CeBIT, Hannover, Germany 2008 (4th March – 10th March 2008)
Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) recently facilitated the participation of IT companies from Pakistan at the world’s largest IT event CeBIT which is held in Hannover, Germany every year.
GoodCore Software was selected to be one of the companies from Pakistan to be part of this delegation of exhibitors. Apart from GoodCore Software, the other participating companies were Server4Sale and Xorlogics. PSEB not only facilitated the process but also provided a substantial subsidy on the cost of the exhibition stall for the participating companies. We would thank PSEB for its on-going efforts for the promotion of Pakistani IT companies. Participation in exhibitions like these is especially useful for small companies like ours which primarily serve international customers and don’t yet have a physical presence for business development in those countries.
The Pakistan Pavilion
CeBIT 2008 drew about 6,000 exhibitor companies in the areas of Business Solutions, Mobile Solutions and Infrastructure, and nearly half a million attendees. CeBIT’s official website (www.cebit.de) provides comprehensive information about the highlights and statistics of the event.
Companies from Pakistan had their stalls at the combined “Pakistan Pavilion” which PSEB had organized. Right from the morning of day one of the 6-day exhibition, visitors started pouring in at the exhibition plaza (The “Messe”, as they would call it in German), in fairly large numbers. A number of them came to the Pakistan Pavilion too (at-least partly due to the strategic location of Pakistan’s stall). Several visitors were surprised to see Pakistan’s stall. “Pakistan wasn’t present at last year’s CeBIT”, they would tell us. And “Good to see you here, Pakistan should have a bigger presence next year”.
There was genuine interest shown in the services the Pakistani companies had to offer. GoodCore Software received multiple inquiries not just from the German IT companies but also from IT companies based in countries such as Romania, Slovenia, Italy, Finland, Sudan, and South Africa. The interest was in some of the main areas of expertise GoodCore Software offers: open source software development, financial software development (stock trading systems), development services around Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision), and custom development services.
Visitors were interested in the learning more about the general state of the IT industry in Pakistan and the overall environment and infrastructure facilities.
The ambassador of Pakistan visits the stall
The ambassador of Pakistan in Germany, Mr. Shahid Kamal, was very kind to visit the Pakistan pavilion and share his thoughts on what further steps PSEB and the Pakistani IT companies could take to achieve a greater presence in the German market.
If it’s on the booth, it’s to be given away
It was probably the 2nd day of the exhibition when we overheard some people saying that one of the exhibitors from a European country had his PDA stolen from right on top of their booth. It surprised us at the Pakistan stall and, at the same time, created that feeling of thankfulness that one feels when one avoids a major embarrassment: thank God the event was not being held in a city of Pakistan!
While it makes sense, we thought, for a visitor to take away any marketing material that an exhibitor places on the booth, taking away a PDA wasn’t nice. It was only later that we came to know that it was a CeBIT tradition that whatever is kept on top of the booth is understood to be a “give away” for CeBIT visitors. Yeah, that’s right.
Good thing we came to know of it fairly early on in the event and, subsequently, kept everything that we didn’t intend to just give away at safer places. We did however unintentionally give away several writing pens.
Strategic location of the stall
PSEB has surely been making efforts to facilitate the marketing plans of the IT companies and participation at CeBIT was part of the same string of efforts. On a lighter note, we must also commend PSEB’s insight into acquiring strategic location in the exhibition hall: right next to the rest rooms of the hall. It drew a lot of visitors to the Pakistan stall which may otherwise not have visited us. A lot of visitors at-least pretended to have interest in what Pakistani IT companies had to offer so that they could kill the time while their accomplices used the rest rooms. Some of them, after using the rest rooms, stopped by for a glass of water (which, by the way, was exorbitantly expensive at the show) as they claimed to have an incredible belief in the future of Pakistani IT industry. Some genuine visitors may very well have stopped by because they saw a crowd of such “time-killers” at our stall. Now, that was creative. Keep it up, PSEB!
