Twitter Inc.has asked all of its employees to work from home in order to slow the spread of coronavirus. In a blog statement today, the company wrote
Beginning today, we are strongly encouraging all employees globally to work from home if they’re able. Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus for us – and the world around us. We are operating out of an abundance of caution and the utmost dedication to keeping our Tweeps healthy.
Twitter employees in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea will be required to work from home “due in part to government restrictions,” the company said. On Sunday, Twitter has also suspended all “non-critical” company travel and events, including CEO Jack Dorsey’s scheduled appearance at the South by Southwest conference in Texas.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has upgraded the global risk from the new coronavirus to “very high” as the infectious disease continues to spread and public health concerns rise. As of Monday, health officials reported more than 89,000 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease and over 3,000 deaths, including 6 in Washington state. The virus has been detected in more than 50 countries and the overall effect on global health is till unknown.
Tech events canceled.
Many global events have been suspended, postponed or downright canceled due to the virus precautions. Companies are also instituting travel restrictions for employees.
Below is a growing list of Tech conferences canceled, postponed, or going virtual by By Bill Detwiler of ZDNet
- MWC Americas (Oct. 28-30 in Los Angeles) – Being held as scheduled
- Gartner CIO Symposium/ITxPo (Oct. 18-22 in Orlando) – Being held as scheduled
- Microsoft Ignite (Sep. 21-25 in New Orleans) – Being held as scheduled
- Oracle Code One (Sep. 21-24 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- VMworld (Aug. 31-Sep. 3 in San Francisco) – Being held as scheduled
- HPE Discover (Jun. 23-25 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Apple WWDC (June) – TBD no announcement as yet
- Cisco Live (May 31- Jun. 4 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Recode Code Conference 2020 (May 26-28 in Beverly Hills, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- Google I/O (May 12-14 in Mountain View, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- SAP SAPPHIRE NOW (May 12-14 in Orlando) – Being held as scheduled
- Facebook F8 (May 6-8 in San Jose, Calif.) – Canceled
- Shopify Unite 2020 developers conference (May 6-8 in Toronto) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Dell World (May 4-7 in Las Vegas) – Being held as scheduled
- Google Cloud Next (Apr. 6-8 in San Francisco) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Adobe Summit (Mar. 29-Apr. 2 in Las Vegas) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Google News Initiative Summit (Late Apr. in Sunnyvale, Calif.) – Canceled
- IoT World Developer Conference (Apr. 6-9, 2020 in San Jose, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- Black Hat Asia 2020 (Mar. 31-Apr. 3 in Singapore) – Postponed until Sep. 29-Oct. 2
- Paris Blockchain Week Summit (Mar. 31-Apr. 1 in Paris) – Postponed until Dec. 9-10
- SAS Global Forum (Mar. 29-Apr. 1 in Washington, DC) – Being held as scheduled
- EmTech Asia (Mar. 24-36 in Singapore) – Postponed to Aug. 4-5
- Gartner Data and Analytics Summit (Mar. 23-26 in Grapevine, TX) – Being held as scheduled
- Nvidia GTC – GPU Technology Conference (Mar. 22-26 in San Jose) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Domopalooza (Mar. 18-19 in Salt Lake City, Utah) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Microsoft MVP Global Summit (Mar. 15-20 in Bellevue & Redmond, Wash.) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- F5 Agility 2020 (Mar. 16-19 in Orlando, Florida) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- O’Reilly Strata Data & AI Conference (Mar. 15-18, San Jose, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- Game Developers Conference (GDC) (Mar. 16-20 in San Francisco) – Postponed to Summer 2020
- SXSW (Mar. 12-22 in Austin, Texas) – Being held as scheduled (Twitter has withdrawn from SXSW)
- Facebook Global Marketing Summit (Mar. 9-12 in San Francisco) – Canceled
- OFC 2020 (Mar. 8-12 in San Diego, Calif.) – Being held as scheduled
- Salesforce World Tour Sydney (Mar. 4 in Sydney) – In-person canceled; online-only event
- Cisco Live Melbourne (Mar. 3-6 in Melbourne) – Canceled
- RSA Conference (Feb. 24-28 in San Francisco) – Held as planned (IBM, AT&T, Verizon, and other vendors withdrew)
- Mobile World Congress MWC Barcelona (Feb. 24-27 in Barcelona) – Canceled