[rescue] CeBIT vs COMDEX

[Sheldon T. Hall]

"Al Potter" <apotter at spankingnuns.com> said ...

> shel at cmhcsys.com said:
> > Long ago and far away, I was walking across Hanover to the
> > Messegelande to work our booth at CeBit.  Massive show in those days:
> > 26 buildings, say 450,000 attendees over 9 days.  Not like piddly
> > little Comdex.
>
> I've been to both this year.
>
> CeBIT is even bigger now, with I believe in excess of 30 buildings and a
> metric a$$load of attendees.  COMDEX last week was just pathetic.  I've
been
> to Interops that were bigger.

That first year, I was just stunned by the scope of CeBit.  I'd been to
COMDEX every year since the MGM Grand fire, and I'd never seen anything like
CeBit.  The IBM booth, for example, was two stories tall, and had an
elevator to take you up to the meeting rooms and the bar.

The building we were in had a railroad siding down the middle and a 200-ton
travelling crane in the ceiling.  Not too useful to us software companies,
perhaps, but just the thing for Linotype, who brought in a museum full of
big old mechanical typesetting machines to contrast with their
phototypsetters.

9 hours a day, 9 days in a row, and every minute of it there was a line of
people in the booth waiting to talk to us.  Demos, questions.  Questions,
demos.  Deals, deals.

I don't miss the trade-show life now, but I'm glad I didn't miss it then.

-Shel