CeBIT Fairs attract millions of attendee’s worldwide. While these gathering feed the technologically starved professionals, they often fail to provide to those not able to attend.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
CeBit e- Government
Congratulations to the Australian Government Pavillion for successfully demonstrating the innovative application of technology to service delivery. Thanks CeBit Australian for showcasing the Australian Government's ICT.
Walking back into the Halss of CeBIT Australia this year was something I personally had been looking forward to for many months. If you've never been here before I guess you can liken it to your first visit to Disneyland, or a as an infant, your first candy store. If your a lover of all things Technology you'll know that these events are exciting and full of new an innovative releases.
As I said hello to some familiar faces and walked past stalls and halls I quickly realised that this year had a new buzz. Apart from hardware and gadgets this year seem to be driven by software and Open Source innovations too. There was Yahoo and Google, and Melbourne IT all promoting their online marketing capabilities; and then there was more niche Open Source Teams with talk of code and best practices, and the emergence of standardisation never seen before. I was intrigued by the amount of Map content and sattelite navigation information being displaye, and excited about how many mobile phone vendors had picked up on this.
If you're around, come on down as Yahoo is giving away two scooters...and everyone has free minities at their stands! Oh, and the Tech is out of this world!
It seems incredible to me that CeBIT Australia 2008 is just a couple of months away. And it is starting to get exciting. The conference programs have come together with some excellent speakers committed, and the exhibition is going to break records.
This year was always going to be exciting. The change of government has put something in the air. It’s odd, because despite the emerging stock market wreckage coming out of the global credit crunch and despite the growing interest rate pressures, there seems to be a lot of optimism tech sector regardless.
This blog will be updated every couple of days, and will give you an update on some of what’s going to be happening at CeBIT Australia this year. There is a lot to get through.
The conference program is locked down, with six specialist events, and new in 2008 is a peak R&D/business event that Hannover Fairs Australia (the CeBIT event company) is organising in partnership with Australia’s three premier research bodies – NICTA, CSIRO ICT Centre and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.
This conference is called AusInnovate. The partners have committed to CeBIT Australia for an initial three years, and it promises to be a flagship conference for at CeBIT.
AusInnovate is a business event that brings elite researchers and developers together with the business community – entrepreneurs, private sector developers, innovation customers, financiers and venture capitalists. It’s about commercialisation and improving Australia’s performance in global ICT markets.
AusInnovate has already attracted great support from the Federal Government. Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy and Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr have both confirmed as speakers.
We’re also excited to have Jason Calacanis, the entrepreneur in action at Sequoia Capital, the most successful venture capital firm in the US. And Sridhar Vembu, the chief executive of SaaS pioneer Zoho is another US keynote speaker.
AusInnovate is being hosted for the day by ABC Radio National breakfast presenter Fran Kelly, who we expect will add both good humour and gravitas. Fran has spent a lot of time in the press gallery at Parliament House in Canberra for ABC radio and TV, and is one of the most respected political commentators of her generation.
And of course NICTA chief executive Dr David Skellern, CSIRO ICT Centre director Alex Zelinsky and DSTO deputy Chief Defence Scientist Dr Warren Harch are all deeply involved.
AusInnovate will create some of the best networking events for the year. On the evening following the event, we have booked the entire Home Sydney nightclub for an exclusive, invitation-only cocktail event that aims to get our best innovators talking with the elite of the business community.
Welcome back to the CeBIT Australia blog. I’m looking forward to the event this year – there is a lot going on. It’s busy, but it is going to be a great event.
Day two at CeBIT Australia was a real eye-opener for me. Walking around I came across two companies that caught my attention. The first was a Company called Neltronics whom represent the NESA range of products; the one that turned my head most was the in-car rear vision mirror with an inbuilt GPS system! The second Stand which caught my attention came somewhat of a surprise to me. Not because it was new but because I was not aware of the extent of their involvement in Open Source Software.
