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13 November 2013 [11:03] - Today.Az
Global Conference and Synergy Summit incorporated into the CeBIT Eurasia Platform, opened its doors to the public for the 14th time in Istanbul on October 24.
Keynote themes such as "Urban Transformation and Technology" and "Smart Cities and Life in Smart Municipalities" were highlighted at the platform, where Turkey was shown as a model.
CeBIT Bilishim Eurasia Exhibition 2013 offered four main sections: CeBIT pro, CeBIT gov, CeBIT lab, and CeBIT life.
General Manager of Hannover Messe Bileshim Fuarcilik A.Sh., Alexander Kühnel, shared the success of CeBIT Bilishim Eurasia with AzerNews.
Question.: This CeBit 2013 in Istanbul was expected to present innovation and entrepreneurship, which are of vital importance for Turkey' future, create seminars, conferences and panel discussion aimed at promoting Istanbul and Turkey as an easily accessible regional information technology center. In your opinion, did you succeed in these aims?
A.: Yes, if you want a successful show, you always have to follow the market, see what the market is doing, and offer the right platform. So what we have been doing for years is scanning the market together with our partner associations, industry zones, and municipalities to find the way forward, what to offer, what kind of platform to offer.
It is not the task of the organizer to show the innovations. Showcasing needs to be done by the exhibitors, but we need to offer them the new trends, to touch the trends, maybe to cluster and to find new topics for the show, where they exhibit.
When we do look at our four columns, they are more or less filled up with exhibitors. We do have four columns, one of which is CeBit Pro -- for professional, one is Gov, it's getting bigger and bigger, the third one is CeBit Lab. For me it is the most interesting one, because whenever somebody has an idea and he starts to create software or a product, it is always difficult to bring it to industry. One thing is an idea, but to transfer it to the industry, that needs to be done, and there you can see the several examples, as well as for the CeBit Live, how the digital world is being used at home and in the office.
Talking about targets and whether we succeeded with them as I said, if you have a successful show it is difficult to keep the level at number one, but we are working hard on it. What is new? One target was to internationalize our conference program and together with German BITS com, an IT association in Germany, we succeeded in installing parallel to our CeBit Synergy Summit, for the first time, CeBit Global Conference. We have high ranking international speakers and the target was not only to have the conference here, we wanted to broadcast it via the Internet. We invested a lot and hopefully it would work. And you can see many of the conference via internet as well for free. Just go on the website of cebitbilisim.com.tr and you can see the conference. This is a very big step for the future.
Q.: Thus, there is no need to come in Istanbul to see the conference?
A.: No, no, no, let me say in that way the internet is, in my opinion, never a substitute for a trade fair. It is a concurrent event. Whenever you do business, business is done by people, and you need to sit face to face. There is research in Europe that even if you make decisions for a two hundred million project, 50 percent of the decision is done by brain and 50 percent is done by heart. You can cover brain by the Internet, but heart - only face to face.
Q.: It was said during the opening that CeBit Global Conference is the first conference of this kind outside Germany, do you think that these conference will attract more visitors?
A.: Yes, for this year, but even more for the next year. It will continue to attract an audience and vendors, in my opinion, because if you go to your boss asking for the allowance to go to a trade show, many times they say, "Hmm...What else do they offer?" And if we offer a conference live, as well as broadcast, then it's another additional reason to give the allowance to go there. So, finally, I am sure that we will attract more visitors and exhibitors, as well because, as you see the program of the conference, there are small, medium, and big size companies, who do promote themselves. They are commenting on current actual topics and people want to listen to this information. Finally, they want to talk to the people themselves, they want to get feedback, so they are listening at the conference. For example, Huawei is promoting their products, or their ideas, on a certain topic and then they are going into the halls to see the reality, so it is a perfect combination, in my opinion.
Q.: The popularity of CeBit fairs is rising year by year. What do you think is the reason for the exhibition success? What specifically indicates the increase of this exhibition's popularity?
