Why do you go?

I always liked CeBit for the surprising stuff. The bits you don't expect. I follow my own corner of the world so closely that a conference rarely is interesting for that subject, but it's the 1,000 other areas that I don't get to look at normally and having the good stuff right there to demo and more importantly ask questions. A product that I might virtually 'walk past' online may get an extra 30 seconds at a show.  

I'll give CEBIT one more try, but I find it to be a bit of a tyre-kickers convention really: it is far too broad, and if you are in the business of selling a 'solution', like me, then you are more likely to end up meeting lots of people who want to flog you a product to integrate into your problem (I mean solution).  Here's what I didn't like about CEBIT last year:

The fifty different varieties of VOIP phones that all did the same thing and amounted to a collective 30 seconds of 'interesting' that got a bazillion hours of air play.

Demo Dollies: they are passé/nay offensive to the extent that it seems incongruous that such a forward-looking event can use such retro gimmicks.

The security products: really and truly, how can so many IT Security exhibitors know collectively so little about security?

Draws: we still live in a world where people ask us to drop business cards into a goldfish bowl for a chance to win a golf club...as boring as Demo Dollies and, based on my own performance at trade fairs, highly likely to be rigged anyway.

Not specific enough...this is not CEBIT's fault, because after all CEBIT is the Easter Show of IT&T products, but if I want a banking IT conference I'd go to SIBOS, Telco: CommunicAsia etc.

For the above reason I think CEBIT is crammed with sellers, with very few buyers.   The only reason I'm going is because it is around the corner from my office.

i love seeing people do stupid things to get attention

oh, and the booth babes. i hope there are some at cebit this week

LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!!!! 

exactly. - but you need to be wearing a monkey suit on roller skates

No booth hunks?

Hrmph! I'm not going 

I've been a booth babe before. Short denim shorts. Roller blades. Tough job.

(great minds)

Girls get this....

Booth Geeks.

As long as they aren't using Macs, that's fine

Mac users are hot!

speaking of mac users - i like cruising th cebit booths and seeing the mix of macs and pcs running windows.

i wonder how many will be running vista ?

Can the Intel Macs run vista yet?

of course - using bootcamp or via parallels

I got bootcamp going. But I actually don't use it much.

I have to say that I've wished for a windows PC more than 100 times in my six months mac experiment....... 

mick - you want me to arrange a windows pc for you???

I like running around handing out my Mick Liubinskas cards

I actually did it because I didn't know enough about the macs. It's been a good exercise, but frustrating when you're a power user. Like learning a new language.

I hand out "Rira End towing Service" cards. I get lots of call backs.

lol - anyway, back to cebit.

Does Microsoft have a big booth? 

not this year.

we stopped exhibiting at cebit a few years back.

we're there in spirit

@rira: I once won a 4.5 litre bottle of scotch with a tipper. I was a hero amongst my friends, just for putting my card into a fish bowl.

I agree on the dollies though. There was one girl at web 2.0 expo in very short shorts and it was quite embarassing. She wore the same thing 2 days running......  

Cebit 2005 (and yes my haircut was AWESOME!)

Cebit is a big BIG event in Europe (in Hanover), you can't miss it if you're doing IT in Europe.

Here in Sydney I found it much smaller and a bit boring because usually nothing big is released in Cebit Australia. 

But thanks god, you can still take pics of "IT" babes

mick's argument fast falling apart

Are you wearing your badge like that to draw attention away from that pistol?

naaaa! I found out that clipping it to my nipple was actually hurting (a lot) so I went for the bottom of my tee shirt lol

I bet you're just jealous of my haircut anyway...