IBM Australia it seems has been placing a lot of energy into the Open Source Community and is intentionally and purposefully targeting Corporate and Enterprise clients as the new users. With their own Distribution of Red Hat (a Linux based system) IBM is making strong moves into the Government also. At the IBM stand I spoke to Maryanne Fisher, IBM USA, and she openly discussed IBM’s intention to make a big splash in the way Open Source was rolled out. When asked why her response was simply this: “our users don’t want to be locked down. They want the flexibility and cost savings that an Operating System like Linux can offer.” While it’s definitely not breaking news it was refreshing to see the enthusiasm and passion which IBM was displaying regarding the move.
Later that afternoon it was my turn to speak on stage at the e-Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation Conference. With over 300 attendees in the e-Marketing Seminar it was easy to see why WEB 2.0 has now caught the attention of Marketing and Sales forces all over the Globe. Tomorrow is Day Three and once again filled with promise. I will be shooting more videos and with luck on our side they will begin to propagate onto the CeBIT TV website and also make their way onto the CeBIT Blog too.
Returning to CeBIT Australia this year was really exciting. Not only were there many familiar faces amongst the CeBIT/Hannover Fair staff but this year the Exhibitors seemed to have grown in numbers too. There was a real buzz in the air and an enthusiasm often not attributed to the IT industry. Perhaps it was the high caliber of Keynote Speakers that had come from overseas, or the fact that attendance was anticipated to hit record numbers this year. Whatever it was it worked!
This morning my “Official Duty” was to Open BloggerZone – a CeBIT Australia initiative designed to get bloggers to do what they do best…blog! How was this achieved? First you have to imagine some beanbags, then 20 Lenovo notebooks, some Plasmas, and lots of coffee. Oh, and we must not forget Jelly Beans in randomly assorted colours scattered in jars around the room. Did it work? I think it did. Of the 25 Bloggers Officially invited to partake in pastries and beverage it seems as though all 25 took their opportunity and posted from their beanbag lounge on the CeBIT Floor.
To read some of the posts all you have to do is head on over to http://www.bloggerzone.com/ and read the posts that are being aggregated from the Bloggers registered to attend CeBIT this year (over 300).
The highlight for me was definitely Dave Girouard of Google USA, and Mitchell Baker, CEO, Mozilla Corporation, USA. Both were open and gave insight into their respective companies thoughts and vision. As Australian we often seem so distant from these larger organizations that it was refreshing to hear such firsthand information. Jackie Toranto, Managing Director of Hannover Fairs, gave a passionate and convincing account of the ICT Sector in Australia, while attendees listened to International Guests speak highly of Australia and the role it plays in ICT worldwide.
Overall it was exciting and I look forward to more tomorrow. (By the way, some videos were recorded and will be online shortly.)
Exhibitors and stand construction companies are flat-out working right now, filling the halls of the Sydney Exhibition and Convention Centre in readiness for the opening tomorrow morning.
It’s a mad scene – sort of controlled mayhem. But it looks good, and there is a buzz steadily building.
I have been to the CeBIT fairs in Hannover and Shanghai in past years as a journalist, and I have covered CeBIT Australia in past years, but this is my first time working with the organisers.
It’s been an incredible experience - very hard work, but with an adrenaline rush as reward (I’m expecting it to peak tomorrow morning at the opening, but the buzz will last the week.)
Because I have always worked as a journo, I was a little nervous jumping to the other side of the fence to do some of the media relations work, and helping with some of the coordination.
But I am a huge believer in this industry, so I suppose if I was going to do this sort of work anywhere, CeBIT Australia was a good place for me to land.
This industry produces such incredible ideas, and has such a big impact on the economy and on the lives of every day Australians that it’s no hardship for me to promote our home grown talent in any way I can.
The official opening is tomorrow at about 8.55am in Hall 6 of the Darling Harbour convention and exhibition centre and we’re expecting to be playing to a packed hall.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan will open the show with the Minister-President of Lower Saxony Christian Wulff from Germany.
