I should preface all of this by saying that I am a CEBIT cynic, a prejudicial position informed by my possibly having been to too many trade fairs to care any more and I am a little tired of people telling me what is “critical” to my business this year.  Note to CEBIT people: “critical” is what happens when I stick a knife in your head, “major” is a brand of cigarettes and “important” is a dyslexic journalist who can’t get a serviceable erection.
In general I’d say that the booths can be characterised under my primality rule: the least interesting products had the best looking Demo Dollies, so much so that I left the Microsoft stand feeling strangely aroused, but I learnt more interesting things at other booths, from men in full beards.
The easiest stand to find was, of course, Google: it was bright, it was white but ultimately it was shite too…and it was, like every other stand at CEBIT, close to a booth that was offering a VOIP product.
The Austrade “alley” was just that: small, pokey, narrow, difficult to navigate, impossible to glean anything useful from, and stuck way over in a corner that screamed: “We the Federal Government don’t understand the IT industry, and if you are looking for anything useful then please visit the British, South African, South Australian or Queensland booths – they’ve got money, they’ve got passion, they’ve got imagination, and it shows”.
Interestingly, CSIRO had two separate booths, a fact that reminds me to ask the ACCC, before I die, “em, who are your competitors?...”.
After I passed my fiftieth VOIP booth and my third secondhand Cisco seller I went in search of the exotic animals enclosure, populated this year by a pair of overly bizarre looking girls in police uniforms – although not quite as tacky as the security vendor who had a large poster of an ostensibly topless woman with petite hands on gargantuan breasts, beneath the moniker “…are your assets covered…”.  A tasty reminder of the high esteem in which the IT&T industry regards women.
Best dressed was the guy in the Stars&Stripes tie, but I have no idea where he was from and most hyped and talked about product was the Panasonic 103” HD television that was, um, a big telly.

nice reporting

I'm inclined to agree with Rira....

I found it pretty boring. As in there wasn't much happening

Yes. Great reporting.  It would seem that Rira's words are far more entertaining than the actual conference.

Thank you, thank you...I do weddings and funerals too.

Mick's wedding is coming up...

As you can see from my picture I'm far too good looking to go to Mick's wedding...he would be intimidated by my beauty and undoubted charisma