A message on the German O’Reilly community blog indicates that the Web 2.0 Expo Europe, an annual event held in Berlin, Germany, has been suspended for this year in the face of the worst economic downturn in decades. (translated version here) The event, co-produced by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb, had been running for only two years.
Web 2.0 Expo Europe was widely known as an outstanding event for the European tech community with a host of excellent speakers, but like many companies O’Reilly and TechWeb are feeling the sting of the declining economy and are being forced to make difficult decisions. Obviously, this is bad news for European entrepreneurs and startups.
We’re still trying to get an official comment at this point.
The blog post reads that Europeans who would like to visit Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco can register using the code “websf09eu” and thus enter a lottery to win a free entrance ticket plus 3 free nights at a hotel and $1000, but also acknowledges this is not a real substitute for a full-fledged European counterpart of the Web 2.0 Expo.
Let’s hope it’ll be back once we get through the storm.
(Disclosure: I run Plugg, an alternative European Web 2.0 conference, and Web 2.0 Expo SF is one of our sponsors here at TechCrunch)