Conference News: MWC Makes More Moves; Speaking about AI; Next Week’s Lineup
That’s so Meta: VentureBeat’s GamesBeat Summit, which was held online in April, focused on how companies can best navigate the transitions to new platforms, machines, new markets, and new business models. It started such a passionate discourse that the conference organizers decided to continue the conversation with a second summit that will be entirely about the Metaverse – from both a gaming and transformative technology perspective. GamesBeat hopes to draw leading thinkers in the game industry and elsewhere to discuss the tech leading us to there and implications for the industry. They will consider questions such as “Will it be an accidental thing like the spontaneous community around Animal Crossing, or a deliberate, engineered universe built by companies such as Roblox or Epic Games?” The new event, Into the Metaverse, will take place online from 26-27 January 2021.
GSMA Mixes it Up: Last week the GSMA announced that Mobile World Congress 2021, initially scheduled for the first week of March 2021 will now be held from 28 June – 1 July. The Shanghai conference, which is typically in the summertime, will take place from 23 – 25 February 2021. After having to abruptly cancel the 2020 conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the GSMA and the members of the mobile ecosystem are eager to host MWC21 Barcelona as a live gathering. They will still have some virtual elements to complement the physical event, however.
Speaking Opportunity: In its fifth year, the AI Summit New York will once again focus on the impacts of AI on business when it runs 9-10 September online. Major players in artificial intelligence are represented here – AWS, IBM Watson, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, to name just a few – and now you can propose a speaker for the virtual program as well. Eight tracks are designed to offer content for professionals from technical to CXO and targeting a few specific industries. Interested speakers should submit proposals by 10 October, however they will be reviewed as they are received.
Lunchtime Learning: The Atlantic Festival was held virtually this year from 21 to 24 September 2020 and was, for the first time, free to attendees. The event organizers hosted interviews, performances, film screenings, and conversations about the political, cultural, and economic forces shaping our world today. If you missed some of this year’s stellar speakers, such as Former Secretary of State, and Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton; Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci; CEO, Delta Air Lines; Founder and CEO, edX Anant Agarwal; or Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Bill Gates, you can catch them all on the event site now.
Coming Up Next Week: Get ready for another jam-packed event calendar, starting with the virtual Interop (5-8 October). An independent conference for IT pros, Interop offers two days of training and certifications, two days of conference tracks. At Fast Company Innovation Festival, which kicks off 5 October, thousands of makers and innovators from across the globe will meet online to weigh “Innovation for Good.” Also, The New Yorker Festival runs 5-11 October and promises an “eclectic mix of conversations, performances, and experiences” through its online platform as well as culinary experience and a drive-in screening for those in the NYC area. One of the largest converged security events in the U.S., ISC West is set to be held virtually 5-7 October and is free to attend for security & public safety industry professionals. The Out and Equal Workplace Summit (5-7 October) is the largest LGBTQ focused conference in the world, featuring presenters from Olympic-winning celebrities to passionate practitioners. And the CIO 100 Symposium – which will run 6, 7, 13 & 14 October – invites top CIOs in the country to “open their playbooks and share details of innovative programs that solve a broad range of today’s IT challenges.”