The Home of Ben May, Hervey Bay, QLD, Australia.Personal Blog of Ben May, Hervey bay

This Year I was lucky enough to be able to travel on down to Sydney for the largest annual ICT show in Australia. Also known as CeBit. 

Now, what is CeBit you might say? Well I wasn’t all that sure either when I signed up, I knew it was IT based and really, that’s all I needed to justify a work trip. CeBit is primarily  a trade show for CEOs, CTOs, IT managers and the like to come along and discover what is out there, and how they can go back home and optimise and stay at the fore front of the technology arena . 

Now I have many hats that I wear, I run a web design business, I build websites/ program websites, and I also manage IT. The three hats generally interlock pretty well as all three fields are pretty similar, or all do better when another side does better. So I thought that it made quite good sense to go. Even if I was rubbing shoulders with people in the same field as me, but instead of needing 3 servers at work, they need 120, or 10 staff computers, needed 500, but i wrote it all off as a learning experience. 

CeBit accomodated for members of the IT industry, from those just starting out to the CTO (Cheif Technology Officers). There were small talks on things like how to utilise the power of Plesk, or cPanel, and how to maintain a Joomla website, right up to how to listening to expert researchers explain what the new Government is trying to do with Broadband, and what they need to do.

Apart from these free talks happening everywhere, there were also conferences in a lot of web based industries, Web 2.0 in Small business, e-Marketing and SEO,and things like DSL discussions and hearing from Federal members on what they are doing with ICT in Australia. 

That covers the speeches and what you could learn directly from listening to experts. There was so much new technology out there it was fascinating to learn of some of the products that are in the market, and how some can help the smaller business like me, streamline and save money. Things like VOIP seemed to be one of the strongest presences in the expo, along with Wireless transmitters, and web hosting.

Speaking of Hosting, I was fortunate enough to meet my hosting provider of a number of years, AussieHQ. I met my Account rep, some of the techs who came up, and even the CEO. It also just so happened that there was a customer appeciation night on over on Darling harbour with AHQ, so I got to spend the First night of cebit with my hosting company.. and without going into the details, I think I got back to my motel, just after 1am.. It was a great night.

Oh right, back to CeBit - I’ve been asked by customers, colleges and friends if it was worth the trip to Sydney? And I would have to say yes.

It shows people like me, who work in a number of IT fields and in a smaller town what really is out there, and that, in most cases, there is no limit to the IT world.

I’ll be sure to book my tickets for next year!