CeBIT 2009. For the amount of money a vend or spends on a booth at CeBIT you would expect more planning to go into it. No photos to protect the guilty, but I lost count of how many corner booths that did not have the company name on each side. If I have to walk 20 extra feet at CeBIT to find the name of the company, that is 20 feet too much.
On a brighter note, CeBIT is so different than any other trade show when the official end of the day comes. The place is party city. Every night of the week, in every hall there was a party. Bands, dancers, beer and and more beer. Never happen in a US based event. Of course, spending most of my time in Hall 11 allowed me to have fun at the ESET party with live band, Gdata seemed to have a show every night and then there was the Kaspersky bash. If you didn’t get a chance to say “hello” to someone during the day you would most certainly run into them after hours.
Still lots of competition from the vendors in Hall 11 to see who had the bigger shopping bag. I think ESET won, but it was almost too big to carry. My favorite was the shopping bag from the openoffice.org group.
I still wonder though why everyone is interested in shopping bags. So many are in the garbage due to walking the floor and upgrading your bag on the way. The goal is to get a strong canvas one and leave all the paper bags behind.
So, my first experience at CeBIT was a good one. I’d go again. If not for the bags, bands or beer.
Andy
