Tim Howell’s Weblog

Reports are coming through that New Zealand once again had a strong prescence at CeBIT, to the chagrin of the Australian exhibitors, it seems.

Putting national rivalries aside, we found CeBIT a useful exercise back in 2005, which also received strong support from NZTE. The takeaways for us, at our first international show were:

Use the event as a launchpad into Europe and, in particular, the German-speaking countries. What they require from you: German language versions of your software and, ideally, all associated documentation.

The event is also a useful one to research other companies and, in particular, competitors, who are most likely to be there. We set aside a couple of days for competitive research, and found it worthwhile understanding how our major competitors positioned themselves, promoted themselves, as well as observing the questions they were asked - assuming the questions were in English, of course.

Lastly, depending on what you want to get out of it, the event is also useful for partnering, with resellers, distributors and technology partner candidates all available.

Dealing with the volume of people is key, and taking good notes about any useful conversations will prove invaluable later on - this is the case at any tradeshow. During the busy periods, we were scrambling to write details on the backs of business cards - anything to keep track of who the person was and what they wanted, so that we could make meaningful contact later on.