No sooner had I returned from Bali, back into the office, than I was off again, this time to Sydney, NSW to attend CeBIT 2010, where I had the honour of being involved in the judging of the Appciety awards, for the best Australian mobile and web start-up, as well as being involved in a panel for the WebForward conference.
Having never been before, I was unsure what to expect, however I was pleasantly surprised at how well put together this series of events were. I say series, because to call CeBIT just an exhibition would be a large understatement.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, on the picturesque Darling Harbour, played host to Australia’s (and probably the southern hemispheres) largest trade show event, with hundreds of stands in the CeBIT exhibition. The highlight of this exhibition for me was the Webciety area, with a number of web start-ups on display (including a few that I had just judged for the Appciety awards), along with an intimate lecture theatre where they demonstrated their products and services.
I arrived in time to attend the Welcome Reception / Innovation Nation event, hosted at the NSW Art Gallery, on Monday evening which was a great way to kick off the next few days.
Then on Tuesday, I attended the Enterprise conference, featuring speakers such as Simone Brunozzi from Amazon, Scott Chasin from McAfee and Stephen Beacham from DB Schenker Australia. The most prolific theme was the adoption and future of cloud computing.
Tuesday night was the popular ICT Celebration dinner, with over 750 guests enjoying the food, flowing drinks and networking whilst watching the CeBIT.AU Business Awards and e-Government Awards happening on stage, before kicking back with a live band and dancing.
On Wednesday, I attended WebForward, the web specific conference brought to you by CeBIT. Speakers included Stuart Bartram from LinkedIn, John Batistich from Westfield Group, Nick Love from MySpace and Bernie Sheehan from national broadcaster, ABC. The topics discussed definitely had a leaning towards the current topics of social media and the real-time web.
Nearing the end of the conference program, I joined fellow expert panelists, Marc Lehmann, Kim Heras, Brad Howarth, Mark Parker and Jeremy Woolf on a panel discussion, entitled ‘The Web Changing Landscape; And What the Future Holds for it’. Chaired by long time friend, Justin Davies, the panel was a great success.
There were plenty of other events and conferences that were also happening over those few days, such as an e-health conference, a number of web and ICT workshops, and the like, but there was no way I could even attempt to see it all. For such a huge combined event, the organisers, Hannover Fairs, did a great job of delivering it all; even the lunches provided for conference attendees were great.
If you are in business within the web or ICT industries, I’d strongly recommend that you consider attending a future CeBIT Australia. I hope to get the chance to attend a future one too!
