Coronavirus is dividing the world into those who decry scaremongering about the epidemic’s impact and those who would rather be safe than sorry. Europe’s largest telecom conference — the Mobile World Congress scheduled to take place in Barcelona — has put itself firmly in the second group.
The decision to cancel the congress puts at risk an estimated €492m of revenue for the Catalan capital and 14,000 temporary jobs. It has pushed coronavirus to the top of the agenda of any trade body or corporate board that was planning to organise or send a delegation to an event virtually anywhere in the world.
While the fatality ratio of the virus is lower than Sars, which gave corporate networkers a jolt in 2002-03, scientists at Imperial College London estimate its impact “may be comparable to the major influenza pandemics” last century. It is only natural, then, for companies to question why they would send their sales team off to glad-hand contacts and potentially bring back more than the contract and logo-ed backpack full of business cards they bargained for.
Conference organisers themselves are cautious. Informa has postponed events in Thailand, Singapore and China. Relx said it had put off nine of the 45 conferences it planned to host in China this year. From art to aviation, gatherings have been scrapped or seen nervous participants withdraw rather than be forced to strike deals in germ-filled rooms. MWC is not the first non-Asian event to succumb. “To guarantee the welfare of our guests, partners, and colleagues,” Swatch cancelled its luxury watch launch, Time to Move, scheduled for next month in Zurich.
For plenty of executives, then, this is not the time to move. The clock is not yet ticking for networking events as a whole, though.
Commerce has been a vector for infectious diseases since at least the 14th century. Historian Walter Scheidel points out drily in his book The Great Leveler, that “existing commercial connections were sufficient to ensure the transfer of the requisite rodents and fleas”, spreading devastating plagues via the caravan routes from central Asia to Europe.
Pessimists and futurologists also claim technology and climate change are conspiring to put an end to conventional mass business gatherings. Developers have long held out the promise of virtual reality as an alternative to schlepping around the globe to draughty exhibition halls. Companies are reconsidering or reducing business travel as they stretch to meet the most demanding goals for cutting their carbon footprint.
But while virtual trade fairs exist, they still look like the feeble offspring of Second Life, the online world that was once the next big thing. For every executive who tells me that videoconferencing has reached new heights, there is another who warns that it is still a distant second best to eyeballing your counterpart in person. Chief executives may wish to recast themselves as fitter, younger avatars or beam their holograms to the next executive awayday, but it is science fiction to imagine this as the permanent future of networking. In real life, business travellers are more likely to don a VR or augmented reality headset at a trade show, to experience a product that exhibitors cannot display.
As for climate change, from Davos to Las Vegas, schmoozers use popular events as a one-stop shop where they can meet all their customers and suppliers, saving time and emissions.
Most future-of-the-conference projections come from conference organisers and rosily forecast ever-vaster trade shows, or suggest only trivial tweaks to the existing model (“Less but more thoughtful swag”, burbles one such self-serving prediction). History suggests, though, that, barring world war, would-be traders will always flock to such get-togethers. For a time, there will be more fist-bumping and bowing and less handshaking and kissing (thank goodness). But the big congresses and conferences will bounce back.
Disease itself has even proved in the past to be one way of uniting influential people. In the 19th century, spas where wealthy and well-connected consumptives and workaholics recovered became hotspots for high-level social contact.
Encouraged by enterprising visitors, Davos became a recognised gathering place for business leaders, bankers and intellectuals long before the World Economic Forum was born, according to Sally Shuttleworth of Oxford university, who is studying the development of the resort.
It is hard to see quarantine as a networking opportunity, but I wouldn’t put it past the WEF to introduce hospital-style fever-screening to safeguard its next annual Alpine conference, just as it imposed airport-style security checks to curb the threat of terrorism. Exclusivity is suddenly not just smarter; it’s safer.
Twitter: @andrewtghill
