With the current safety concerns around the coronavirus epidemic Micro Focus have taken the sensible approach and transitioned the Micro Focus Universe event from a physical meetup at The Hague to a virtual event.
The good news is that you can sign up for the virtual event for free and get access to the wide schedule of technical sessions and futures talks.
You can still register. The event will run over the same days as originally planned 17 – 19 March.
At this point the San Antonio, Texas Universe is still planned as a physical event in May.
Many major tech events have been hit. One of the first to hit the headlines was the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in late February. Over 100,000 visitors were expected for that event and it’s cancellation undoubtedly caused chaos for all parties; delegates, sponsors, organisers and the hotel and hospitality industry. This has now become a worrying trend. Adobe World, for example, has also been turned into a virtual event. Virtual events are the new standard.
Now the focus is on remote working and online collaboration tools. It will be interesting to see how successful large scale remote working is over the next few months. There could be winners and losers in the marketplace.
However the feeling is that while virtual events can supply the basic technical information exchange it is still good to meet up face to face to discuss matters further in a good social environment.