protonet @ CeBIT 2012

Von Protonet Team. Veröffentlicht 12. März 2012.

Thanks to the betahaus we were able to enjoy our first exhibition “in swimmies”:

Protonet in the coworking area at CeBIT 2012 

Christopher and Henning used the day before the official start to set up the node infrastructure in the coworking area, just outside of hall 2 at the convention center. Ali and I joined Tuesday morning, just in time for our first journalist meeting with the computer magazine c’t. The outcome was more than we could have asked for: an awesome article about our product on heise.de, the biggest German IT online news magazine: http://heise.de/-1467773 (Thank you!).

Amongst laser cutters, 3D printers and crazy betahaus sessions we set up our protonet node, lay out our cebit flyers and got ready to talk all day about wifi, storage, data security, collaboration and our (so we heard) great 70s design. Although we were not directly in one of the exhibitor halls we had a steady flow of interested people coming by and checking out us and the betahaus area.

We also visited a few events that were more or less effective. There were discussion rounds that turned out to be sales attempts (where we decided to use that for our benefit and in turn tried to sell them our stuff) and quite a few networking get-togethers were we met some really interesting people and startups.

We were told not to miss the parties when going to CeBIT, so we took that advice to heart and to be honest – we were quite surprised. Not only did we get drinks everywhere after six o’clock, but most parties also served food and snacks. While talking to people during the day we were invited to some parties that were truly valuable (mostly for the first non-drunken hours though). Our advice: visit the Tobit booth, with free booze and robot strippers you can’t do much wrong.

Talking all day, partying every night, walking and standing around is exhausting. The conferences in the convention center only went from Tuesday to Friday, so we decided to leave CeBIT on Friday. Considering our startup-like sleeping arrangements in a Karate-Dojo nearby that probably was a good decision. All in all this was a great experience for us, both in teambuilding and in sales & pitch practice. Next stop DAX30.

It’s time to get back to serious business! Your Serious Business Officer, Wolfgang