CeBIT 2008 Over

As some of you may know, I have spent the last week in Sydney at CeBIT, one of the world’s largest IT exhibitions.

CeBIT 2008 was the 7th CeBIT which marks the 7th time that I have attended and the 2nd time the AussieHQ (my employer) has exhibited.

I attended CeBIT this year from two perspectives - one as an exhibitor available for consultation as required by the staff on our stand, and another as a visitor as I had been for the past 7 years.

From our perspective as an exhibitor, this year’s CeBIT was great. We had a landmark stand with visitors actually using our stand as a reference point (“meet me at the AussieHQ stand”), and we were also able to collect a large number of extremely qualified leads.

Having said that, while this year had nearly 10,000 additional visitors compared to last, the number of qualified leads per visitor ratio is now worse than previously (there were many more people who were only there for “the free stuff” compared to previous years).

From a visitor’s perspective though, this year’s CeBIT was great and I found that exhibitors were generally willing to spend some time talking to a potential prospect about the products and services that they offer, which I suspect is related to my observations as an exhibitor.

When I wasn’t meeting with customers, I was usually walking around the show floor speaking with other exhibitors whose products were of interest including IntelliguardIT and Argent.

On a whole I think CeBIT was a worthwhile experience. I met with and spent some time with a number of great people (which I will be following up on over the coming few weeks) and look forward to next year.