This week, the world’s largest IT expo CeBIT, attracted visitors from all over the world. For the second time now, I got the chance to go to Hanover, supporting our clients Equinix and protected-networks.com. There is a lot to say about my experience at CeBIT this year, but to keep it nice and simple I just wanted to give you my – personal and very subjective – lowlights and highlights of the event.
Lowlights
1. Giveaway hunters: It can get really annoying when you stand in front of a booth, waiting for a journalist to arrive and approximately every 20 seconds, someone comes up to you, asking if you have any freebies. Seriously, do I look like Santa Claus? (Although perhaps I’m just jealous because I didn’t get one of those footballs everybody else was carrying around…)
2. Musical warfare: I don’t want to sound like my grandfather, but I can’t see the point in having a DJ (or in one case a band) at booths at a business IT event. So many stands had loud pop music playing while at their competitor’s booth some metres away, people were trying to listen to a really interesting lecture. This isn’t exactly going to endear those people to come visit their stand later on.
3. Bad bus karma: Somehow, I managed to just miss the shuttle every single time I had to get to the other side of the show. I’m not quite sure what I did to deserve that.
Highlights
1. The organisation: The organisers had to fight some serious challenges this year but they did it great! The best examples are probably how they moved 400 exhibitors from hall 9 to hall 26 on very short notice and how – together with the city of Hanover – they faced a public transport strike on Thursday. (But the WiFi fee is still ridiculous…)
2. The lectures: Perhaps I’ve just been lucky, but the lectures and speeches I heard ranged from good and informative, to plain awesome. It really helps if the person giving the presentation has at least some charisma, and the ability to interact with the audience. Special mention goes here to James Lyne from Sophos whose live demonstration of malware threats was so interesting and funny that I went there twice!
3. The Hot Dog stand in hall 5: Seriously, those were some pretty good hot dogs…
Want to share your experience? Feel free to comment or contact me on Twitter: @Oliver_Fischer
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