Snap Scraps 2020 Partner Summit in Downtown L.A. Citing Coronavirus Concerns, Will Stream Sessions Online

By Todd Spangler

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Snap canceled its second Partner Summit next month in Los Angeles for Snapchat developers, content creators and advertisers, moving the event instead to an online-only streaming presentation amid the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

“Out of an abundance of caution for the well-being of our partners and our team, we have decided to shift our plans for the April 2nd Snap Partner Summit,” the company said in a notice late Monday to attendees. The Snap Partner Summit 2020 had been scheduled to be held at ROW DTLA in downtown L.A. on April 2 from 9 a.m.-6 p.m., with a lineup including a keynote by CEO Evan Spiegel.

With the in-person event nixed, Snap will now deliver stream the keynote and product announcements online, starting at 10:30 a.m. PT on Thursday, April 2, on .com.

The global outbreak has led numerous events and movie openings to be cancelled or postponed. Those include SXSW, Google I/O, GDC, Facebook’s F8, MipTV, and Mobile World Congress.

At last year’s in augural Snap Partner Summit, the social messaging and media app player — which calls itself a “camera company” — announced a new games platform ; the  ability to let third-party apps  let their users create Stories from Snapchat; an ad network to bring Snapchat ads to third-party apps; and a new  slate of original shows .