A lot of startups are letting their employees work from home for the next few days because of hurricane Sandy. That’s all swell news, but those members of New York’s tech scene who were supposed to go out and party or sit through conferences are screwed. Tech events are getting cancelled left and right, though some scene luminaries don’t seem to mind.
AllThingsD’s “D: Dive Into Mobile” conference has been postponed until a later date that will be announced as soon as possible. The event had originally been set for tomorrow and Tuesday in New York City. If you booked a room at the Ritz Carlton (looking at you, VC’s), the hotel is apparently giving full refunds and waiving cancellation fees. Speakers like Pandora CEO joe kennedy and Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, will just have to wait until another day to make their speeches.
The Big Apple Smackdown Tourney, a ping pong tournament held at Susan Sarandon’s SPIN and co-sponsored by this very blog, was postponed until further notice. Gilt’s Kevin Ryan will have to wait to face off in a heady match of pong against David Tisch and AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher. Ping Pong’ing with the Tech Stars sounds like a Bravo reality show just waiting to happen. Maybe the rain delay will give Andy Cohen some time to hash out that concept. The event will be postponed “until a later date.”
Facebook (META), however, is the company shedding the most tears about Sandy. They’ve had to cancel two of their New York events set for this week. The first is a Tuesday engineering open house that was planned for the social networking site’s New York HQ in midtown. And, more importantly, Facebook’s Gifts event–set for Thursday at FAO Schwartz–has been nixed too. According to AllThingsD, Facebook was set to use the occasion to announce partnerships for its new platform that allows users to send gifts to each other in real life.
Monday’s Google (GOOGL) event in New York has also been shut down ahead of schedule. They were expected to present the Nexus 10 tablet and an updated version of Android OS. Guess you’ll just have to use your old gear through the storm and dream of the bigger and better things that will come after the skies clear.