The tech giant had to make a quick decision.
"Senior management told us, 'Drop all live events and look into what it means to do digital. This is an all-hands, and we'll give you a bucket,'" Bob Bejan, Microsoft's corporate vice president of global events, said.
After the Build event in May, the company reorganized its events team, cutting jobs and retraining staff to focus on virtual events in a shift Bejan called "painful and hard for everyone."
The biggest change was spending more time and money producing digital content, from keynote speeches to short videos that would live online for others to access after the initial livestreams, he said.