Thoughs on CeBIT 2010

Last week three of my colleagues an I drove from Munich to Hannover to visit CeBIT. This was my first time at CeBIT so outside of knowing that its a huge exhibit and the little that I read on their website, I didn't have anything else to go on.

CeBIT is the world's largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments. The key target groups are users from industry, the wholesale/retail sector, skilled trades, banks, the services sector, government agencies, science and all users passionate about technology.

CeBIT offers an international platform for comparing notes on current industry trends, networking, and product presentations. Deutsche Messe AG has organized CeBIT in Hannover each spring since 1986.

CeBIT is HUGE

Although everyone told me that the number of exhibitors have reduced over the years and quite dramatically because of the "Economic Crisis" I still think it's huge with over 4 thousand exhibitors from 68 countries in attendance.

For the average "joe" there isn't all that much to see really. I for one am not particularly interested in long-range RFID readers, or POS (point of sale) machines, retail barcode readers or the newest trend in high speed mail sorters. For Industry people though I'm sure it is quite interesting.

Hall 23

Hall 23 is geek paradise, no really it is. It's got all the new hottest games, and AlienWare was there showing off their latest. Every single stand had either scantily clad or tightly clad young hotties to entice the pubescent or social lepers that left their WoW caves at home to play WoW at CeBIT.

Hall 6 Stand J32

Thats where CONTENS was. Direct in the middle of the Content Management software area. According to my colleagues we had quite a few visitors to the stand and with Railo and Intergral there with us I'm sure it was interesting. According to Gert he even managed to convert a few PHP developers!

One of our stand neighbors was fusion charts. I managed to get the CTO Pallav Nadhani to give me a demonstration of their charting solutions (will be blogging about that later). It's definitely worth taking a look at to spruce up your site, business app or power point presentation. Great bunch of guys who were very pleased to experience a little snow (it tends not to snow in Calcutta, India).

In the end it was an interesting experience but was clear to me that most of the halls and exhibits are clearly not directed towards end-consumers.

I did have to pity some of the industrial exhibitors who had to contend with the flood of end users passing by their stands on Saturday. Most of them staring out with bored expressions waiting for the day to be over.