Shortly after finishing up their 2021 event, organizers of Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) have announced the event will be back from October 19th-23rd, 2022. Their daytime business conference, ADE Pro, will also return.
Despite the Dutch government’s COVID-19 restrictions forcing clubs to close between 12:00 AM-6:00 AM, ADE 2021 ended up moving forward. Organizers simply adjusted event hours to take place during the day.
ADE Pro hosts numerous daytime conferences discussing the business of electronic music. Due to pandemic restrictions, the daytime conference was canceled back in September. Industry professionals still met up, however. ADE’s monthly talk show, ADE in Conversation, ran using VR technology.
Numerous professionals and DJs gathered in a mixed reality environment to discuss electronic music and the “Metaverse” (a term describing a new iteration of the Internet made up of shared 3D spaces). Audiences were able to all gather in the same space to watch the conversation unfold regardless of their physical location.
Starting in 1996 as a three-day conference along with DJ performances across three venues, Amsterdam Dance Event now spans 350+ events and brings in roughly 400,000 attendees each year. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, attendance this year was around 300,000.
Dutch national newspaper Volkskrant praised the event’s organizers. “Given the role that ADE fulfilled this year, it was perhaps the most important edition in its history,” they wrote.
