VR Education Holdings PLC (LON:VRE) is to virtually host the 2020 HTC Vive Ecosystem Conference via its ENGAGE platform.
The conference has historically been held by HTC Corporation in Shenzhen in China but because of the coronavirus and the subsequent shutdown and travel restrictions imposed across China, the event in its physical format has been cancelled.
The conference will also be attended by the teams from other events that have either been cancelled, postponed or are taking on new digital formats such as GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications), GDC (Game Developers Conference), ESL (English as a Second Language) and GTC (GPU Technology Conference).
The HTC 2020 VEC speakers will be located in China, Taiwan, France, the UK and the US and will communicate their various presentations as avatars in virtual reality via the ENGAGE platform.
"We have a close working relationship with HTC and so when they asked if we could assist in hosting HTC 2020 VEC via ENGAGE, we were delighted to help out,” said David Whelan, the chief executive officer of VR Education.
“Coronavirus continues to impact us all and we feel that by hosting this conference virtually we can mitigate some of the disruption that it has and continues to cause businesses globally,” he added.
There is no monetary value attached to this agreement with HTC but as this is the first time, so far as Whelan is aware, that a big industry event has “gone virtual” it offers an excellent opportunity to put VR Education's technology in the shop window.