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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

ADDED: The Houston Rodeo with a couple million attendees is also going ahead.

My anecdotal impression is that tech and tech adjacent events are canceling in significantly great numbers than non-tech. Part of the difference is probably that so many tech companies are telling employees not to attend large events, or even events at all, that even if a tech conference organizer wanted to go ahead, they'd lose half their attendees.

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I think the amount of international travel is huge part (the Houston rodeo might have 2M+ attendees, but I'll bet 90% of them are from Texas), but so are economics- It wouldn't suprise me if cancelling CONEXPOCONAGG or the Houston Rodeo would bankrupt the sponsoring organizations, whereas google won't even notice cancelling their events.

>whereas google won't even notice cancelling their events

That's something of an overstatement. Companies don't put these things on for fun. But, yeah, they'll manage. And, to a first approximation, all the other companies and individuals who were sponsoring/attending/etc. will manage too and relatively few individuals will be directly and personally out of pocket.

That said, there will be startups who were planning launches around the Google events, there will be indirect downstream effects on people who organize events, do professional speaking, etc.

Google doesn't exactly do it for fun, but I'm sure it isn't a significant source of revenue. Given that most corporate conferences are essentially about marketing, the incentive is to be break-even, or even run at a loss. That's very different than people trying to make a living from an event.

Yeah, obviously it's not an easy decision, but my definition of "won't even notice" is that it even if it's a $20M write off, it's like 0.06% of their 2019 net income. For a lot of independent events (like SWSX) canceling the event means losing most of their operating budget.

SXSW in Austin was recently cancelled and the organization is considering bankruptcy. They laid off 1/3 of their full-time staff due to the cancellation.

https://twitter.com/efindell/status/1237156566564048898?s=19 https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-by-southwest-hit-hard-by-...

They won't be the last. There will be plenty of companies going under due to this.

While not a universal (I see replies to that tweet about CONEXPOAGG that mention folks from Canada), I feel like tech conferences have an increased amount of international attendance -- definitely I expect a greater worldwide contingent at most tech conferences vs. the Houston rodeo. Imagine if this had gotten loose at CES...

There's probably truth to that. Certainly it was a factor in MWC canceling while there were still other events, including RSA, going forward as planned. (Some companies did pull out of RSA but it didn't reach the critical mass for the organizers to pull the plug on the event.)

Unbelievable these events are going ahead. A number of travelers returning to Australia from the USA have contracted COVID19, indicating the disease is more widespread than admitted by the government.

The Formula 1 Grand Prix is going ahead in Australia this weekend, which is equally poor.

I always thought the majority of income for F1 is unrelated to the live visitors. and as such it should be fine to do it just without live publicum. ...

I wonder if I'm wrong about it or they are just too irresponsible to cancel the parts involving crowdes?

Irresponsible mostly. Bahrain has already said it plans to hold their Grand Prix in an empty grandstand.

I do think the host tracks would prefer to have a full Grand Stand, due to ticket sales, but I'm not sure how much it would affect F1 as a whole.

Sadly, there seems to be a sense of invincibility almost towards the virus in Western Countries until all of a sudden it arrives and you are dealing with hundreds or thousands of cases.

One non-tech even that was cancelled: Arnold Fitness Expo (Columbus, OH)

Coachella is being delayed till October.

Source? Neither their website nor Twitter says so.

EDIT: Confirmed. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/arts/music/coronavirus-co...

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