Ade CeBIT: # 4191 says goodbye

Who, like me, was born and raised in Hanover, gets to know the monstrous Malstrom called "Mbad". My first room, fiercely disputed, had to be released for the distinguished guests, the whole family settled in the basement. "It's our vacation," said my father, when drunk guests collapsed in my room. In high school, I myself moved to the center of this hot tub and worked in the 70s at the Hannover Fair, twice at the Center for Office and Information Technology of the Odd Hall. 1, which became the independent CeBIT in 1986. It was my vacation because the Interrail card was funded.

Printer searched, call found

I visited the first CeBIT after a long absence from Hannover as an aid seeker, because I had bought after the fight with a 250-page master's thesis for the university career a British computer Apricot and I was looking for a printer with which the least compatible PC Thing that printed what I wrote. This ended in a total fiasco, on the one hand. On the other hand, some people were paying for articles describing how the serial port should be plugged with their cables so that a daisy-chain printer will shut down properly.

From this first CeBIT, I remembered the idea of ​​the Compaq towing head, the computer exploiting the wave of IBM compatible computers that made possible the mbadive growth of CeBIT.

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Journalist at CeBIT

So I first appeared on the 1987 CeBIT as a journalist and I got the number 4191, which I kept until the last CeBIT this year, as it was counted sequentially and a small number was quickly considered an honorific title. Being a journalist at CeBIT was simple: a Microsoft executive, who later reached the management level, was invited into the exhibition halls as a representative of the magazine "Multiplan". Staying a journalist at CeBIT has been more difficult.

That year, a Data Data Becker journalist "stood out" because he had criticized the "starwriter" of the young German startup StartUps Star as an unfinished program. Before the sale of Star Division to Sun Microsystems, President Marco Borries held legendary press conferences at CeBIT, which earned him a reputation for his loyal press.

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Exhibition Park seen from above

The fair developed quickly, because first of all, all the exhibitors admitted had something to do with the new "office technology" and all visitors were invited to marvel at this new territory. Many established authors have started as "opossip" at CeBIT interested in computer technology. Exhibitors rewarded this with premieres. The first computers equipped with a Pentium processor appeared at CeBIT in 1993 and forced the chief editor of the board, Andreas Stiller, to go to the editorial office the first night of the show, one of these boxes under the arm.

The first …, the first …, the first …

The first color laptop (from Zenith), the first "private radio" (Mannesmann D2) or the first smartphone had their appearance, apart from countless printers and other accessories. Some things have been mentioned in a prestigious way, such as the Newton concept of Apple, which evoked more of a fashion show, and others without any appeal, such as the presentation of voice over IP telephony Vocaltech at the NCR booth, where they wanted to show "something interesting",

Speaking of the Internet: CeBIT, on which Research Minister Jürgen Rüttgers launched the "Schulen ans Netz" initiative in 1996, so that "online multimedia" can be part of life daily school.

In 1998, Rüttgers added to his initiative on the "CeBIT Home" the demand for discounted internet rates, especially for students, so that Germany does not miss the train entering the network. CeBIT Home has seen the growing number of visitors, the company's attempt at the fair, the professional visitors and the experience of carrying bags to separate visitors. It did not work and CeBIT Home was shut down after two years. Instead, this separation of pleasure and "serious computing" finally sealed the descent of the fair.

The beginning of the end

This separation from the public was decisive, because after the protests of Microsoft, the "production of just peace" was due to the fact that Sony had obtained an exhibition ban for its new Playstation and had no longer been view in Hanover. At the same time, ticket prices were raised to deter "possums". But the concept did not work, because more thematically limited exhibitions, such as the 3GSM in Barcelona, ​​presented complete thematic worlds just before CeBIT and the audience was invited to an annual show of good humor in Barcelona. IFA Berlin.

Since 2007, there has been the crisis of CeBIT, which was fought by a congress gathering and the exhibition of professional visitors. With topics such as Shareconomy, we wanted the "decision makers" from other industries to go to Hanover, but that remained because of the typical fair prices in Hanover, the cold weather and the overly simple themes of fashion knitted by visitors from the IT sector.

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(Detlef Borchers) /

(Mho)