My Five Takeaways From Cebit 2013

Cebit is the largest IT conference in the world, scheduled once a year in Hanover, Germany.

The trade fair is held each year on the Hanover fairground, the world’s largest fairground, in Hanover, Lower Saxony, Germany, and is considered a barometer of the state of the art in information technology. […]

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. (via Wikipedia)

I had the chance to participate in a panel to discuss the future of television in 2020 (which seems to be a perfect fit for Project Primetime). Here are my overall takeaways from the conference.

1) Television of the future

The technology is there to deliver a next generation TV experience, but the business models are still challenging. While TV Everywhere provides a solid foundation in the US, it’s not the case internationally. High hopes are in invested in better, more targeted, and more innovative online advertisement models.

2) Big Data

Big Data wins US presidency elections, and is a lot more accessible with cloud capacity. It’s certainly also more entertaining when presented at the Microsoft booth with an overall very high production value, and a music band highlighting every statement in “late night show” style.

3) Firefox is popular

With around 50% penetration, Germany loves the Firefox browser. And not only that, Firefox’s CEO likes to provide in-depth insight in the strategy of their Firefox OS at the Telekom booth, which likely was the largest stage at the conference.

If Germany is interested in Firefox OS in the same capacity as in the browser, it could become very interesting – even though Firefox OS is clearly targeting development countries.

4) Online Security can be entertaining

I had the chance to attend an entertaining security presentation by James Lyne. Not only became it clear how advanced web hackers are these days, but also how you might track them physically down. It and it was certainly interesting to see him at HBO’s Bill Maher right next to Snoop Dogg just a couple of days before.

5) 3D Printers and Industry 4.0 

The new, more flexible and personalized Industry 4.0 it about to evolve, but there is a lot of confusion how this actually will look like, and what role 3D printers can play. Will they replace traditional, static production workflows, and are short lived and customizable productions applicable to add industries? We will see, but as we all know, the problem of choice will persist in the future.

Interested in more information? Visit the Cebit video archive.