Must-Attend Events in September and October 2020

While many businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic, few industries have been affected as deeply as the in-person events sector. Meeting in-person in large numbers has become mostly impossible, so many conferences and exhibits in our industry were forced to be postponed or even cancelled. However, people still have a need to network and discuss industry trends among each other, so some organisers have made the move from the physical to the online space to host their events. There are some trends that we have seen for these digital events. Firstly, due to the change in platform, many organisers have opted to shorten their events, so that attendees do not get exhausted by the digital platform. Secondly, as a result, a lot of events have forfeited their fee for attending: many online events are free to attend, and thus provide a lot of opportunities for those who want to keep learning and networking through the pandemic. There is a lot of great content out there!

In the anti-fraud industry, there has been a wave of events that have continued a smaller version of their original event in an online space: for example, the Virtual Cybersecurity & Fraud Summit: London is hosted by iSMG on October 20 2020. By shortening the conference to a single day, they put an emphasis on the educational aspect of these industry meetings, while not overburdening the attendees with too much screen time.

For merchants and their service providers, the Merchant Payment Ecosystem’s MPE Summer week (September 7-11 2020) attempts to preserve as much of the original conference experience as possible. Even though the entire conference is digital, they supply attendees with virtual meeting rooms, a networking lounge, and a digital exhibit hall for merchants and service providers. Money20/20 has postponed all their physical events to 2021, but instead is hosting MoneyFest (October 26-29 2020).

Informa’s conference FinovateFall Digital 2020 (September 14-18 2020) takes a similar approach for Fintechs and Financial Institutions: they have a large range of digital demos of financial technologies and products, especially designed for the online space. Also for banks and FIs, there is LendIt Fintech USA (September 29-October 1 2020) and Europe (October 19-20 2020), offering a platitude of talks and seminars on the lending industry. 

While COVID-19 is obviously an important new topic, it has not taken over all the talks and presentations at these events: the range of topics is still as diverse as ever. We will update our event page as more and more events move online, so if you feel downhearted in your home office and miss interacting with other minds in your industry, open up your calendar and check out our events page for the latest overview of online events for you!