Cebit: some high tech, others low-key

3D printers can produce spare parts for technical machinery with the push of a button. That helps companies save, especially on storage. 3D printed dresses haven’t been as widely adopted, but they’ve caused some buzz, at least at the Cebit.

It doesn’t get any more personalized than creating a miniature version of yourself. “It’s really strange, when you see it for the first time,” said Rene Strien of Botspot, a company that specializes in 3D scanners.

German chancellor Angela Merkel and the Swiss president Johann Schneider-Ammann look a little skeptical of the augmented reality glasses. They’re supposed to provide more perspective, by enhancing normal vision with additional information from the Internet.

VR headsets can be found at the Cebit too. But because the trade fair is mostly targeted towards corporate clients, the headsets are almost an afterthought. But the Swedish startup Uniti uses VR goggles to allow visitors to experience a new way to steer a mini electric car that it wants to bring to market soon.

Nox, a show robot, has no industrial use whatsoever. But he provides entertainment, especially for weary Cebit visitors. Nox originated from a project at Germany’s Pforzheim University. Now he’s mostly into show business. And he dances too.

Speaking of show business, some companies went all out with their stands, like the Deutsche Telekom. But top dogs like SAP from Germany, Huawei from China or Salesforce from the U.S., haven’t scrimped on their presence either. The bigger stands even had their own restaurants to serve business partners.

Most of the Cebit’s 3300 exhibitors had significantly more modest stands. Lai Guojie from China’s Wuhan only needs a few square meters to show off fiber optic cables for fast data transfers. Despite an unassuming presence at the Cebit, he says his employer YOFC is one of the sector’s biggest players.

…still exist at Cebit. A company specialized in car racing game accessories, hopes the hostesses at its stand attract the requisite attention. The strategy doesn’t seem to be working as well as hoped.

The population of exhibitors and visitors at the Cebit is overwhelmingly male. That still seems to be par for the course at tech fairs. Beyond the big shows, it’s still mostly men that are looking at all the technical nuts and bolts.

The next wave of tech aficionados are at the Cebit, here at the sidelines of a prize ceremony for the winner of a tech contest. By the time they’re older, data cables are probably going to seem terribly old-fashioned to them.