Incidently, public ownership clearly isn’t taboo in Europe as it seems to be here. The reason Christian Wulff is so important to us is that Deutsche Messe AG is 50 per cent owned by the state of Lower Saxony, and 50 per cent owned by the City of Hannover. And this is one of the biggest event companies in the world, with operations in 83 countries!
Our local managing director Jackie Taranto will also present at the opening. Jackie, of course, is very well known to this industry. (It’s not too late to register, by the way on the CeBIT website, if you want to come along)
After the opening ceremony, the doors to CeBIT Australia 2007 will be thrown open. We’ll hope to see you there, and I will keep posting through the event with video interviews of speakers and exhibitors!
A careful analysis of the software applications industry, which is regarded as innovative reveals an interesting paradox. Specifically, that the development of software is far from innovative. Some would say that the approach to software development is more akin to a ‘cottage industry’.
What do we mean by cottage industry? Essentially, the term cottage industry refers to environment where products are not produced using engineering principles, or via a ‘factory’ approach in terms of capturing the design, production and then delivery as a completed and working product. This is certainly true of the approach to the development of large scale software applications.
It should be noted in view of the above that the whole software industry has become entrenched around two delivery extremes, specifically, that is the development and sale of a ‘one size fits all’ in terms of software product design and functionality, or software applications that are laboriously hand crafted using hundreds of programmers for each unique customer requirement.
If we compare the evolution of the manufacturing industry with that of the software applications industry it is evident that the software industry has yet to catch up and evolve a factory/engineering approach to software application development.
It is inevitable this will happen as the demands of customers, the need to cut costs, need for innovation and applications that are designed for and distributed across networks (the Internet) will result in the application development value chain evolving to mirror the evolution of manufacturing.
At CeBIT this year you will see the first steps toward the essential tools for the software industry and for all businesses world wide from Open Source to new WEB 2.0 and WEB 3.0 systems.
The report found Australian ICT exports in 2006 were worth $5.7 billion, while imports were worth $26.6 billion. The bottom line number is that the nation’s ICT trade deficit last year was $20.9 billion, up six per cent from the $19.7 billion in 2005.
While the numbers themselves are disheartening, I find it is the lack of reaction to them that is more demoralising. There has been some coverage on industry news web sites, but so far no political reaction.
The report was released last Thursday, and from our political leaders we heard …. nothing. ICT is not on the agenda, let alone in the news cycle.
Communications and IT Minister Helen Coonan didn’t feel the need to spruik, Labor’s shadow minister Stephen Conroy wasn’t moved to put forward the plans of the alternate government.
But to me, the silence says more about the way the ICT industry is organised than it does about government.
Why should our Government leaders take seriously an industry that is so fractured and fragmented? Why should Helen Coonan or Stephen Conroy be expected to listen to so many competing ICT voices and conclude anything other than that they are hearing a series of self-interested whines?
Our industry needs a single, loud and powerful voice if it is to command attention and get ICT issues on the national agenda.
The industry is currently represented by twenty-odd different groups. These are fiercely protected fiefdoms, meaning the industry struggles to articulate a clear message.
The ICT Trade deficit numbers are disheartening. We have made no progress as an industry in this area in five years. But the trade issue needs to be kept in perspective. There are plenty of economists who will point to the high business investment in ICT as a sign of a robust economy.
It is not all doom and gloom. The exciting thing about this industry is that it always presents new and greater opportunities. But changing the technology business culture in this country will take direction.
Pulling the different trade groups together – the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers Association (AEEMA), the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) and the ACS (among others) – must be this industry’s number one priority.
To form a single industry lobby group, or to even create a single umbrella organisation, is a hugely difficult challenge. It will be an extremely painful and most likely bitter process.
But it simply has to done, and ultimately the benefits will have been worth the pain.
This is an issue that is well recognised across the industry. There is nothing new being said here. But it needs to be said, again and again.
CeBIT Australia was described to me by a colleague as the circus coming to town, and as a gathering of the Clans. It’s a fair description, but it is now time for the clans to stop behaving like clowns.
We are in an election year, yet this industry has no real voice at the table.
