| CeBIT World Center for Office, Information and Communications Technology[1] |
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|---|---|
CeBIT logo |
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| Status | Active |
| Genre | computer expo |
| Venue | Hanover fairground |
| Location | Hanover |
| Country | Germany |
| First held | 1970 |
| Last held | 2011 |
| Organizer | Deutsche Messe AG |
| Attendance | 334,000 |
| Official website | CeBIT.de |
CeBIT (German: for Centrum für Büroautomation, Informationstechnologie und Telekommunikation,[2] lit. "Center for Office Automation, Information Technology and Telecommunication") is the world's largest and most international computer expo. CeBIT is held each year on the world's largest fairground in Hanover, Germany, and is a barometer of the state of the art in information technology. The trade fair is organized by Deutsche Messe AG.[3]
With an exhibition area of roughly 450,000 m² (5 million ft²) and up to 850,000 visitors at the apex of the dot-com boom, it is larger both in area and attendance than its Asian counterpart COMPUTEX and the no-longer held American equivalent COMDEX. While by 2007 the CeBIT expo attendance had shrunk to around 200,000 from those all-time highs,[4] attendance rebounded to 334,000 by 2010.[5] The 2008 expo was marred by the police raids of 51 exhibitors for patent infringement.[6]
The 2011 expo was held from 1 to 5 March, 2011.
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CeBIT was traditionally the computing part of the Hanover Fair, a big industry trade show held every year. It was first established in 1970, with the opening of the Hanover fairground's new Hall 1, then the largest exhibition hall in the world.[7] However, in the 1980s the information technology and telecommunications part was straining the resources of the industry fair so much that it was given a separate trade show starting 1986, held four weeks earlier than the main Hanover Fair.
In 2009, the U.S. state of California became official Partner State of Germany's IT and telecommunications industry association, BITKOM, and of CeBIT 2009. focusing on environmentally-friendly technologies.[8]
As CeBIT continued to grow quickly and was becoming too big on its own, it was decided to concentrate on the professional market, while the home and entertainment market was given a separate show, CeBIT Home, during summer, planned to be biennial. However, after being held twice (in 1996 and 1998), the 2000 CeBIT Home (had originally been scheduled to be held in Leipzig due to the Expo 2000 being held in Hanover) was cancelled and the project was abandoned.
Since 1999 the CeBIT sponsor Deutsche Messe AG ("German Trade Show, Inc.") has organized trade shows outside of Germany bearing the CeBIT name:
Running over a five-day period in Hanover, Germany, the CeBIT Global Conferences (CGC) are staged congruently with the CeBIT exhibition. The conferences are dedicated to providing a 360° overview of the digital industry’s four core markets: IT, Telecommunications, Digital Media and Consumer Electronics. Noted industry figures and researchers from across the globe are invited to speak on the latest relevant trends and innovations as well as their impact on society and the working world. The conference is divided up into keynote speeches, talks and panel discussions. The CGC conferences are produced by Deutsche Messe AG, with the German BITKOM association acting as the CGC patron since 2009.
Recent conferences have featured the following keynote themes:
• 2008: “Improving Life in the Global Village”. This installment of CGC attracted 1900 visitors and 43 speakers attending the keynotes and discussion sessions.
• 2009: “How Will We Be Working, Living and Communicating in the Coming Years?” This CGC drew 3,133 visitors from 88 nations, with some 2,200 guests following the conference via live streaming.
• 2010: “The Challenges of a Changing World - ICT for Better Lives and Better Business“, attracting some 4,000 guests from more than 100 nations. Just under 4,000 guests also visited the conference via live streaming.
The motto of the CeBIT Global Conferences for 2011 is “The Power of Creativity and Innovation”.
Speakers at the CeBIT Global Conferences have included Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California; Kevin Turner, COO, Microsoft, Craig Barrett, Chairman of the Board, Intel, Jon Iwata SVP Marketing & Communications, IBM, Reid Hoffman, Chairman and CEO, LinkedIn; Scott Durchslag, COO, Skype; Dr. Werner Vogels, Vice President & CTO, Amazon, Stewart Butterfield, Co-founder of Flickr.com, Michael Jones, Chief Technology Advocate, Google & Founder of Google Earth; Mark Kingdon, CEO, LindenLab
CeBIT has also become a platform for recognising achievement by ICT businesses, particularly in Australia.[11] The awards include the Excellence in Communications Award, the Advanced Retail Technology Award, the Innovative IT Security Award, and the Early Innovators Award. Notable past winners include Motorola,[12] McAfee[13] and eWAY.[14]