CeBIT 2005

By Daniel Dern

March 28, 2005

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People in funny tech costumes—always a good sign you're headed in the right direction!

If the demise (or, some say, hiatus) of the annual Comdex show in Vegas and TechExpo/PC Expo in New York City leave you jonesing for an a big, sprawling event in a way that the January Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas won't satisfy—and if you don't mind being in the middle of people smoking cigarettes, cigars and pipes in just about every room, restaurant, bar, train and hotel lobby—then consider attending the annual CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany. It's held every March "just before the weather turns nice."

Comdex at its peak (1997) had over 235,000 attendees and 2,340 exhibitors, according to Bill Sell, former Vice President and General Manager of Comdex and now Managing Partner at Advisor Communications. CeBIT, a two-decades old show for ICT, at its peak had around 850,000 people. This year, a more modest but still awe-inspiring 480,000 or so people showed up during the seven days—Thursday, March 10 through Wednesday March 17—the show was open. That's more or less the population of Hannover, the city where the show is held. There were also over 6,200 exhibitors.

A growing number of exhibitors and attendees both are international: several hundred from the United States (double or triple that if you include the local affiliates of US companies), and nearly 1,600 from the Asia-Pacific region. Many, if not most, of the exhibitors were there to line up resellers, channels, or other marketing partners.

Yet, during the opening two days I was there, the site didn't seem as overloaded as Comdex (and, in peak years, Network+Interop) had. There were no long snaking lines for taxis, restaurants, Bill Gates keynotes, or free T-shirts.

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