My Cebit report

I spent yesterday with two friends, Kaj and Yrjö, in Hannover at CeBIT. We took an early train (6:05AM) to Hannover and came back sometime after 10PM. The day was long, with a lot of walking and sitting in trains.

On one stand, there was a man explaining how their company is represented all around Germany ('bundesweit') and now that Vienna would possibly join, too, it would be something more than bundesweit, searching for a term without luck. "Depends on how you look at it," I remarked. I found it funny.

On the Parrot stand, we found a few interesting Bluetooth products and an old colleague from Bochum, who moved to Paris. Jens-Uwe seemed to be doing fine and was justifiably proud about the stand.

In the afternoon, after kilometers and kilometers of wandering past stands of less and less interesting products, we were just crossing the Benq Siemens mobile phone department. A young woman approached me and asked me in German if I'd like to take part in a survey. I agreed, and she asked me several questions, which I answered as best I could about the stand and the products displayed etc. The best question was "How long did you spend at the stand?" and after many probing questions for which I had given exact answers, it was a bit funny to answer "30 seconds". The woman didn't waver, just asked if she could round it up to a minute, to which I agreed. In the end of the interview, she asked me for my name and email address and suddenly noted that "German is not your native language? I didn't notice." Although I had given only short answers but the reaction still made me very happy. To be able to speak German like a German, that's something.

The funniest things about CeBIT were the "Management Execution Systems". I half-expected to see guillotines and gallows in the hall, but they were nowhere in sight. Perhaps these most effective systems were kept secret and only shown to invited guests behind closed doors.