A.: There are several reasons. This is our 14th exhibition. Years ago we had a hard time because the IT business and the shows went down dramatically. There was hype ten years ago, but then it died down. Remembering the internet hype, I guess 80-90 percent of the Internet companies are gone. They no longer exist, there was a bubble. But now since two-three years ago we are back to success. Why? The first is the location for that region. If you look at the surrounding countries, many of them are not allowed or they have big problems getting a visa to go to Germany, to the CeBit mother show in Hannover. Many of the surrounding countries now have an agreement with Turkey and they can join without any visa. They are just allowed traveling. This is allowed for the products of the trade, as well as for the people, who are doing the sales and maintenance, so this is one of the successes.
The first reason is the right location, because we are covering the Middle East region and the second reason is, I think, people who are exhibiting. Many people are following us around the world not only for CeBit, but for others as well, because they know if Deutsche Messe organizes a show, they are doing it in a very professional way. It is a well known brand, so they know if they go to a show somewhere in the world organized by Deutsche Messe, a certain quality is delivered and they want to have quality.
There are many smaller shows around the world, but in the matter of organization and infrastructure, they are worse than us. Our big advantage is that we have big shows around the world, and our network has more than one hundred representatives around the world. We are connected more or less all over the world. We are collecting experience and can exchange it. Therefore, as Istanbul becomes more and more a hub for that region, it is the right decision to have an exhibition 15 and more.
Q.: This year along with other innovations CeBit Istanbul presented "Smart Cities and Smart Municipal Services" program. Could you please be more precise and talk about the opportunities provide by this project not only for Turkey, but also for surrounding countries including Azerbaijan?
A.: Look at the traffic in this metropolitan city here, it is really a challenge. You need a smart solution for a smart city. You need a smart solution for this city not only for traffic. The metropolitan area is so huge that you need to find ways to make life easier. Traffic is one problem, but they told me, for example, if you want to go to a cemetery in this area with its population of 17 million, the cemeteries are unbelievably big. If you want to visit your relatives there, to think about them, bring some flowers, you have a hard time finding the burial plots. Now, they have developed a software for the terminals at cemeteries. There you can enter the name, and print out a map of where to find the plot.
This is just an example, but I like it because it is smart, it is really smart. Public traffic, and earthquakes are topics important to the CeBit Gov sector. Istanbul is in a danger of earthquake because two continent platforms are crushing each other. They are expecting an earthquake, but when nobody knows exactly. It might happen soon, and they are not prepared.
They were not prepared and are starting now. They are installing special alert systems and special information channels, because if something happens you need to immediately provide emergency information. They started a project to examine the quality of houses. If there is an earthquake and the construction is weak, ... pouf.
So they are dismantling buildings because there are too old to survive an earthquake and they need plans, they need software, since this is a smart city as well.
Q.: Baku is growing and will need such smart projects in the future as well.
A.: Yes, the interesting thing and this is another target of the trade show is the exchange of ideas and solutions. If we do have guests here, delegations, from other countries as exhibitors as well as the visitors, on the political level, they see what Turkey does. Turkey is promoting itself. What they are doing is not only for visitors, but for the residents of Istanbul, as well as other cities and other countries. Those things are coming up to the laboratory, where they are creating software for the smart cities. If they can promote them in Istanbul, and Istanbul is taking them into consideration and installing it, they can show that it works. Then they can use the example of Istanbul to spread it to other cities, like Baku. This is our show. Our show is information, information for products, information for politicians, and it is a mixture of all of it.
Q.: What novelties are forecast for the coming CeBit exhibitions, like new topics, and opportunities for exhibitors?
A.: As I said we need to follow the market. We are in close contact with the industrial zones, associations, municipals, looking for trends in the future. As I already mentioned, earthquake is one of the topics. What I think, in general, for the show in addition to the exhibition is there will be conferences. This is a trend, they belong together since shows need conferences, and conferences need shows. Visitors and exhibitors of the show are listeners or presenters of the conference and vice verse. They belong each other. And, if you ask me, in the future there will be more and more in the conference sector. I think it there will be more in the direction of applications, and this means you need to show something. It is not enough for software companies to find new software. It is difficult to explain a software, you cannot touch it. But if, for example, they have an application, like a small robot, and they can show on the screen how the robot works or what you can do by giving new software to the robot, this will be the future for shows. Because all those topics are difficult to showcase they need to have more applications and I think that will come in the future.
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