RIP IRL tech events

The pandemic’s darkest days have passed and in-person gatherings are back, but the virtual events that emerged during the pandemic have staying power. Some of tech’s biggest conferences are hanging on to a hybrid element — if not remaining entirely online.

We’re fully into year three of the pandemic, and Big Tech’s conferences are still mostly virtual. The events once packed thousands of attendees into large convention centers in exotic locales like San Jose and Las Vegas, but this week, Apple announced that its annual developers conference would once again be an online event, and Facebook parent company Meta is also putting its annual developers event on pause.

• Meta is putting F8 on ice to focus on “building the metaverse.” The company told Protocol that it’s still contemplating how F8 will evolve and that online events allow for more-focused content and a wider audience.
• Meta is still planning other developer events, including an “inaugural business messaging event” called Conversations on May 19. That event is — you guessed it — entirely virtual. Hybrid events might be possible in the future, Meta said.
• On May 11-12, Google I/O will be broadcast for a “limited live audience,” which spokesperson Alex Garcia-Kummert said would be mostly Google employees along with some partners and developers. The event is free to anyone online.
• Apple is taking a similar approach: WWDC will take place online from June 6-10, with an in-person keynote and State of the Union viewing event at Apple Park on June 6. (Developers and students have to apply to attend the in-person get-together.)
• That’s the third year in a row WWDC will take place virtually, and the second for Google I/O.

Other companies are going all-in on hybrid conferences. This combines the benefits of in-person gatherings — networking, more immersive experiences, a captive audience — with the wider audience and deeper focus of online sessions.

• Salesforce is hosting a developer conference, TrailblazerDX, in San Francisco later this month. While the company will put “limited episodes” from the conference on its streaming service, Salesforce+, the company is warning attendees that “the full experience” will be found in person.
• VMware is also going with a hybrid approach for its VMware Explore event in August and September, which will take place both in San Francisco and online.
• Salesforce’s Dreamforce event is on the calendar for late September with a hybrid approach of in-person and virtual. Highlights will be available on Salesforce+. The conference was also hybrid last year.

In-person networking is a big part of the appeal of conferences. But apparently, that’s not deterring tech companies from making their developer conferences virtual.

• Admit it: No one has figured out how to make online gatherings feel anywhere near as sociable as in-person ones. But so far, Big Tech seems to be OK with that tradeoff when it comes to developer conferences, which can reach a wider audience online.
• Hybrid will likely be the popular approach, particularly for shows that lean on the in-person element. CES returned to Las Vegas this year with a hybrid show, though in-person attendance was decidedly muted in the midst of the omicron variant outbreak. The consumer electronics showcase is planning to try again next January.
• But will Big Tech ever go back to in-person product launches? From an audience reach and production quality standpoint, virtual seems to work well. Still, there’s something anticlimactic about reducing these once-theatrical events to streaming content with no opportunities for the press and influencers to go hands-on with the latest hardware and software.

We’ll have to see whether Apple takes the wraps off its latest iPhone with a splashy IRL event this September. Either way, the more technical tech conferences are likely to stay at least partially, if not mostly, online — or maybe in, IDK, the metaverse?

On the calendar

How is tech setting and measuring climate goals?

Net zero. Carbon offsets. Scope 3 emissions. These are just some of the terms you’ll find in Big Tech’s climate plans. Understanding what they actually mean is vital to ensuring the industry is meeting its goals. Join us at 10 a.m. PT April 19, where Protocol's Brian Kahn will talk with some of the people responsible for setting those goals and experts who are monitoring them to find out what tech companies are really doing. RSVP here.

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People are talking

Tesla shareholder Ron Baron doesn’t think Elon Musk’s Twitter buy is a big deal:

• “I think it’s meaningless. It’s a tiny investment. $3 billion for a man who is worth $300 billion.”

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella told workers to stop sending those late-night emails:

• “We need to learn the soft skills, good old-fashioned management practices, so people have their well-being taken care of.”

Janet Yellen said crypto regulation should be “tech neutral”:

• “Consumers, investors and businesses should be protected from fraud and misleading statements regardless of whether assets are stored on a balance sheet or distributed ledger.”

Daversa Partners’ Frank Cumella said companies should create strong ties with their executive search firm:

• “This is your search partner, your strategic adviser for what we all agree is the most important part of your business: your people, your talent.”

Making moves

Bolt Financial bought Wyre Payments, a blockchain-based payments provider, for about $1.5 billion, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

Coinbase is on a hiring spree in India. The company plans to triple its employee count in the country to 1,000, and half of the new hires will be engineers.

Discovery’s new post-WarnerMedia merger leaders are in place. Jean-Briac Perrette will lead its streaming businesses; Bruce Campbell will serve as chief revenue and strategy officer; and Kathleen Finch is the new chair and chief content officer.

Skand Gupta is the new head of Engineering at Cadre. Gupta has worked in senior engineering roles at companies like Better.com and Dropbox.

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Riot Games is the latest to drop its vaccine requirement and ask workers to come back to the office. Sources told Vice the change has upset employees, some of whom have left.

Twitter Employees aren't happy with Elon Musk being on the company's board, so much so that the company plans to host a town hall on the matter, according to The Washington Post.

Activision Blizzard’s quality assurance testers are now full-time workers after months of activism from some employees. The workers now have full-time contracts and a raise.

Twitter is testing a tool that would let users unmention themselves from conversations on the web.

Epic and Lego want to make the metaverse better for kids. Their plans to work together are vague, but they’re aiming to prioritize kids’ well-being and protect their privacy.

SpaceX can’t expand in Boca Chica, Texas, for now because it never provided documentation on how its growth would affect surrounding ecology and wildlife.

The girlbossification of crypto

Famous women including Gwyneth Paltrow and Reese Witherspoon are getting in on the crypto craze. Given that men have invested more in crypto than women, that leadership push from women celebrities should be seen as a good thing. But it’s … not really?

Women celebrities’ interest in NFTs sounds a lot like the girlboss philosophy, which refers to a 2010s trend in which women leaders broke into male-dominated fields, but in a self-serving way. The charge looks like women are successfully breaking the glass ceiling, but at the expense of marginalized women. The ongoing hype around NFTs could play out in the same way, the Washington Post reports, but time will tell.

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