister at Doughty Street Chambers; Mayim Bialik, writer, actress and neuroscientist; and Imogen Heap, musician, producer, founder, Mycelia for Music, to name a handful.

Ingram Micro Cloud Summit 2020 has been postponed to early 2021. The distributor’s Comet Competition details are being worked out and participants will receive information. The Comet Competition 2.0 is in its second year.

The MSP Alliance has rescheduled MSPWorld 2020 for Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in New Orleans. Same location, different date.

It looks like the next PlanetOne Tech Tour is scheduled for June 9-10, in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Additional Tech Tour events are scheduled for Sept. 23-24, in Las Vegas, and Nov. 10-12, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience, scheduled for April 28-29, is open to registrants. If you already registered for the onsite event or are interested in registering for the virtual event, visit the vendor’s website for information on the agenda, speakers, and early Virtual OpenShift Commons Gathering on April 27.

Aruba Atmosphere 2020 (ATM) was canceled and its ATM Digital event has been postponed. The company is focused on providing solutions at this time, according to a statement on its event website. Similarly, the canceled Google Cloud Next ’20: Digital Connect has also been postponed and will update its site as more information becomes available.

The ASCII Houston IT Success Summit has been postponed to Dec. 2-3 at the JW Marriott Galleria Houston. Partners can get information on other ASCII Success Summit events taking place in the U.S. on the organization’s website.

D&H Distributing recently announced the relaunch of its partner conference series for 2020. Called them Thread Technology conferences, the events are virtual, live-streamed “Threadcast” videocasts. The first two Threadcast events featured special speakers, subject-matter experts and manufacturer-based technology presentation. For partners who missed the initial virtual event, D&H is making the content available to view on demand.

IWCE Expo has been rescheduled to Aug. 24-28, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

LiveWorx 20200 has scheduled a virtual event for June 9. The company is working through the event details and will provide updates as they become available.

Vendors with plans to retool their live events to virtual events, or reschedule for later in the year, but have not announced details as of this time include: F5 Agility; ImpartnerCon 2020; Kaseya’s Connect IT Global; Lenovo Transform 2020; Microsoft Inspire 2020; Sapphire Now 2020; TBI’s Big Event, VeeamOn 2020; Pax8 Wingman 2020; ZertoCon 2020.

HPE Discover 2020, scheduled for June 23-25, in Las Vegas, is still scheduled, as is HPE Partner Growth Summit 2020, which runs June 22-24, during the Discover event. VMworld 2020, scheduled for Aug. 31-Sept. 3, in San Francisco, is also still being held as scheduled. Both vendors are monitoring developments of the COVID-19 outbreak and will keep the public notified.